What Does Job 3:17 Mean?
There the wicked stop their trembling, and there the spent of strength come to rest.
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
There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.THE KEY
Rest here is the end of two forces at once: the wicked’s agitation and the weary person’s toil.
THE MEANING
This verse gives your exhaustion a blunt image: in the place of the dead, the wicked’s turmoil stops, and those worn by labor settle into rest. It lets death appear as the end of both disturbance and toil.
THE ROOT
יָנוּחוּ
yanuḥu
GROWS FROM
נוח
Settle, come to rest.
“be at rest” in this verse is yanuḥu. This verb pictures rest as coming to settle, rather than as something the weary must achieve. The line imagines the motion of burden finally stopping.
ALSO GROWS
menuchah: Rest, resting place.
מְנוּחָה
The same root can name rest as a place of settling, as in Psalm 116:7.
naḥ: He rested, settled.
נָח
This form makes the root’s movement plain: to come to rest is to settle.
רֹגֶז
rogez
GROWS FROM
רגז
Tremble, quake, or be agitated.
“trembling” in this verse is rogez. Rogez names agitation or tumult, so English “troubling” can sound like one person disturbing another while the Hebrew also makes the disturbance itself audible. The verse imagines that turmoil ceasing.
ALSO GROWS
ragaz: To tremble or be agitated.
רָגַז
The verb shows the movement beneath the noun: agitation that shakes or disturbs.
rogez: Agitation, tumult.
רֹגֶז
This is the word in the verse, naming what comes to an end there.
יְגִיעֵי
yegiey
GROWS FROM
יגע
Labor, toil, grow weary.
“spent of strength” in this verse is yegiey. The weary are described through a root that can name both exhaustion and the labor that produces it. Their rest follows the draining work itself.
ALSO GROWS
yagea: Weary, exhausted.
יָגֵעַ
This form names the state of those who have been spent by labor.
yegiah: Toil, labor.
יְגִיעָה
This branch names the work whose exhaustion the verse says can cease.
THE PATTERN
Across scripture, rest names the ending of toil and agitation and is given to the burdened.
And he said, My face will go with you, and I will give you rest.But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work, neither you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your animals, nor the sojourner who is within your gates, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as you do.Come to me, all you who toil and have been loaded down, and I will give you rest.THE THREAD
Turn back, my living soul, to your settling place; for the LORD deals out good to you.Job’s “be at rest” and the Psalm’s “rest” share the Hebrew root נוח (nuach), meaning settle or come to rest. Job imagines that settling in death; the Psalm speaks of the soul returning to rest, showing the same root’s movement without erasing the difference between the verses.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us