What Does Job 13:20 Mean?
Only do not do two things to me, then from your face I will not hide.
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
Only do not two things unto me: then will I not hide myself from thee.THE KEY
The two things are a withdrawn hand and lifted dread, the conditions Job names for staying before God’s face instead of hiding.
THE MEANING
You can want an answer and still feel driven to hide from the presence you are addressing. This prayer names the conditions for remaining present: the hand withdrawn and dread no longer imposed. With the threat eased, speech can move both ways: one can call and the other answer.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that reverence requires silent endurance: Job names the threat and asks for it to stop before he can remain present.
THE ROOT
אֶסָּתֵר
ʾesater
GROWS FROM
סתר
To hide or conceal; to keep out of sight.
“hide myself” in this verse is ʾesater. This root links a person’s withdrawal with whatever is concealed or serves as a hiding place. Job’s request is not to escape God’s presence, but to remain in it without having to disappear from fear.
ALSO GROWS
mistār: Hiding place, secret place
מִסְתָּר
The root can name the place of concealment as well as the act of hiding, giving Job’s refusal to hide a sense of leaving shelter.
nistār: Hidden, concealed
נִסְתָּר
This branch describes the state of what is out of sight; Job’s words reverse that state by choosing to remain visible before God.
מִפָּנֶיךָ
mippāneḵā
GROWS FROM
פנה
To turn or face toward.
“from your face” in this verse is mippāneḵā. The Hebrew wording says “from before your face,” where the KJV’s “from thee” can sound like simple distance. Job is asking to stay in the encounter, with the source of dread removed.
ALSO GROWS
pānîm: Face, presence
פָּנִים
This is the face-language at the center of Job’s request: he wants to remain before God rather than hide from that presence.
liphnei: Before, in the presence of
לִפְנֵי
This related form makes the spatial sense clear: the question is whether Job can stay before the face he is addressing.
THE PATTERN
Fear and exposure draw concealment, while bringing what is hidden into God’s presence opens a path to speaking and cleansing.
And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I trembled, because I was bare; and I hid myself.I make my falling short known to you, and my crookedness I do not cover. I say, I will speak my rebellion into the open before the LORD, and you release the crookedness of my falling short. Selah.But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we share in common one with another, and the blood of Jesus, the Anointed One, his Son, cleanses us from all falling short.THE THREAD
Do not hide your face from me; do not turn your servant away in the burning of your anger. You are my help; do not drop me, and do not let go of me, O God of my deliverance.In both verses, “hide” comes from סתר (satar, “to hide or conceal”). Job asks not to hide from God’s face; the psalm asks that God not hide that face from the speaker, making the shared root audible in both directions.
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