What Does Job 35:4 Mean?
I will return words to you, and to your companions with you.
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
I will answer thee, and thy companions with thee.THE KEY
The word translated “answer” is built on the motion of returning: a reply is speech coming back to meet you.
THE MEANING
You receive an answer here, and the people beside you are included in its reach. The verse holds the reply within shared speech: it meets you together with your companions.
THE ROOT
אֲשִׁיבְךָ
ashivkha
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
Turn, return; in a causative form, bring back or restore.
“return words to you” in this verse is ashivkha. The verb is a causative form of שׁוּב (shuv), “turn, return,” carrying the sense of bringing words back to someone. Hebrew makes answering a movement of return: speech comes back across the relationship, and the response reaches the companions beside you too.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: Turn; return.
שׁוּב
This is the seed beneath “answer”: the reply turns back toward the person who receives it.
hēshīv: Bring back; restore; answer.
הֵשִׁיב
This causative form shows how a return becomes a response addressed to someone.
teshuvah: Return; response or answer.
תְּשׁוּבָה
The same root holds both turning back and giving a reply together.
THE PATTERN
Speech and relationship move through return: words come back with effect, and hearts turn toward one another.
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.Therefore say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts, Turn to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will turn to you, says the LORD of hosts.And he will go before him in the breath and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers toward the children, and the unpersuaded toward the mind of the aligned, to make ready a people fitted for the LORD.THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.The verb translated “answer” comes from שׁוּב (shuv), “turn, return”; Isaiah uses that same root for the word that “shall not return unto me void.” In both verses, speech has a path back, and its return carries what it accomplishes.
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