What Does Job 13:5 Mean?

Oh that you would altogether hush! It would be your wisdom.

Job 13:5 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.

THE KEY

Here, silence is not the absence of wisdom; it is the wisdom itself.

THE MEANING

When someone meets your pain with explanations that miss what you are living, this verse names silence as wiser than another confident answer. It treats restraint as the recognition that speech can outrun understanding.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The verse undoes the belief that having an answer ready proves wisdom; sometimes restraint reveals more understanding than speech.

THE ROOT

הַחֲרֵשׁ תַּחֲרִישׁוּן

haḥăreš taḥărîšûn

GROWS FROM

חרשׁ

ḥ-r-š

Be silent, keep quiet.

“hush” in this verse is haḥăreš taḥărîšûn. The Hebrew repeats ⁨חרשׁ⁩: an infinitive absolute followed by a verb from the same root, intensifying the sense to “be utterly silent.” The English phrase spreads this force across several words, while the Hebrew centers silence as the action that would count as wisdom here.

ALSO GROWS

haḥăreš: Being silent, utterly quiet.

הַחֲרֵשׁ

This form intensifies the following verb from the same root, giving the phrase its force of complete silence.

ʾaḥărîš: I will be silent; I will hold my tongue.

אַחֲרִישׁ

Job uses the same root in Job 6:24 when he says he will hold his tongue as he receives instruction.

THE PATTERN

When speech outruns understanding, restraint can reveal more wisdom than another answer.

Even a fool, when he settles, is reckoned wise; and the one who shuts his lips is discerning.

Proverbs 17:28 · SDVSilence can display the understanding that words alone may only claim.

A time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to hush, and a time to speak.

Ecclesiastes 3:7 · SDVWisdom includes recognizing that silence, like speech, has its fitting time.

Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to swell.

James 1:19 · SDVSlowing speech makes room to hear before an answer hardens into anger.

THE THREAD

Point me, and I will hold my tongue; make me reach where I have wandered.

Job 6:24 · SDV

“Hold my tongue” uses the same Hebrew root ⁨חרשׁ⁩ as “hold your peace” here. In Job 6:24, silence makes room for correction; in Job 13:5, it would be the friends’ wisdom.

This reading is from Selah Verse.

You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.

Get Selah Verse

A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.

Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us