What Does Job 3:7 Mean?

Look, let that night be barren. Let no cry of joy come into it.

Job 3:7 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.

THE KEY

Job imagines more than solitude: he wants the night to admit no ringing cry of joy.

THE MEANING

When anguish fills the present, this verse gives the wish for joy to stay away a stark voice. The night becomes a place where no jubilant cry can enter.

THE ROOT

רְנָנָה

renanah

GROWS FROM

רנן

To cry out or ring out, often in joy.

“joyful voice” in this verse is renanah. The Hebrew word is a ringing cry of joy, not simply pleasant speech. Job imagines barring that audible joy from the night altogether.

ALSO GROWS

ranan: To cry out, sing aloud, or shout for joy.

רָנַן

Psalm 32:11 uses this verbal form for the joyful cry that Job’s night excludes.

rinnah: A ringing cry, jubilant shout, or song.

רִנָּה

This related noun keeps joy audible as a sound, matching what Job asks the night to lack.

THE PATTERN

When grief or ruin takes hold of a place, scripture makes the loss audible through songs that stop or cannot enter.

My lyre becomes mourning, and my flute the voice of the weepers.

Job 30:31 · SDVMourning replaces music, so grief is heard in the changed sound of the instruments.

The leaping of the tambourines rests, the roar of those who leap is stilled, the joy of the lyre rests.

Isaiah 24:8 · SDVThe end of rejoicing becomes audible as instruments and joyful noise fall silent.

And the sound of those who pluck the harp, and of the makers of song, and of those who blow the pipe, and of those who sound the trumpet, shall be heard no more at all in you; and no hand of any craft shall be found in you any longer; and the sound of the grinding stone shall be heard no more at all in you;

Revelation 18:22 · SDVThe place’s ruin is rendered as the disappearance of music, work, and every familiar sound.

THE THREAD

Rejoice in the LORD and leap, you who are aligned, and ring out, all you who are straight of heart.

Psalm 32:11 · SDV

Job’s ⁨רְנָנָה⁩ (renanah, a ringing cry of joy) and Psalm 32’s ⁨רננו⁩ (ranenu, shout for joy) share the root ⁨רנן⁩. One verse imagines that cry barred from the night; the other gives it voice.

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