What Does Job 10:13 Mean?
And these you hide in your heart; I perceive that this is with you.
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
And these things hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this is with thee.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “hid” also means to store or treasure away, so what is concealed remains held close.
THE MEANING
The speaker confronts God with the claim that these things are hidden in God’s heart and says, “I know this is with you.” What is hidden remains present with the one who holds it; concealment is a form of keeping, not disappearance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that concealment means absence: what is hidden is still with the one who holds it, and can still be known.
THE ROOT
צָפַנְתָּ
tsafanta
GROWS FROM
צפן
tsaphan
To hide, store, or treasure away.
“hide” in this verse is tsafanta. This root holds hiding and laying up together: what is concealed is also kept. The verse’s force is that the hidden things remain with the one who stores them; secrecy does not make them absent.
ALSO GROWS
tsafun: Hidden, concealed, or stored away.
צָפוּן
It shows the continuing state of what the speaker says is held in God’s heart.
titspon: You hide or store up.
תִּצְפֹּן
This form appears with words kept “with thee,” echoing the verse’s claim that what is hidden remains with its keeper.
יָדַעְתִּי
yada’ti
GROWS FROM
ידע
yada
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“perceive” in this verse is yada’ti. The speaker’s “I know” uses yada, a word for knowing and recognizing. Set beside what is hidden, it gives the line its tension: the matter is concealed, yet the speaker recognizes that it remains with God.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know, recognize, or perceive.
יָדַע
It is the verb behind the speaker’s direct claim of knowledge.
madda: Knowledge or understanding.
מַדָּע
This related noun shows the root’s reach into what is known or understood.
moda: An acquaintance or kinsman; one known.
מוֹדָע
It carries knowing into relationship, reinforcing the personal force of the speaker’s claim.
THE PATTERN
What is hidden remains held within the one who keeps it, whether as concealed things, guarded words, or treasure.
How great is your goodness, which you store up for those in awe of you, which you work for those who take shelter in you before the sons of men!My son, if you take hold of my words, and store my commands within you.Again, the governance of the heavens is like a treasure hidden in a field, which, when a man has found, he hides; and in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.THE THREAD
How great is your goodness, which you store up for those in awe of you, which you work for those who take shelter in you before the sons of men!“Laid up” in Psalm 31:19 uses the same root, צפן (tsaphan), as “hid” in Job 10:13. The shared root shows that the hidden things in Job and the goodness in the psalm are both held in reserve, still present with the one who keeps them.
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