What Does Job 40:13 Mean?
Hide them in the dust together; bind their faces in the hidden place.
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
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats one root for both “hide” and “secret,” making this a double act of concealment: the proud are lowered into dust and removed from view.
THE MEANING
The verse gives you a severe measure of power: the proud are put into dust together, and their faces are bound out of sight. Judgment here does more than reduce their rank; it removes their visible presence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Public stature makes the proud untouchable. The verse pictures their faces bound and their place reduced to dust, stripping status of any power to resist judgment.
THE ROOT
טָמְנֵם
ṭāmnēm
GROWS FROM
טמן
ṭ-m-n
to hide, conceal, or bury
KJV English separates the action (“hide”) from the place (“secret”), but both come from טמן (ṭ-m-n, hide or conceal): טָמְנֵם (ṭāmnēm, hide them) and טָמוּן (ṭāmūn, hidden). The verse repeats concealment at both ends, so the dust is not just where judgment lands; it becomes the place that removes the proud from view.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmūn: hidden, concealed
טָמוּן
This is the same family as the verse’s “secret,” making its ending a second concealment rather than a separate idea.
maṭmōn: a hidden thing or treasure
מַטְמוֹן
The same root can name something stored out of sight; here the hidden place receives those lowered into dust.
חֲבֹשׁ
ḥăvōš
GROWS FROM
חבש
ḥ-b-š
to bind, wrap, or fasten
חבש (ḥ-b-š, bind or fasten) does not say whether the act heals or restrains; what is bound gives it that force. Here it binds faces into obscurity, while the same root can bandage wounds.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāvaš: to bind up or bandage
חָבַשׁ
The same fastening can be care when it is applied to wounds.
ḥāvūš: bound, confined
חָבוּשׁ
This form carries the sense of restraint that colors the bound faces in Job.
THE PATTERN
Divine judgment strips the proud of elevation and brings them low.
Gaze at every one who is lifted up, and bend him; and tread down the wicked beneath them.Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.THE THREAD
From the sole of the foot to the head there is no unbroken place in it, but wounds, welts, and fresh blows. They have not been closed, nor bound up, nor softened with oil.Job’s חֲבֹשׁ (ḥăvōš, bind) comes from חבש (ḥ-b-š, bind), the same root Isaiah uses for wounds that have not been “bound up.” The same binding can cover a face in judgment or bandage injured flesh; what is fastened changes the force of the act.
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