What Does Job 22:7 Mean?
You do not give waters to the weary to drink, and from the hungry you hold back bread.
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
Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry.THE KEY
The verse makes deprivation active: the thirsty and hungry are not merely overlooked when someone withholds what would sustain them.
THE MEANING
The line confronts the reader with a stark charge: the weary do not receive water, and the hungry are denied bread. It makes care tangible through what keeps the body alive, and names withholding as a form of harm.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that harm only happens through an overt attack is undone here: keeping water or bread from someone can itself do harm.
THE ROOT
מָנַעְתָּ
mānaʿta
GROWS FROM
מנע
To hold back, restrain, or prevent.
“hold back” in this verse is mānaʿta. The Hebrew verb מָנַעְתָּ (mānaʿta, “you withheld”) comes from a root that also means “prevent.” The line presents hunger as more than lack: bread is kept out of reach, so control over provision can turn need into deprivation.
ALSO GROWS
mānaʿ: To withhold or prevent.
מָנַע
This is the root verb itself: the verse names an act that blocks provision from reaching someone in need.
nimnaʿ: Refrained, abstained, or was prevented.
נִמְנַע
The same root can describe someone holding back or being held back, bringing the question of restraint into the act of withholding.
THE PATTERN
A person’s response to thirst and hunger reveals whether sustaining care reaches the body.
If the one who hates you hungers, feed him bread; and if he thirsts, give him water to drink.Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.For I hungered, and you gave me food; I thirsted, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you gathered me in.THE THREAD
For I hungered, and you gave me food; I thirsted, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you gathered me in.Job names water and bread being withheld; Matthew turns the same pair into a mirror, with thirst answered by drink and hunger by food. Together, the verses make provision, or its denial, visible as a form of care.
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