What Does Job 15:4 Mean?
Even you break off awe, and cut short your murmuring before 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
Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God.THE KEY
The prayer being restrained is also musing and discourse, so the verse names the shrinking of an entire inner conversation before God.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present possibility: awe of God is set aside, and the inward speech and reflection before God are made smaller. What is restrained is more than a spoken request; it includes the continuing movement of thought and words in God’s presence. The two clauses hold those losses together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that prayer is only a spoken petition: its word includes musing and discourse, so restraining prayer also narrows the inner conversation before God.
THE ROOT
שִׂיחָה
sichah
GROWS FROM
שיח
s-y-ḥ
to muse, speak, or discourse
“murmuring” in this verse is sichah. The word rendered “prayer” carries the sense of musing and discourse, joining inward reflection with spoken address. The verse describes diminishing that whole movement of thought and speech before God, not merely reducing formal requests.
ALSO GROWS
asichah: I meditate or speak
אָשִׂיחָה
Psalm 119:15 uses this form for meditation, showing inward attention as one branch of this discourse.
sicho: his musing or complaint
שִׂיחוֹ
Psalm 102:1 uses this word for a sufferer’s poured-out complaint, connecting musing with speech that can carry distress.
תִּגְרַע
tigraʿ
GROWS FROM
גרע
g-r-ʿ
to diminish, reduce, or withdraw
“cut short” in this verse is tigraʿ. The root names a reduction or taking away, giving “restrainest” the force of making something less. Here what is diminished is prayer as inner discourse before God.
ALSO GROWS
niggaraʿ: be diminished or held back
נִגָּרַע
In Numbers 9:7, the speakers ask why they are held back from bringing an offering; the same root makes restraint a concrete subtraction.
tigreʿu: you diminish or subtract
תִּגְרְעוּ
Deuteronomy 4:2 uses this form for diminishing instruction, showing the root’s force as taking something away.
יִרְאָה
yirʾah
GROWS FROM
ירא
y-r-ʾ
to fear or stand in awe
When God is the one feared, this word carries awe: a posture of recognition before God. Paired with the act of setting it aside, the verse describes awe being discarded alongside the diminishing of prayer.
ALSO GROWS
yareʾ: to fear or stand in awe
יָרֵא
This form shows the root as a lived response; with God as its object, the sense is awe rather than fear of danger.
moraʾ: awe or dread
מוֹרָא
This noun carries the same root’s sense of awe, clarifying the relational posture named in “fear of God.”
THE PATTERN
Prayer before God includes sustained inward discourse, not only occasional spoken petitions.
I murmur over your appointments, and I gaze upon your ways.And he spoke a parable to them to this end, that people must always pray and never give out.Pray without leaving a gap.THE THREAD
Evening, and morning, and at noon, I murmur and roar, and he hears and responds to my voice.Job’s “prayer” and the psalmist’s “will I pray” share שיח (s-y-ḥ), the root of musing and discourse. Job names that discourse as diminished; here it pours through the day and is heard, revealing what the restrained word contains.
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.
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