What Does Job 6:9 Mean?
Even that God would be willing to crush me; that he would let his hand go and cut me off!
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
Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!THE KEY
The desired end is pictured as force released: God’s hand crushes, then severs.
THE MEANING
Here, pain can feel so complete that even God’s action appears as the way to an ending. The wish is physical and direct: crush me, release your hand, cut me off. The verse lets despair speak without declaring that the wish is answered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a cry this dark must be hidden to be spoken to God: the verse gives that wish direct words.
THE ROOT
וִידַכְּאֵנִי
vidakkə'eni from daka
GROWS FROM
דכא
Crush, beat down, break down.
English “destroy” compresses a physical image into a broad outcome: דכא (daka, crush) names pressure that breaks something down. The same root describes people as “crushed in breath” elsewhere; here, Job asks for crushing that ends in severance.
ALSO GROWS
dakkə'o: Crush him; “bruise him” in Isaiah 53:10.
דַּכְּאוֹ
The same verb describes crushing in a line that also speaks of what follows it, showing that the root names the breaking itself, not its outcome.
dakkə'e-ruach: Crushed in breath; “contrite in spirit” in Psalm 34:18.
דַּכְּאֵי־רוּחַ
It uses the crush-root for a person’s inward brokenness, the same root-force Job names as he imagines his own end.
וִיבְצְעֵנִי
wivetse'eni from batsa
GROWS FROM
בצע
Cut off, break off; the same root also appears in words for gain or profit.
“cut me off” in this verse is wivetse'eni from batsa. The final verb keeps the image of severing concrete. The root also appears in words for gain or profit, a resonance of taking a portion by cutting it away; here Job imagines himself removed, not merely relieved.
ALSO GROWS
betsa: Gain, profit.
בֶּצַע
This related noun brings a sense of taking or securing a portion into the same word-family as “cut me off.”
botsea: One who gains or takes profit; “covetous” in Psalm 10:3.
בֹּצֵעַ
The related form preserves the root’s taking sense, giving Job’s final image the force of being severed and taken away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives despair a first-person voice that names the desire for life to end without disguising its severity.
But he himself walked a day's road into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree. He asked that his living soul might die, and said, "Enough now, O LORD, take my living soul, for I am no better than my fathers."So my living soul chooses strangling, and death, rather than my bones.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
Yet the LORD delighted to crush him, and to sicken him. When you make his living soul a guilt offering, he shall see his seed, and lengthen his days, and the delight of the LORD shall break through in his hand.The words translated “destroy” in Job and “bruise” here share דכא (daka, crush). Isaiah places that crushing beside continued life and future fruit, sharpening the difference between Job’s requested ending and the force of the root itself.
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