What Does Job 41:24 Mean in the King James?
His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.
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 Hebrew pictures this heart as cast into stone-like solidity, its firmness a shape set at the core.
THE MEANING
You encounter a heart with no give: stone first, then a piece of the lower millstone. The Hebrew repeats יָצוּק (yāṣûq, cast or poured into form), making the firmness feel like a shape set all the way through.
THE ROOT
יָצוּק
yāṣûq
GROWS FROM
יצק
to pour, cast, or pour into a fixed form
“firm / hard” in this verse is yāṣûq. English “firm” and “hard” describe the result; יָצוּק (yāṣûq, cast or poured) gives the image of material poured into shape and left set. The repeated word makes the heart’s solidity feel like its cast form, not a passing reaction.
ALSO GROWS
yāṣaq: to pour or cast
יָצַק
This verb makes explicit the action carried inside יָצוּק: material is poured or cast into a form.
mûṣāq: cast, solid, firm
מוּצָק
Job 37:18 uses this form for a molten mirror, linking the root’s act of casting with the solidity pictured here.
THE PATTERN
A heart set hard resists what would reach it, while a changed heart becomes able to receive.
Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.THE THREAD
Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?Job 37:18 uses the same יצק root in מוּצָק (mûṣāq, cast or solid) for a molten mirror, connecting casting with a visible, solid form. Here that same cast-state describes the creature’s heart, making “firm” an image of something poured and set.
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