What Does Job 16:10 Mean?
They have gaped their mouths wide against me. They have struck my cheek in scorn. They have gathered together against me.
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
They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures the crowd as filling up against him: open mouths, a struck cheek, and collective opposition become one assault.
THE MEANING
You see hostility arrive through speech, bodily harm, and people closing ranks against one person. Reproach is not detached words here; it reaches the cheek and becomes collective pressure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that humiliation is only verbal: here reproach reaches the face as a blow, while the crowd makes it collective.
THE ROOT
יִתְמַלָּאוּן
yitmallāʾun
GROWS FROM
מלא
maleʾ
To fill or be full.
“gathered together” in this verse is yitmallāʾun. The verb comes from מלא, “fill, be full,” and can carry the sense of attackers filling themselves against the speaker. “Gathered” conveys their convergence; the root also lets you hear the crowd becoming a mass of opposition.
ALSO GROWS
maleʾ: To fill or be full.
מָלֵא
The basic verb makes the crowd’s convergence sound like a filling in around the speaker.
melōʾ: Fullness; a full measure.
מְלֹא
This related form reinforces the image of opposition accumulating until it is full.
פָּעֲרוּ
paʿaru
GROWS FROM
פער
paʿar
To open wide or gape.
“gaped their mouths wide” in this verse is paʿaru. The Hebrew gives the mouths a physical openness: they are stretched wide as the attack begins. The same verb appears in Psalm 22:13, where the gaping mouths are compared to a ravening lion.
ALSO GROWS
paʿar: To open wide; to gape.
פָּעַר
This is the verb’s basic form, making the attackers’ mouths an active part of the scene.
poʿer: One who opens wide or gapes.
פֹּעֵר
This participial form carries the same open-mouthed action into the image of an attacker.
THE PATTERN
Hostility becomes a whole assault when contempt, bodily blows, and collective opposition converge on one person.
They gape at me with their mouths, a lion tearing and roaring.He gives his cheek to the one who strikes him; he is filled with reproach.Then they spat in his face and struck him with their fists, and others slapped him with the palms of their hands.THE THREAD
They gape at me with their mouths, a lion tearing and roaring.The Hebrew verb behind “gaped” is פער (paʿar), “to open wide or gape,” in both verses. Job places the open mouths beside a struck cheek and a crowd filling against the speaker; the Psalm’s lion image makes the same hostility feel predatory.
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