What Does Job 30:25 Mean in the King James?
Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for 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
Job’s proof of compassion is that another person’s hardship has entered his own living self.
THE MEANING
Another person’s trouble reaches your own life, and their need is not distant or abstract. The verse names compassion as grief that is felt within you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Compassion is only an opinion about someone else’s suffering; it does not reach or change the one who sees it.
THE ROOT
נַפְשִׁי
nafshi
GROWS FROM
נפש
The living self or person; a related verbal form means to rest or be refreshed.
English “soul” can sound like a separate inner part, but נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, living self) names the person whose grief is stirred by another’s need. A related verbal form means to be refreshed or rested, placing that living self within the movement from strain toward restoration.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living self, person, or life.
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the word Job places inside the grief: another person’s hardship reaches his whole living self.
vayinnafesh: Was refreshed or rested.
וַיִּנָּפֵשׁ
This related verbal form shows the root also speaks of the living self at rest, deepening the contrast with the grief Job describes.
THE PATTERN
Compassion lets another person’s distress reach the self and take form in a response.
If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother:But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom.Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.THE THREAD
But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom.Job’s נַפְשִׁי (nafshi, my living self) grieves for the poor; the psalm’s נַפְשִׁי (nafshi, my living self) is humbled while others are sick. The shared root shows compassion as something borne within the living self, not held at a distance.
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