What Does Job 16:14 Mean?
He breaks through me, breach upon breach. He runs at me like a warrior.
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
He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats the root for breaking through as both action and wound, so the assault becomes rupture multiplying itself.
THE MEANING
When suffering comes this way, one rupture opens into another before you can recover. The force seems to rush straight at you with a warrior’s strength, and the verse gives that experience its full weight.
THE ROOT
יִפְרְצֵנִי
yipretseni
GROWS FROM
פ־ר־ץ
parats
To break through, burst out, or make a breach.
“breaks through me” in this verse is yipretseni. The verb “breaketh” and the noun “breach” grow from the same root, turning the action into the wound it leaves. The repeated root makes this more than a blow: it is breaking through, again and again.
ALSO GROWS
parats: To break through or burst out.
פָּרַץ
This is the verb behind “breaketh,” naming the force that breaks into the speaker’s life.
perets: A breach, rupture, or breaking forth.
פֶּרֶץ
This noun names the opening left by the action; “breach upon breach” repeats the same root’s force.
גִּבּוֹר
gibbor
GROWS FROM
ג־ב־ר
To be strong, prevail, or have might.
“warrior” in this verse is gibbor. The word carries the sense of a mighty or prevailing force, not merely a large figure. The comparison makes the rush feel powerful enough to overwhelm.
ALSO GROWS
gavar: To be strong or prevail.
גָּבַר
This verb shows the force behind the image: strength pressing forward.
gevurah: Might or strength.
גְּבוּרָה
This related noun makes the attacker’s overwhelming power explicit.
THE PATTERN
Repeated affliction is pictured as an engulfing assault that arrives in waves or blows, with no interval between them.
Deep calls to deep at the voice of your waterspouts. All your breakers and your rolling waves cross over me.Your heat lies upon me, and with all your breakers you bend me low. Selah.Are they servants of the Anointed One? I speak as one beside myself. I am above them, in toils overflowing, in blows beyond measure, in guardhouses overflowing, in deaths often.THE THREAD
And it came to be, as he drew back his hand, and behold, his brother came out, and she said, How have you broken through? Let this breach be upon you. Therefore his name was called Pharez, the breach.Job’s “breaketh” and “breach” both arise from פ־ר־ץ (parats, break through). In Genesis the same root describes פָּרֶץ (Perets, breach or breaking forth) emerging into the world; here it names repeated injury, preserving the root’s raw force without deciding that the rupture is good.
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