What Does Job 32:2 Mean in the King James?
Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram: against Job was his wrath kindled, because he justified himself rather than God.
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 dispute is about whose verdict defines what is right: Job’s self-justification is set above God’s.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present tension: self-defense can become a claim that your own judgment outranks God’s. Elihu’s name, אֱלִיהוּא (Elihu, “My God is He”), echoes the question of whose verdict stands highest. The anger in the verse rises around that ordering.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that defending yourself is neutral even when your own verdict becomes the highest measure.
THE ROOT
צַדְּקוֹ
tsadqo
GROWS FROM
צדק
To be right, just, or aligned.
“justified himself” in this verse is tsadqo. The consonants צ־ד־ק run through צֶדֶק and צַדִּיק, linking rightness, the act of justifying, and the person judged to be right. Here the tension is about alignment itself: whether Job’s self-judgment stands above God’s.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness, alignment.
צֶדֶק
This noun shows that the verse’s “justified” is about the standard by which a person is judged right.
tsaddiq: A just or aligned person.
צַדִּיק
This related form connects a person’s standing to the same root as the act of declaring oneself right.
THE PATTERN
A claim to be right becomes a rival standard when it places the self above God’s judgment.
All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.THE THREAD
If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.Job uses the same Hebrew root צדק in “justify myself,” then places that claim beside his own mouth’s counterverdict. The shared root sharpens the present verse’s question: can self-declared rightness become the final measure?
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