What Does Job 24:9 Mean in the King James?
They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse places two forms of extraction side by side: a fatherless child is seized at the breast, and a poor person is made collateral.
THE MEANING
The verse exposes a violence that reaches into the most dependent life: the fatherless are taken even from the breast, while the poor are bound to a creditor’s claim. Bodily dependence and economic vulnerability appear in one scene, showing extraction reaching for whatever sustains a person.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the claim that a person’s need makes them fair collateral; the verse names that taking alongside the seizure of a nursing child.
THE ROOT
יִגְזְלוּ
yigzəlū
GROWS FROM
גזל
g-z-l
to seize or rob by force
“pluck” in this verse is yigzəlū. The verb can name robbery, so the image is an actual taking by force. “From the breast” makes the child’s dependence painfully concrete.
ALSO GROWS
gāzal: to seize, rob
גָּזַל
This verb exposes the force inside the act rendered “pluck.”
gəzēlāh: robbery, what has been robbed
גְּזֵלָה
The related noun names the taking as dispossession, not a harmless removal.
יַחְבֹּלוּ
yaḥbōlū
GROWS FROM
חבל
ḥ-b-l
to bind; to take as a pledge
The root’s binding sense gives “take a pledge” a physical edge: a poor person’s possession becomes tied to a creditor’s claim. The line moves from a child seized from nourishment to a poor person bound by collateral.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāḇal: to bind; to take as a pledge
חָבַל
This verbal form shows the root’s direct force in the verse: the poor are made security.
ḥevel: a cord or rope
חֶבֶל
This related word carries the image of binding, echoing how a pledge ties a possession to a debt.
עָנִי
ʿānî
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿ-n-h
to be afflicted or brought low
The word for the poor also carries the sense of being afflicted or brought low. The verse shows a pledge demanded from someone already under pressure.
ALSO GROWS
ʿānāh: to afflict or humble
עָנָה
The verb links poverty here with being brought low under another’s power.
ʿŏnî: affliction, misery
עֳנִי
This related noun makes the suffering carried within the description of the poor more visible.
THE PATTERN
Exploitation reaches for what sustains the vulnerable, turning care, covering, and earned wages into things the powerful can seize.
For that is his covering only, it is his raiment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto me, that I will hear; for I am gracious.Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge:Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge:Job’s “take a pledge” and Deuteronomy’s “take a widow’s raiment to pledge” use the same Hebrew root, חבל (ḥ-b-l; bind, take as a pledge). Deuteronomy names the fatherless and widow before forbidding this taking, opening Job’s line further as a question of who bears the cost of a creditor’s claim.
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