What Does Job 38:5 Mean in the King James?
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
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 world’s measure is already laid down before your knowing reaches it.
THE MEANING
The question meets you inside a world with dimensions and boundaries, even where you cannot trace who set them. It holds your limited knowledge beside a created order that is measured all the same.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that what exceeds your understanding must be without measure.
THE ROOT
מִמָּדֶיהָ
mimmādeyha
GROWS FROM
מ־ד־ד
m-d-d
To measure or measure out.
“measures” in this verse is mimmādeyha. The Hebrew “its measurements” grows from מָדַד (madad, “to measure”), joining the earth’s dimensions to the act of measuring them. The next phrase names a קָו (qav, “measuring line”), making the image one of a world surveyed and laid out, not simply vast space.
ALSO GROWS
madad: To measure, measure out.
מָדַד
The verb makes explicit the action held inside “measures”: the dimensions are something set by measuring.
middah: Measure, dimension, extent.
מִדָּה
This related form makes the root’s sense of a defined span concrete: the earth has dimensions, not merely size without limit.
נָטָה
natah
GROWS FROM
נ־ט־ה
n-ṭ-h
To stretch out, extend, or incline.
“stretched” in this verse is natah. The line is not merely present; it is extended across the earth. נָטָה (natah, “to stretch out”) also describes pitching a tent, where an expanse is drawn over a space and given a defined shape.
ALSO GROWS
natah: To stretch out, extend, or incline.
נָטָה
Here the verb gives the measuring line its action: it reaches across the earth to establish its span.
natah ʾohel: To pitch or spread a tent.
נָטָה אֹהֶל
The same verb can describe spreading a covering across space, echoing the image of an expanse deliberately laid out.
THE PATTERN
The created world has appointed measures and boundaries that human understanding does not set.
Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.THE THREAD
Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?Job’s מִמָּדֶיהָ (mimmādeyha, “its measurements”) comes from מָדַד (madad, “to measure”), the same root Isaiah uses for “measured.” The image widens from the earth’s dimensions to waters, heaven, dust, and mountains: the question of measure reaches across the whole created expanse.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us