What Does Job 11:3 Mean?
Shall your hollow words make men hush? And when you mock, shall no one put you to shame?
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
Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed?THE KEY
The verse asks whether empty words can force silence and whether mockery can escape being answered.
THE MEANING
The verse presents a live accusation: your words are called lies, and your mockery is said to demand a reply. Its questions expose how speech can silence others while remaining answerable itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A mocking voice is entitled to go unanswered simply because it has already silenced others.
THE ROOT
יַחֲרִישׁוּן
yaḥărîšûn
GROWS FROM
חרשׁ
Be silent, keep quiet.
“make men hush” in this verse is yaḥărîšûn. The Hebrew verb means to fall silent; it does not carry the sense of shalom, wholeness. Its related range also touches deafness, so the question is whether empty speech can make others stop answering, or stop hearing.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāraš: To be silent or keep quiet.
חָרַשׁ
This is the verb behind “hold their peace”; the image is silence, not restored wholeness.
ḥērēš: Deaf; unable to hear.
חֵרֵשׁ
This related form lets silence shade into not hearing, sharpening the question of what empty speech does to a room.
תַלְעַג
talʿag
GROWS FROM
לעג
Mock, deride; the root also has a shade of stammering or broken speech.
“mockest” in this verse is talʿag. The same root can describe mockery and stammering speech. That overlap makes ridicule a way of treating another voice as defective, even as this verse asks whether the mocker’s own speech can be challenged.
ALSO GROWS
lāʿag: To mock or deride.
לָעַג
This is the root behind the charge of mockery in the verse.
laʿăgê śāp̄â: Stammering lips; speech that sounds broken or unfamiliar.
לַעֲגֵי שָׂפָה
Isaiah 28:11 uses this related form, linking derision with speech treated as defective.
מַכְלִם
makhlîm
GROWS FROM
כלם
Put to shame, disgrace, or reproach.
“make thee ashamed” in this verse is makhlîm. The verse frames shame as something one person can bring upon another through public speech. The same root appears as the noun for shame in Proverbs 18:13, where answering before hearing becomes shameful too.
ALSO GROWS
kālam: To shame or reproach.
כָּלַם
This verb supplies the force of “make thee ashamed.”
kelimmāh: Shame or disgrace.
כְּלִמָּה
This noun shares the root and appears in Proverbs 18:13, connecting shame to how people answer one another.
THE PATTERN
Words remain accountable to hearing, response, and judgment.
The one who returns a word before he hears it, folly and shame are his.Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to swell.But I say to you, every word without work that humankind speaks, they will give back an account of it in the day of judgment.THE THREAD
The one who returns a word before he hears it, folly and shame are his.Job’s “make thee ashamed” and Proverbs’ “shame” share the Hebrew root כלם (kālam), meaning to put to shame or disgrace. Proverbs opens the question further: the response to speech can itself bring shame when it comes before hearing.
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