What Does Job 31:31 Mean?
If the men of my tent have not said, Who will give from his flesh? We have not been filled.
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
If the men of my tabernacle said not, Oh that we had of his flesh! we cannot be satisfied.THE KEY
Job makes fullness audible: the people under his roof do not cry that they need his flesh before they can be satisfied.
THE MEANING
The line names an unbearable edge of hunger: people can be left wanting even the flesh of the one who holds the food. Its claim rests on that cry not being heard under the reader’s roof. Here, satisfaction is bodily satiety, the difference between being cared for in theory and having enough.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that provision is proven by the giver’s good intentions; the people’s actual fullness is the evidence.
THE ROOT
נִשְׂבָּע
niśbāʿ
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
to be full, sated
“filled” in this verse is niśbāʿ. The word names bodily satiety, not a vague sense of contentment. Its related forms name both the sated person and fullness itself, making Job’s claim concrete: the people beneath his roof have enough to eat.
ALSO GROWS
śāvēaʿ: full, sated
שָׂבֵעַ
This describes the state Job says his household does not have to plead for.
śōvaʿ: satiety, fullness
שֹׂבַע
This names the condition of having enough, the very condition against which the household’s hunger is measured.
THE PATTERN
Care becomes visible in whether hungry people receive enough to be filled.
For he sates the thirsting living soul, and fills the hungry living soul with goodness.But you shall open your hand wide to him, and you shall surely lend him enough for what he lacks.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 he sates the thirsting living soul, and fills the hungry living soul with goodness.Job’s “satisfied” and Psalm’s “satisfieth” share the root שׂבע (ś-b-ʿ), meaning to be full or sated. Job measures whether hunger is left unmet; Psalm names fullness as the answer to longing.
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