What Does Job 4:7 Mean in the King James?
Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?
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 question treats survival as evidence of innocence, making a sufferer’s loss sound like proof of guilt.
THE MEANING
The question offers a sweeping rule: the innocent do not perish, and the upright are not erased. Read beside Job’s suffering, its certainty turns pain into an accusation, as if loss itself proves guilt. The verse exposes how easily a confident rule can wound the person whose life contradicts it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Uprightness does not guarantee freedom from suffering; Job’s own suffering stands as the book’s answer to the question.
THE ROOT
נָקִי
nāqî
GROWS FROM
נקה
n-q-h
Be clean, be clear, or be free from guilt.
The word translated “innocent” carries the image of being clean or cleared. The question makes that moral cleanness seem incompatible with perishing, though the word itself says nothing about being protected from loss.
ALSO GROWS
nāqî: Clean, guiltless, innocent.
נָקִי
This is the form used here: the question asks whether someone clean of guilt can perish.
niqqāyôn: Cleanness, innocence.
נִקָּיוֹן
This noun from the same root keeps innocence connected to the image of being clear or clean.
אָבַד
ʾābad
GROWS FROM
אבד
Be lost or perish.
The word translated “perished” also carries the sense of being lost. The question treats that loss as something that should never happen to the innocent, though the root names what happens, not why.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōvēd: Perishing, lost.
אֹבֵד
This participle from the same root describes one who is perishing or lost.
ʾăvaddôn: Destruction, ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This related form carries the same root’s movement into destruction.
נִכְחָדוּ
nikḥādû
GROWS FROM
כחד
Hide or conceal; in this form, be hidden away or disappear.
“cut off” in this verse is nikḥādû. The second image of loss comes from a root whose basic sense is concealment. Beside “perish,” it doubles the image of the upright vanishing, while the question treats that disappearance as incompatible with innocence.
ALSO GROWS
kāḥad: Hide, conceal.
כָּחַד
This basic form reveals the image of disappearance beneath “cut off.”
hikḥîd: Make disappear, destroy, cut off.
הִכְחִיד
This causative form shows how the root can describe bringing something to an end or removing it from sight.
THE PATTERN
A person’s suffering cannot by itself prove that the person is guilty.
All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.THE THREAD
All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.“Perisheth” uses the same Hebrew root אבד (ʾābad, be lost or perish) as Job’s “perished.” Ecclesiastes places a just person inside that very loss, turning Job 4:7’s confident question into an open challenge.
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