What Does Job 1:9 Mean?
Then the Adversary answered the LORD, and said, Is Job in awe of God for nothing?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?THE KEY
The Adversary turns reverence into a transaction: is Job in awe of God only because he is paid in blessing?
THE MEANING
The question reaches you wherever goodness and belief seem tied: does reverence survive when life stops paying you back? The Adversary frames Job’s regard as a bargain, as though protection and prosperity purchase his awe. The verse exposes this suspicion as a live test of what a relationship rests on, while leaving the answer unresolved.
THE ROOT
הַשָּׂטָן
ha-satan
GROWS FROM
שׂטן
To oppose or act as an adversary.
The Hebrew has the article: ha-satan, “the Adversary.” That makes the question more than a neutral inquiry; it comes from the posture of opposition, casting Job’s reverence as a purchased response.
ALSO GROWS
satan: Adversary; one who opposes.
שָׂטָן
This is the title used in Job’s verse, naming the speaker by the opposing role he takes.
sitnah: Hostility or accusation.
שִׂטְנָה
This related form shows how opposition can take the shape of an accusation, as it does when Job’s motives are called into question.
יָרֵא
yare
GROWS FROM
ירא
To fear or stand in awe.
“in awe of God” in this verse is yare. The word translated “fear” can carry the sense of awe and reverence toward God. The question is therefore about whether Job’s orientation toward God is freely held or bought by the good he receives.
ALSO GROWS
yir'ah: Fear or awe.
יִרְאָה
This noun shares the root’s range and makes visible the reverence that the Adversary claims is conditional.
nora: Awe-inspiring or formidable.
נוֹרָא
This related form describes what evokes awe, drawing attention to the nature of the one Job reveres.
THE PATTERN
When devotion is measured by its return, a relationship is mistaken for an exchange.
Have you not put a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock has burst forth in the land.Though the fig tree shall not burst into bloom, and no fruit shall be in the vines; the work of the olive shall come up short, and the fields shall make no food; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. Yet I will leap in the LORD; I will dance in the God of my deliverance.For if you love those who love you, what wage do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?THE THREAD
And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the messenger of the LORD, and the Adversary standing at his right hand to stand against him.Job’s הַשָּׂטָן (ha-satan, “the Adversary”) speaks here; Zechariah uses the same title for the one standing to oppose Joshua. The shared שׂטן root makes the posture of Job’s question visible: it is opposition expressed as an accusation.
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