What Does Job 12:13 Mean?
With him is wisdom and strength; counsel and understanding are his.
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
With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding.THE KEY
In God, wisdom and strength belong together: discernment never stands apart from the power to act.
THE MEANING
Wisdom, strength, counsel, and understanding are held together in God’s presence now. What can look like separate capacities, seeing clearly, discerning a way, and having strength to act, belongs to one source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that clear sight and real strength must pull in opposite directions dissolves here: the verse holds both in God.
THE ROOT
חָכְמָה
ḥokhmāh
GROWS FROM
חכם
ḥ-k-m
To be wise or act skillfully.
The Hebrew word can name wisdom as well as skill, so wisdom is not only an idea but a practiced capacity. Paired with strength, it presents clear understanding and effective action as joined in God’s presence.
ALSO GROWS
ḥākam: To be wise or act skillfully.
חָכַם
This verbal form presents wisdom as something exercised, not merely held as information.
ḥākām: A wise or skilled person.
חָכָם
The same root describes a person whose wisdom is expressed through capability.
גְּבוּרָה
gevurah
GROWS FROM
גבר
g-b-r
To be mighty, prevail, or prove strong.
The root carries the sense of prevailing strength, more than mere force. Beside wisdom and counsel, that strength appears joined to discernment.
ALSO GROWS
gābar: To be strong or prevail.
גָּבַר
This verb shows the active force carried by the word for strength in the verse.
gibbōr: A mighty person or warrior.
גִּבּוֹר
The same root describes one able to act with strength, giving the verse’s pairing of wisdom and might a human-scale branch.
תְּבוּנָה
tevunah
GROWS FROM
בין
b-y-n
To discern or distinguish.
Understanding here carries the sense of discernment: the ability to perceive distinctions. The verse places that clear seeing beside strength, counsel, and wisdom as part of one coherent presence.
ALSO GROWS
bîn: To discern or understand.
בִּין
The verbal root makes understanding an act of perceiving clearly.
nāḇōn: Discerning or perceptive.
נָבוֹן
This related form describes the quality of one who can distinguish and understand.
THE PATTERN
Scripture holds wisdom and effective power together as capacities that come from God.
Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom; I am discernment; strength is mine.Daniel answered and said, Let the name of God be blessed for the ages and the ages, for wisdom and might are his.But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the Anointed One, the power of God and the wisdom of God.THE THREAD
Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom; I am discernment; strength is mine.Job’s עֵצָה (ʿēṣāh, counsel) and גְּבוּרָה (gevurah, strength) recur in Proverbs 8:14; its בִּינָה (bînāh, understanding) comes from the same ב־י־ן (b-y-n, discern) root as Job’s תְּבוּנָה (tevunah, understanding). Proverbs gathers the same capacities into a first-person voice, letting them speak as one presence.
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