What Does Job 19:17 Mean?
My breath turns aside from my wife, and I plead for favor for the sons of my own womb.
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
My breath is strange to my wife, though I intreated for the children’s sake of mine own body.THE KEY
Here estrangement reaches beneath speech: the speaker’s very breath has become foreign to his wife.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks into the reader’s present experience of estrangement: even the breath of someone close can feel foreign to a spouse. The appeal to the children of the speaker’s own body leaves the intimacy of kinship exposed rather than making the distance disappear.
THE ROOT
רוּחִי
ruachi
GROWS FROM
רוח
ruach
Air in motion; breath or wind.
Ruach names breath and wind with the same Hebrew word; English translations may also render it as spirit elsewhere. Here, that life-bearing air is what has become strange in the closest relationship.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Wind, moving air beyond the body.
רוּחַ
The same word names the moving air outside, joining what English separates as wind and breath.
ruach: Breath, the air moving through a living body.
רוּחַ
This is its sense here, where estrangement reaches even the speaker’s living breath.
זָרָה
zarah
GROWS FROM
זור
zur
To be foreign or alien.
“turns aside” in this verse is zarah. The word describes more than an unfamiliar sound: it marks the speaker’s breath as foreign within his own household. The root’s stranger-language makes the intimacy of the rejection sharp.
ALSO GROWS
zar: A stranger or foreigner.
זָר
The same root names the outsider, showing how the speaker’s presence is heard as if it came from beyond the household.
zarim: Strangers or foreigners.
זָרִים
The plural form carries that sense of foreignness into a group, while this verse brings it into the most intimate bond.
וְחַנֹּתִי
vechanoti
GROWS FROM
חנן
chanan
To show favor or appeal for favor.
“plead for favor” in this verse is vechanoti. The plea belongs to the language of favor, not simply to asking for something. That makes the appeal to his own children a vulnerable request for a gracious response within the family bond.
ALSO GROWS
chen: Favor or gracious regard.
חֵן
This noun names the favor sought in the plea, giving the appeal a relational weight.
chanun: Gracious or favor-giving.
חַנּוּן
This related form describes the quality the plea seeks: a response marked by favor.
THE PATTERN
Estrangement can reach into the closest bonds until the familiar presence of one’s own household feels foreign.
I am one turned aside from my brothers, and a foreigner to my mother's sons.For the son sets the father at nothing, the daughter rises against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house.And a man's enemies will be those of his house.THE THREAD
You hide your face, and they are shaken; you gather in their breath, and they breathe out and return to their dust.Both verses use ruach for breath. In Job that breath is strange to his wife; in the Psalm, the same breath is bound to life itself, showing that the rejected breath remains part of the shared life of living creatures.
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