What Does Job 15:6 Mean?
Your own mouth declares you in the wrong, and not I; your own lips answer against you.
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
Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee.THE KEY
Job’s lips are cast as both defendant and witness: they “answer” the charge against him.
THE MEANING
Your words can answer back as evidence, carrying a charge even when no one else speaks it. But saying that someone’s words condemn them is still an accuser’s interpretation, not proof that the verdict is true.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A confident accusation does not become true merely because it is presented as your own words speaking against you.
THE ROOT
יַרְשִׁיעֲךָ
yarshiʿakha
GROWS FROM
רשע
r-sh-ʿ
To be wicked or guilty; in this verb form, to declare someone guilty.
“declares you in the wrong” in this verse is yarshiʿakha. The verb comes from the root רשע, which also names wickedness and the person judged wicked. Job’s mouth is cast as a prosecutor, making the charge sound as if it rises from within him.
ALSO GROWS
rāšāʿ: A wicked or guilty person.
רָשָׁע
This branch names the person under the root’s charge, showing that “condemn” carries the weight of a guilt verdict.
rišʿāh: Wickedness.
רִשְׁעָה
The same root names the condition the verdict assigns, giving “condemneth” a sharper edge than general disapproval.
יַעֲנוּ־בָךְ
yaʿănû-ḇāḵ
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿ-n-h
To answer or respond; here, the lips answer against Job.
“answer against” in this verse is yaʿănû-ḇāḵ. The verb translated “testify” literally means “answer,” followed by “against you.” The wording turns the lips into responders in a case: their speech is framed as an answer that bears witness.
ALSO GROWS
ʿānāh: To answer or respond.
עָנָה
This is the answer-and-response root used for Job’s lips, making testimony sound like speech answering a charge.
maʿăneh: An answer or response.
מַעֲנֶה
This noun from the same root shows how an act of answering can become a spoken response, like the testimony assigned to the lips here.
THE PATTERN
Words become evidence that can carry consequences and reveal what is within the speaker.
Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.For by your words you will be made aligned, and by your words you will be condemned.And it was so, after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, that the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, The burning of my anger is against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken to me the steady thing, as my servant Job has.THE THREAD
If I align myself, my own mouth will pronounce me wicked; if I say, I am whole, it will make me crooked.Job 9:20 uses the same Hebrew root, רשע, for “condemn,” with the same image of Job’s own mouth. The echo places this charge within Job’s contested struggle to speak honestly under judgment; the accusation is not a neutral fact about his words.
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