What Does Job 21:5 Mean?
Turn to me and be stunned, and lay your hand upon your mouth.
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
Mark me, and be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats one verb for both commands: set me before your eyes, then set your hand over your mouth.
THE MEANING
The verse places another person’s reality before you: look closely, be stunned, and let the ready answer fall silent. Its astonishment is not mere surprise; it is the shock of what resists an easy explanation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that another person’s suffering must fit a tidy explanation before it deserves to be heard.
THE ROOT
שִׂימוּנִי
simuni
GROWS FROM
שים
To set, place, or put.
“Mark / lay” in this verse is simuni. The same Hebrew verb appears in both commands: set the speaker before you, then set your hand over your mouth. English makes the actions sound separate, while Hebrew links attention and silence as two deliberate placements.
ALSO GROWS
wayyāśem: Placed, set.
וַיָּשֶׂם
The same root describes placing something in its place; here it sets the speaker before the listeners and then sets a hand over the mouth.
śamtî: I placed, I set.
שַׂמְתִּי
Job later uses this form for setting his own hand over his mouth, echoing the gesture in this verse.
הָשַׁמּוּ
hashammu
GROWS FROM
שמם
To be desolate, stunned, or appalled.
“be stunned” in this verse is hashammu. This word for astonishment shares a root with desolation and being appalled: it describes a shock that empties the familiar explanation, not just a moment of surprise. With the hand over the mouth, that stunned state becomes visible as silence.
ALSO GROWS
shemāmāh: Desolation.
שְׁמָמָה
This branch gives the root’s shock a stark image: a place emptied out, as an easy explanation can be emptied by what one sees.
shomem: Desolate, appalled.
שֹׁמֵם
The root can describe a person struck with dismay as well as a place left desolate, joining inward shock with outward ruin.
THE PATTERN
When a reality exceeds the answer at hand, speech gives way to silence.
Look, I am light; what shall I return to you? I have set my hand upon my mouth.But the LORD is in his set-apart temple. Hush before his face, all the earth.Now we know that whatever the instruction says, it speaks to those under the instruction, so that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may come under the verdict of God.THE THREAD
Look, I am light; what shall I return to you? I have set my hand upon my mouth.Both verses use שים (śîm, set or place) for the hand-over-mouth gesture: here Job calls for it, and later he says he has done it himself. The shared root makes silence a deliberate act of setting the reply aside.
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