What Does Job 35:13 Mean?
Surely God will not hear and respond to emptiness, nor will the Almighty look upon it.
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
Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it.THE KEY
God’s hearing here is receptive attention, so empty speech does not command the Almighty’s regard.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now to words that are plentiful but empty: they do not compel God’s attention. It distinguishes sound being spoken from speech being received with regard. Its claim is stark: the Almighty does not treat vanity as a call that must be answered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that speaking a request obligates God to regard it; this verse says empty speech does not compel that response.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁמַע
yishma
GROWS FROM
שמע
shama
Hear, listen, receive.
“hear and respond” in this verse is yishma. This root reaches from listening to a report that is heard and to making something heard. Its range gives “hear” the depth of receptive attention, not mere sound detection; here, empty speech receives no such regard.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear; listen.
שְׁמַע
The imperative form shows hearing as an active reception, the sense that gives weight to the verse’s contrast.
shemuah: A report or tidings.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report is something carried to be heard, linking hearing with communication received.
hishmia: To make heard; announce.
הִשְׁמִיעַ
The causative form extends the root from receiving speech to bringing it into hearing.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents divine hearing as receptive attention to a truthful call, not an automatic response to empty words.
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.The LORD is near to all who call out to him, to all who call out to him in truth.And this is the open speech we hold toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.THE THREAD
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Job’s “hear” and the Psalm’s “heareth” share the root שמע (shama, hear or listen), tying divine hearing to receptive attention. The Psalm shows what that reception can open into: deliverance from trouble.
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