What Does Job 7:4 Mean?
When I lie down, I say, When shall I rise, and when is the evening measured? I am filled with tossings until twilight.
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
When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.THE KEY
Job is not simply awake in the night; he is filled to satiety with the motion of unrest.
THE MEANING
You can lie down and still be carried through an inner night of repeated motion, measuring time by the question of when relief will come. Here, restlessness becomes what fills the speaker until morning. The verse gives that exhaustion its full weight without claiming that daylight has already brought rest.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that lying down guarantees rest: the body can be still while the whole night is filled with motion.
THE ROOT
וְשָׂבַעְתִּי
wəśāvaʿtî
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
To be full, satisfied, or sated.
“filled with” in this verse is wəśāvaʿtî. The root carries the sense of being filled to satisfaction, but here what fills the speaker is restless motion. The verse makes anguish a kind of satiety: the night leaves him full, but not at rest.
ALSO GROWS
sāvēaʿ: Full, satisfied, sated.
שָׂבֵעַ
This branch shows the familiar sense of fullness that Job’s restless fullness turns inside out.
śōvaʿ: Fullness, satiety.
שֹׂבַע
This noun names a state of being filled, clarifying how completely unrest occupies the night.
נְדֻדִים
nedudim
GROWS FROM
נדד
To move to and fro, wander, or flee.
The root names wandering and flight, opening “tossings” into more than a single restless turn. It evokes an inner life that keeps moving without finding a place to settle.
ALSO GROWS
nādad: To wander, flee, or move to and fro.
נָדַד
The verb gives the restless movement in the verse the shape of ongoing wandering.
nedudim: Wanderings, restless motions, tossings.
נְדֻדִים
This plural form presents the night’s unrest as repeated movement, not one brief disturbance.
THE PATTERN
Anguish can keep the night in motion even when the body is laid down.
At night my bones are pierced within me, and my sinews do not lie down.I am spent with my groaning; all the night I make my bed swim; I melt my couch with my tears.Then he said to them, My living soul is pained all around, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.THE THREAD
As for me, I gaze upon your face in alignment; I am filled when I wake with your form.Job’s “full” and Psalm 17:15’s “satisfied” share the Hebrew root שׂבע (savaʿ), meaning to be full or sated. The shared root places a night filled with restless motion beside a waking filled with satisfaction: two radically different kinds of fullness.
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