What Does Job 16:7 Mean?
But now he has worn me out. You have emptied all my assembly.
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 now he hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my company.THE KEY
The verse names suffering as a double devastation: the speaker is worn down, and the whole circle around him is left desolate.
THE MEANING
This verse gives words to the moment when you feel spent and the people gathered around you seem devastated too. It holds both wounds together: your own exhaustion and the loss reaching your company. Its shift from “he” to “thou” leaves the charge direct and unresolved.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that being worn down is only a private weakness: here the speaker names the exhaustion as imposed and its damage as reaching the whole company.
THE ROOT
הֲשַׁמּוֹתָ
hashimmota
GROWS FROM
שמם
To become desolate or devastated; also to be appalled.
“emptied” in this verse is hashimmota. The root holds desolation and being appalled together: this is more than simple absence; it is devastation that leaves a scene stunned. The form in this verse makes the whole company the object of that desolation.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, waste.
שְׁמָמָה
Isaiah 49:8 uses this same-root word for desolate inheritances, showing that what is desolate can later be inherited.
shamem: To become desolate or be appalled.
שָׁמֵם
The root’s appalled sense presents desolation as a condition that shocks those who see it, as in Jeremiah 18:16.
עֲדָתִי
ʿadati
GROWS FROM
יעד
To appoint, designate, or meet; עֵדָה (edah) is an assembly or company.
“assembly” in this verse is ʿadati. עֵדָה (edah) is linked with יעד (yaʿad), appointing or gathering for a meeting. The desolation reaches a gathered body of people, not only the speaker’s private solitude.
ALSO GROWS
yaʿad: To appoint, designate, or meet.
יָעַד
The gathering sense behind the word for company makes clear that the verse’s loss falls on a group bound together.
moʿed: An appointed time, meeting, or meeting place.
מוֹעֵד
This related word carries the sense of people or events brought together by appointment, sharpening what it means for the whole company to be made desolate.
הֶלְאַנִי
heʾelani
GROWS FROM
לאה
To tire, grow weary, or become exhausted.
“worn me out” in this verse is heʾelani. The root names real depletion, and the form here presents the speaker’s weariness as something brought upon him. Set beside the desolated company, his exhaustion is one part of a wider affliction.
ALSO GROWS
vayyilʾu: They became weary; they wearied themselves.
וַיִּלְאוּ
In Genesis 19:11 the same root describes people exhausting themselves trying to find a door, giving weariness the force of effort spent without relief.
nilʾeiti: I have grown weary.
נִלְאֵיתִי
In Jeremiah 20:9 the same root names a speaker’s exhaustion, echoing the personal depletion expressed here.
THE PATTERN
Suffering can wear down a person while also emptying the circle of companionship around them.
For these I weep. My eye, my eye, runs down with waters, for the comforter is far from me, the one who turns back my living soul. My children are stunned, for the enemy grows mighty.At my first defense no one came to my side, but everyone left me behind. May it not be counted to them.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD, In a time of favor I answered you, and in a day of deliverance I helped you. I will guard you, and give you as a covenant for the people, to make the earth stand, to hand down the emptied holdings.The same root, שמם (shamem), names Job’s desolated company and Isaiah’s desolate inheritances. Isaiah speaks of those inheritances being received again, showing desolation as a condition with a future beyond itself.
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