What Does Job 26:13 Mean in the King James?
By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.
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 heavens are beautified by breath, and even the fleeing serpent is formed by God’s hand.
THE MEANING
The heavens above you are made fair by God’s breath, and even the force that twists and flees is within the reach of his hand. Beauty and danger both remain within the scope of God’s creative power.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that what twists or terrifies lies beyond God’s creative reach.
THE ROOT
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
ר־ו־ח
r-w-ḥ
To blow or breathe; the word also names wind and breath.
One Hebrew word carries breath, wind, and spirit, so “spirit” here is not detached from moving air or life-giving breath. Its consonantal kin רָוַח (rāwaḥ), meaning “breathe freely” or “gain room,” lets the breath that beautifies the heavens carry a shade of spaciousness.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath, wind, or spirit.
רוּחַ
The verse’s word for “spirit” also holds the concrete senses of breath and wind.
rāwaḥ: To breathe freely, have room, or gain relief.
רָוַח
This related form links breathing with gaining room, adding a spacious shade to the breath that makes the heavens fair.
בָּרִיחַ
bāriaḥ
GROWS FROM
ב־ר־ח
b-r-ḥ
To flee, run away, or escape.
The word rendered “crooked” also carries the sense “fleeing” in this serpent epithet. Its root makes the creature’s elusiveness audible, while the verse places even what escapes human grasp within the reach of the hand that forms it.
ALSO GROWS
bāraḥ: To flee or run away.
בָּרַח
This verb from the same root makes the serpent’s movement explicit.
nāḥāš bāriaḥ: The fleeing serpent.
נָחָשׁ בָּרִיחַ
This phrase names the elusive creature whose formation the verse places within the reach of God’s hand.
THE PATTERN
The breath that makes the heavens radiant and the hand that forms the serpent hold beauty and chaos within one creative reach.
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.THE THREAD
In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.Isaiah repeats the phrase נָחָשׁ בָּרִיחַ (nāḥāš bāriaḥ), meaning “the fleeing serpent.” Job places this elusive creature within the hand that forms it; Isaiah shows the same force under God’s judgment.
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