---
title: Job 12:25 (JPS 1917) — They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to stagger… · tree and pragmatics
description: They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man. Who acts: people, wisdom. Job 12:25 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Job 12:25 · JPS 1917

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They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.

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**Who acts:** people, wisdom · **What happens:** grope, make, stagger · **To what, where:** dark, people

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This is Job 12:25 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people, wisdom), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:JOB:307
# text = They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	grope	grope	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	dark	dark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	without	without	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	maketh	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Style=Arch|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	stagger	stagger	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
15	like	like	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	drunken	drunken	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grope** | present | people |  |  | the dark |  | without light | vn rummage-35.5-1 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent in dark=Location |
| 2 | **make** | present | wisdom | people |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **stagger** | to-infinitive | people *not said here* |  |  |  |  | like a drunken man | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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יְמַֽשְׁשׁוּ־חֹ֥שֶׁךְ וְלֹא־א֑וֹר וַ֝יַּתְעֵ֗ם כַּשִּׁכּֽוֹר׃

[Job 12:25: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and the Targum →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/JOB.12.25/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:JOB:307` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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