What Does Job 33:20 Mean?
So his life recoils from bread, and his living soul from the food of craving.
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
So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat.THE KEY
The Hebrew carries “loathes” across both halves: even bread and food of desire lose their pull when affliction reaches the living self.
THE MEANING
When affliction presses into your body, even bread can become repellent and food you desire can lose its appeal. The verse names suffering as reaching both vitality and the living self’s appetite at once.
THE ROOT
מַאֲכַל תַּאֲוָה
ma’akhal ta’avah
GROWS FROM
אוה
To desire, long for.
“the food of craving” in this verse is ma’akhal ta’avah. The phrase beneath “dainty meat” is food of desire. The verb “loathes” carries into this second half, so even what is wanted loses its appeal.
ALSO GROWS
avah: To desire or long for.
אָוָה
This verb is the seed of the longing named by ta’avah.
tit’avveh: Desire or covet.
תִּתְאַוֶּה
The same root describes wanting itself, making the food here something desired, not merely luxurious.
נַפְשׁוֹ
nafsho
GROWS FROM
נפש
The living self: a person, living soul, or appetite.
Here nefesh is the living soul with an appetite, not an abstract inner self detached from the body. Its recoil from food shows suffering reaching the person’s most basic embodied wanting.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living soul, person, or appetite.
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the word in the verse: the living self turns away from food.
naphash: To rest or be refreshed.
נָפַשׁ
This related verb places the living self within bodily need and restoration.
חַיָּתוֹ
chayyato
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive.
The word for life stands beside nefesh, the living self. The parallel names suffering in two registers at once: vitality and appetite.
ALSO GROWS
chay: Alive, living.
חַי
The same root describes the state of being alive that affliction can diminish.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This familiar form makes clear that the verse speaks of life itself, not only a passing desire for food.
THE PATTERN
Severe distress can reach ordinary sustenance, making appetite itself part of the suffering.
Their living soul recoils from all food, and they touch the gates of death.I ate no bread of desire, and no flesh or wine came in my mouth, and I did not rub myself with ointment, until three weeks were filled.And while the day was about to come, Paul urged them all to take food, saying, Today is the fourteenth day that you have watched and gone without food, taking nothing.THE THREAD
The things my living soul refuses to touch are like the sickness of my bread.Job 6:7 uses the same nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ, living soul) for the self that refuses food. Together, the verses reveal appetite as one register of the living self: when suffering closes it, the whole person is affected.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us