What Does Job 2:13 Mean?
So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spoke a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.
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
So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.THE KEY
The friends do not fill grief with speech; their silence lets the full weight of the pain be seen.
THE MEANING
Some pain is too large for speech, and care can take the form of remaining beside the person who bears it. The companions’ silence lasts through seven days and nights without claiming to mend what they see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that silence necessarily means abandonment: here, silence stays beside the sufferer.
THE ROOT
כְּאֵב
ke'ev
GROWS FROM
כ־א־ב
k-ʾ-b
To hurt or suffer pain.
The Hebrew names the grief as pain, not as a vague sadness. The same root spans pain felt and pain endured, giving the companions’ silence a concrete suffering to meet.
ALSO GROWS
kāʾab: To hurt or feel pain.
כָּאַב
The verb makes explicit the pain contained in the noun for grief.
makh'ov: Pain, sorrow.
מַכְאוֹב
This related noun shows how the same pain-family can name what English calls sorrow.
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak; the related noun can mean a word, matter, or thing.
“spoke a word” in this verse is davar. The text says no one speaks a davar. That Hebrew noun can also name a matter or thing, so the silence falls over both speech and the painful matter before them.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: To speak.
דִּבֵּר
This verb form makes the companions’ silence a pause in speech beside the pain.
davar: Word, matter, thing.
דָּבָר
The noun joins what could be said with the matter they see: his immense pain.
THE PATTERN
When grief is immense, care can meet it through presence and shared sorrow before it has an answer.
A time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to hush, and a time to speak.The LORD is near to those whose heart is broken, and delivers those crushed in breath.Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.THE THREAD
He is despised and left off by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And as one hiding the face, we hid our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not reckon him.Job’s כְּאֵב (ke’ev, pain) and Isaiah’s מַכְאֹבוֹת (makh’ovot, pains or sorrows) belong to the same Hebrew pain-family. The shared root lets the KJV’s “grief” and “sorrows” speak in one language of suffering.
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