What Does Job 6:13 Mean?
Is my help not within me? And is wisdom pushed from me?
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
Is not my help in me? and is wisdom driven quite from me?THE KEY
The question carries an inward exile: help is absent within, and wisdom is pictured as driven away.
THE MEANING
There are moments when no help seems to remain within you and sound judgment feels driven away. This verse gives that depletion language without pretending inner resources are always reachable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief this verse undoes is that a capable person should always be able to summon inward help and clear judgment, however crushing the pressure becomes.
THE ROOT
עֶזְרָתִי
ʿezrātî
GROWS FROM
עזר
To help, support, or come to someone’s aid.
“help” in this verse is ʿezrātî. This word names aid, not an inexhaustible personal reserve. Its root also forms the word for a helper, so Job’s question reaches the point of wondering whether any aid remains within him.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: Help or aid.
עֵזֶר
It shares the root of Job’s “my help,” keeping the focus on assistance that may or may not be available.
ʿōzēr: A helper, one who aids.
עֹזֵר
The same root names both help and the one who provides it, making Job’s question about whether he can still find aid within himself.
נִדְחָה
nidḥāh
GROWS FROM
נדח
To thrust away, drive off, or banish.
“wisdom pushed from me” in this verse is nidḥāh. The verse pictures wisdom as pushed from its place, not simply as a skill that has failed. This root also describes an outcast, giving the loss of inner wisdom the shape of exile.
ALSO GROWS
niddāḥ: One driven away; an outcast.
נִדָּח
The outcast sense makes the verse’s image of wisdom feel like an inward banishment.
nidhê: Driven ones; outcasts.
נִדְחֵי
This plural form shows the root can describe those scattered or cast away, extending the verse’s image beyond a momentary lapse.
THE PATTERN
Distress can exhaust a person’s inner capacity until strength, clarity, and hope feel beyond reach.
My heart spins, my strength leaves me, and even the light of my eyes is gone from me.They reel and stagger like a drunken man, and all their wisdom is swallowed up.For we would not have you unaware, brothers, of the pressure that came to us in Asia, that we were weighed down beyond measure, beyond strength, so that we were without a way through, even to live.THE THREAD
My help comes from the LORD, who makes heavens and earth.Job’s עֶזְרָתִי (ʿezrātî, “my help”) and the psalm’s עֶזְרִי (ʿezrî, “my help”) share the root עזר, aid or help. The shared word opens Job’s question about inward help toward the psalm’s picture of help coming from the LORD.
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