What Does Job 16:5 Mean?
But I would make you firm with my mouth, and the shaking of my lips would hold back your pain.
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
But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage your grief.THE KEY
Job’s “moving” lips echo the Hebrew verb for mourning with someone: comfort begins as movement toward another person’s grief.
THE MEANING
The verse names speech as a real force in grief: words can strengthen you, and lips can help hold sorrow back. Comfort comes through words that support without adding another wound.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that another person’s words cannot help when you are grieving. Here, speech can strengthen, and compassionate restraint can lessen grief’s pressure.
THE ROOT
נִיד
nid
GROWS FROM
נוד
nud
To move or wander; in a context of grief, to mourn with someone.
“shaking” in this verse is nid. The “moving” of the lips comes from נוד (nud), a root of movement and wandering. In Job 2:11, the same root describes mourning with Job, linking the movement of lips with movement toward another person’s grief.
ALSO GROWS
lanud: To mourn with or show sympathy.
לָנוּד
Job 2:11 uses this form for the friends’ act of mourning with Job, making the motion in this verse an image of sympathy.
nad: A wanderer or fugitive.
נָד
This branch keeps the root’s basic sense of movement visible: comfort moves toward the grieving person.
אֲאַמְּצֵכֶם
ammetsekhem
GROWS FROM
אמץ
amats
To be firm or strong; to make strong.
“make firm” in this verse is ammetsekhem. The word carries the sense of imparting firmness. The mouth can give someone steadiness in grief, so strengthening here is not merely saying something reassuring; it is helping another person stand more firmly.
ALSO GROWS
ve'emats: And be strong or courageous.
וֶאֱמָץ
This form shows the root’s connection between strength and courage, clarifying the steadiness that Job’s words would give.
imtsu: Be strong or courageous.
אִמְצוּ
The same root can name the courage that takes hold within someone, the quality Job’s speech would help restore.
יַחְשֹׂךְ
yachsokh
GROWS FROM
חשך
chasakh
To hold back, withhold, or spare.
“hold back” in this verse is yachsokh. The word translated “assuage” carries the image of holding back or sparing. Relief can come through restraint: speech that strengthens while not pressing further into the wound.
ALSO GROWS
chasakhta: You withheld or spared.
חָשַׂכְתָּ
This form shows that the root can describe holding something back, bringing a sense of restraint to Job’s promise.
chosēkh: One who withholds.
חֹשֵׂךְ
This participle names the act of withholding, illuminating how restraint can be part of the relief the verse describes.
THE PATTERN
Speech can either intensify pain or give a grieving person strength through words that do not add to the wound.
There is one who blurts like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is healing.A soft answer turns away the burning, but words of pain stir up the nostrils.Let no rotten word come out of your mouth, but whatever is good for building up where there is need, that it may give favor to those who hear.THE THREAD
Now when Job's three friends heard of all this harm that had come upon him, they came each from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; for they had made an appointment together to come to shake their heads with him and to comfort him.The same Hebrew root נוד (nud, “move or wander”) underlies “moving” here and the phrase translated “to mourn with him” there. Comfort begins as movement toward grief: lips move, and companions move toward the one who suffers.
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