What Does Job 16:1 Mean?
Then Job answered and said.
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
Then Job answered and said,THE KEY
The Hebrew holds answering and speaking together: a response takes a voice inside an exchange.
THE MEANING
Job answers, and the answer becomes speech rather than remaining an inward reaction. You meet the moment when a response takes a voice and enters the exchange.
THE ROOT
וַיַּעַן
wayyaʿan
GROWS FROM
ענה
to answer or respond
“answered” in this verse is wayyaʿan. This root ties the act of answering to a response made to someone else. Paired with “said,” it presents Job’s words as a reply within an exchange, not speech detached from what came before.
ALSO GROWS
maʿaneh: An answer or response.
מַעֲנֶה
The noun names the response itself, keeping it in the same word family as the act of answering.
ʿoneh: One who is answering or responding.
עֹנֶה
This form names the speaker through the act of answering, as Job’s voice enters the exchange here.
THE PATTERN
An answer takes shape as speech within an exchange.
Then call, and I will answer, or let me speak, and you turn back to me.A soft answer turns away the burning, but words of pain stir up the nostrils.Jesus answered him, If I have spoken badly, bear witness to what is bad. But if well, why do you beat me?THE THREAD
Then call, and I will answer, or let me speak, and you turn back to me.Job 13:22 uses the same root ענה (ʿanah, answer or respond) for the answer in a direct exchange. In Job 16:1, that reply takes the form of spoken words: the possibility of an answer becomes a voice taking its turn.
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