What Does Job 25:5 Mean in the King James?

Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

Job 25:5 · KJV

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

Even the heavens’ brightest lights do not make brightness the measure of purity before God.

THE MEANING

What looks luminous and complete from where you stand is seen more fully than you can see it yourself. The moon and stars do not establish cleanness by their brightness; radiance and purity are not the same thing.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The lie that whatever looks bright and orderly must therefore be pure in God’s eyes.

THE ROOT

זַכּוּ

zakkû

GROWS FROM

זכה

z-k-h

To be clear, clean, or pure.

English “pure” can sound like a moral label, but ⁨זכה⁩ (zakah, “to be clear or clean”) also carries the sense of cleanness. Job uses this root for the stars and, in Job 9:30, for hands made clean: the image moves from the heavens to the human body, yet brightness and self-cleansing do not establish purity before God.

ALSO GROWS

zakh: Pure, clean, clear.

זַךְ

This related adjective brings out the root’s sense of clearness beneath the stars’ “purity.”

zikkiti: I have made clean.

זִכִּיתִי

Proverbs 20:9 uses the same root for making the heart clean, carrying the question from the stars to inward self-cleansing.

THE PATTERN

Created radiance is real, but it is measured by the one before whom it shines.

Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.

Job 15:15 · KJVThe heavens themselves cannot claim cleanness before God’s sight.

Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.

Isaiah 24:23 · KJVThe moon and sun lose their apparent standing before the LORD’s reign.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

1 Corinthians 15:41 · KJVThe stars have distinct glories, showing that created radiance is particular rather than absolute.

THE THREAD

If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;

Job 9:30 · KJV

The Hebrew root ⁨זכה⁩ (zakah, “to be clear or clean”) links the stars’ purity here with Job’s attempt to make his hands clean. The image shifts from the heavens to the hands, but the question remains what can truly stand clean before God.

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