What Does Job 16:15 Mean?
I have stitched sackcloth over my skin, and I have lowered my horn into the dust.
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
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust.THE KEY
Job’s horn, a sign of strength and a word-family tied to radiance, is brought down into the dust.
THE MEANING
The verse gives you a bodily picture of grief: sackcloth is sewn against the skin, and your horn, your force and standing, lies defiled in dust. Sorrow reaches what is visible and what gives a person strength, rather than staying only inward.
THE ROOT
קַרְנִי
qarnî
GROWS FROM
קרן
q-r-n
Horn; a projecting point or ray, and by extension a sign of strength.
The consonants behind “horn” also form a verb for shining or sending out rays. What can rise and radiate is laid in dust here, giving humiliation both a body and a visible loss of force.
ALSO GROWS
qeren: Horn; also a figurative sign of strength.
קֶרֶן
The horn gives the verse a visible image for force and standing brought low.
qāran: To shine or send out rays.
קָרַן
This verb is used of Moses’ face shining; its shared consonants place radiance beside the horn now lying in dust.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses the horn as a sign of strength whose lowering and raising make a change in standing visible.
All the horns of the wicked I cut off; but the horns of the aligned one are lifted high.Those who strive with the LORD are shattered; from the heavens he thunders upon them. The LORD judges the edges of the earth, and gives strength to his king, and lifts high the horn of his anointed one.And has raised up a horn of deliverance for us in the house of his servant David;THE THREAD
All the horns of the wicked I cut off; but the horns of the aligned one are lifted high.Psalm 75 uses the same Hebrew word, qeren, for the horns that are cut off or exalted. Beside Job’s horn in the dust, it reveals the image as a measure of strength and standing that can be brought low or lifted.
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