What Does Job 3:13 Mean?
For now I would lie down and go quiet; I would sleep, and then rest would be mine.
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
For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,THE KEY
The verse’s final “rest” is imagined as the end of disturbance, reached through lying down, quiet, and sleep.
THE MEANING
When pain feels inescapable, death can appear as silence, sleep, and rest. The verse lets that longing speak plainly, without decorating it or hurrying past it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that despair must be hidden behind hopeful language; here, the wish for death is spoken without disguise.
THE ROOT
יָנוּחַ
yanuach
GROWS FROM
נוח
To settle or come to rest.
“rest would be mine” in this verse is yanuach. The verb pictures settling, an end to disturbance. After lying down, quiet, and sleep, rest is the condition the speaker imagines when life is over.
ALSO GROWS
menuḥah: Rest or a resting place.
מְנוּחָה
It makes rest a place or condition of settling, echoing the stillness the speaker longs for.
heniaḥ: To set down or let rest.
הֵנִיחַ
This form carries the sense of something being laid down, deepening the verse’s image of release from strain.
וְאֶשְׁקוֹט
ve’eshqot
GROWS FROM
שקט
To be quiet or become still.
“go quiet” in this verse is ve’eshqot. The verse gives quiet its own place between lying down and sleeping. It is not merely a peaceful feeling here; it is the imagined absence of disturbance.
ALSO GROWS
sheqet: Quietness or stillness.
שֶׁקֶט
The noun makes explicit the condition the speaker imagines after life’s turmoil.
shaqet: Quiet, calm, or undisturbed.
שָׁקֵט
This related form shows the root’s range from becoming quiet to being in a quiet state.
THE PATTERN
When suffering overwhelms life, scripture can name death as a longing for the end of disturbance and labor.
There the wicked stop their trembling, and there the spent of strength come to rest.Wherefore I shout praise for the dead, who have already died, more than for the living, who still live.And I hear a voice from heaven saying to me, Write, Flourishing are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the breath, that they may rest from their toil, and their works follow with them.THE THREAD
There the wicked stop their trembling, and there the spent of strength come to rest.The same Hebrew root נוח (nuach), “settle” or “come to rest,” appears in both verses. Job 3:13 voices rest as a private longing; verse 17 extends the image to the weary, who are no longer troubled.
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