What Does Job 33:2 Mean?
Look now, I am bursting open my mouth; my tongue speaks in the hollow of my palate.
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
Behold, now I have opened my mouth, my tongue hath spoken in my mouth.THE KEY
A voice begins as an opening: the mouth becomes a doorway through which the tongue gives inner speech sound.
THE MEANING
Your speech takes shape in the body: the mouth opens, and the tongue gives voice to what is within. Speaking moves from inward formation to audible expression.
THE ROOT
פָּתַחְתִּי
patachti
GROWS FROM
פ־ת־ח
p-t-ḥ
To open; to make an opening.
“opened” in this verse is patachti. The speaker begins with an opening, before the tongue gives voice. The root also forms the word for a doorway, so the mouth becomes a threshold where speech passes from within to another.
ALSO GROWS
pataḥ: To open.
פָּתַח
This is the action named in the verse: the opening comes before the speaking.
petaḥ: Doorway, opening.
פֶּתַח
A doorway makes passage possible; this branch casts the opened mouth as a passage for speech.
דִּבְּרָה
dibberah
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak, utter.
“speaks” in this verse is dibberah. The verb for speaking shares its root with the word for a word or matter. Hebrew holds the act of speaking and what is spoken within one seed: the tongue gives sound to a word taking shape.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke, uttered.
דִּבֵּר
This verbal form shows the spoken word as an act brought forth by the tongue.
davar: Word, matter.
דָּבָר
The shared root joins speech with the word or matter that speech gives voice to.
THE PATTERN
Speech takes form when what is within crosses the opening of the mouth into utterance.
Lord, open my lips, and my mouth sets forth your praise.And for me, that a word may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, so that I may make known with open speech the sealed thing of the gospel.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.THE THREAD
The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I have not rebelled, nor have I drawn back.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root פתח (patach, “to open”) for the ear that Job uses for the mouth. In Job the opening lets speech out; here it lets hearing in, showing the same opening as passage in either direction.
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