What Does Job 14:6 Mean?
Look away from him, and let him stop, until he takes his pleasure, like a hired hand, in his day.
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
Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day.THE KEY
The rest requested here is cessation: a person asks for the gaze to lift while the hired worker’s day runs to its end.
THE MEANING
The verse gives human life the shape of a workday with a limit. It voices a request for the gaze to turn aside, allowing the person to cease until that day is complete. Rest here is the stopping of pressure, not a claim that mortality disappears.
THE ROOT
וְיַחְדָּל
wəyaḥdāl
GROWS FROM
חדל
ḥ-d-l
To cease, stop, or desist.
“stop” in this verse is wəyaḥdāl. English rest can suggest recuperation, but this Hebrew verb names the stopping itself. The request is for labor and exposure to cease, not for extra strength to keep going.
ALSO GROWS
ḥādal: To cease or desist.
חָדַל
This verbal form makes the verse’s rest a cessation of activity.
ḥādelû: They ceased or stopped.
חָדְלוּ
The plural form carries the same stopping into Job 3:17, where the troubled cease.
שָׂכִיר
śāḵîr
GROWS FROM
שכר
ś-k-r
To hire or engage for wages; the root also names wages.
“hired hand” in this verse is śāḵîr. The hired worker and the wage belong to the same word family. The comparison gives the day a concrete boundary: it is the span of labor that eventually reaches its close.
ALSO GROWS
śāḵār: Wages, hire, or reward.
שָׂכָר
This branch shows the compensation bound up with the hired worker named in the verse.
śāḵar: To hire or engage for wages.
שָׂכַר
This verb shares the worker’s root and brings the act of hiring into the image of a measured workday.
THE PATTERN
A person’s labor has a boundary, and the desire for relief gathers around the close of that day.
A person goes out to his work and his labor until evening.I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.So when evening came, the lord of the vineyard said to his overseer, Call the workers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and reaching the first.THE THREAD
There the wicked stop their trembling, and there the spent of strength come to rest.Job 3:17 uses the same root, חדל (ḥ-d-l), for the troubling that ceases; here the same root gives shape to the reprieve being asked for. Across both lines, rest is the ending of exertion and disturbance.
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