What Does Job 34:7 Mean in the King James?
What man is like Job, who drinketh up scorning like water?
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 image turns scorn into sustenance: Job is pictured taking contempt in as readily as water.
THE MEANING
The speaker’s question portrays Job as taking in scorn with the regularity of drinking water. Contempt becomes an inward intake, something received until ridicule feels ordinary.
THE ROOT
לַעַג
laʿag
GROWS FROM
לעג
l-ʿ-g
To mock or deride; to make someone an object of contempt.
“scorning” in this verse is laʿag. This root holds together the act of mocking and the experience of derision. The verse’s drink image gives that human act the force of something received into Job’s inner life.
ALSO GROWS
loʿēg: One who mocks; a mocker.
לֹעֵג
This form keeps the root attached to the person doing the deriding, giving the scorn a human source.
laʿag: Mockery; derision.
לַעַג
This noun names the scorn itself as something Job is pictured as taking in like a drink.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses eating and drinking to picture an inward reality as something received into a person.
How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.THE THREAD
But thou, O LORD, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision.Job 34:7 uses לַעַג (laʿag), meaning derision, for what Job is accused of drinking. Psalm 59:8 uses the same root for the LORD’s derision of hostile nations, showing that this word can carry more than a personal insult.
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