What Does Job 13:8 Mean?
Will you lift up his face? Will you contend for God?
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
Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God?THE KEY
To “accept his person” is literally to lift his face: the verse asks whether loyalty to God has tilted the scales before the case is heard.
THE MEANING
You can raise God’s case above the evidence and call it loyalty. This verse asks whether your defense is fair, or whether you have already tilted judgment toward the one you defend.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that loyalty to God means giving his side preferential treatment.
THE ROOT
תִּשָּׂאוּן פָּנִים
tisa’un panim
GROWS FROM
נשא
to lift, carry, or bear
“lift up his face” in this verse is tisa’un panim. English “accept his person” sounds like agreement, but the Hebrew pictures lifting someone’s face, raising them above ordinary judgment. The idiom exposes partiality as giving one person an elevated place in the scales.
ALSO GROWS
massa: burden; oracle
מַשָּׂא
A burden is something carried; the shared root makes lifting a person’s face part of a wider language of bearing.
nasi: prince; leader
נָשִׂיא
The word is associated with one lifted or elevated to rank, echoing the image of raising someone above others.
תְּרִיבוּן
terivun
GROWS FROM
ריב
to contend, dispute, or plead a case
“contend” in this verse is terivun. This root can name both a legal case and a quarrel. The verse asks whether the friends are making a case for God while already favoring him.
ALSO GROWS
riv: dispute; legal case
רִיב
It shows that contending can mean taking up a case, not simply expressing support.
merivah: quarrel; strife
מְרִיבָה
The same root also describes conflict, revealing how advocacy can turn into a fight.
THE PATTERN
A just judgment cannot be tilted by the identity or status of the one whose case is being argued.
You shall not recognize faces in judgment; hear and respond to the small as well as the great; do not shrink from the face of man; for the judgment is God's; and the word that is too hard for you, draw it near to me, and I will hear and respond to it.It is not good to regard the faces of the wicked, to bend the aligned one in judgment.My brothers, do not hold the trust of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Lord of weight, by receiving faces.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David. Grapple, LORD, with those who grapple with me; fight against those who fight against me.Job asks whether people will take up God’s case; Psalm uses the same ריב root as the speaker asks God to plead his cause. The shared word makes advocacy a two-way act of contending, leaving the question of whether a side is being taken fairly.
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