What Does Job 34:1 Mean?
And Elihu answered and said.
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
Furthermore Elihu answered and said,THE KEY
The verse calls speech an answer before it calls it saying: a voice enters through relation.
THE MEANING
This verse catches speech at the moment it begins as response, already in relation to what has come before. Elihu (אֱלִיהוּא, ʾĔlîhûʾ, “My God is he”) carries that relation to God in the speaker’s name.
THE ROOT
וַיַּעַן
wayyaʿan
GROWS FROM
ענה
ענה (ʿānāh): to answer, respond.
The verse pairs וַיַּעַן (wayyaʿan, “he answered”) with וַיֹּאמַר (wayyōʾmar, “he said”), placing response before utterance. The related noun מַעֲנֶה (maʿaneh, “answer, response”) shows that the root can name both the act of answering and the response itself.
ALSO GROWS
maʿaneh: answer, response
מַעֲנֶה
The response itself comes from the same root, keeping the act and what emerges from it in one word family.
ʿanēh: answer!
עֲנֵה
The same root can form a direct call to answer, showing the relational direction already inside the verb.
THE PATTERN
A spoken answer takes shape in relation to what another voice has put into the room.
So I have an answer for the one who taunts me, for I lean my weight on your word.A soft answer turns away the burning, but words of pain stir up the nostrils.In that season Jesus answered, and said, I give thanks to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have covered these things from the wise and the discerning, and have uncovered them to the infants.THE THREAD
They were shattered. They answered no more. They removed their words from themselves.Job 32:15 uses ענה (ʿānāh, “answer, respond”) when it says they “answered no more.” The same root marks both the voice beginning here and the silence that withholds an answer there.
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