What Does Job 5:14 Mean in the King James?
They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night.
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 verse makes noon itself dark: having light around you does not guarantee that you can see your way.
THE MEANING
You can stand in what should be the clearest hour and still meet darkness. At noon, a person gropes as though night has erased every landmark. Bright conditions do not by themselves create orientation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that daylight guarantees clear perception: a person can have light around them and still be unable to find a way through.
THE ROOT
חֹשֶׁךְ
ḥōshekh
GROWS FROM
חשך
To grow dark; darkness.
The root names darkness as a condition that can arrive, not just a place a person enters. Here it occupies daytime itself, so the expected light gives no assurance of clear sight.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāshakh: To grow dark or become dark.
חָשַׁךְ
The verb presents darkness as something that happens, matching the verse’s startling shift of a bright hour into darkness.
maḥashakh: A dark place or obscurity.
מַחֲשָׁךְ
This branch gives darkness a setting; Job makes that setting the middle of the day.
צָהֳרַיִם
ṣāhŏrayim
GROWS FROM
צהר
To shine or be bright.
“noonday” in this verse is ṣāhŏrayim. The word for noon belongs to a root of brightness, sharpening the verse’s reversal: the hour marked by light becomes indistinguishable from night. The contradiction is inside the wording, not just the scene.
ALSO GROWS
ṣāhŏrayim: Noon or midday.
צָהֳרַיִם
This is the bright hour in which the verse says people grope as though it were night.
ṣōhar: A light opening or window.
צֹהַר
This related word evokes an opening that admits light, deepening the contrast with a noon in which light does not guide.
יְמַשְּׁשׁוּ
yemashshu
GROWS FROM
משש
To feel or search by touch.
“grope” in this verse is yemashshu. The verse does not only say that sight is lost; it shows people reaching out to find their way by touch. The root makes the darkness physical: they search for what the eyes cannot locate.
ALSO GROWS
vayemushēhu: And he felt him, by touch.
וַיְמֻשֵּׁהוּ
In Genesis 27:22, touch tests what sight cannot confirm; here it becomes an attempt to navigate when the world offers no clear direction.
nemashesh: We grope or feel our way.
נְמַשֵּׁשׁ
Isaiah 59:10 uses the same root for people groping like the blind, echoing Job’s image of touch replacing sight.
THE PATTERN
Perception can fail even when the conditions that should make things visible are fully present.
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!THE THREAD
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.Isaiah uses the same root, מָשַׁשׁ (māshash, to feel or grope), and repeats the image of stumbling at noon as in night. The shared root reveals that both verses picture touch searching for a way forward when the light offers no usable sight.
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