What Does Job 7:6 Mean?
My days are lighter than a weaver's shuttle, and run out at the end of the cord.
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
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for hope, תִּקְוָה (tiqvah, hope or expectation), can also mean a cord, so Job’s days race like a weaver’s shuttle while the thread that might link them to a future feels absent.
THE MEANING
Time feels as though it is passing with the quick, repetitive sweep of a shuttle, and each day closes before anything can be secured. The absence here is not merely cheerfulness; it is the felt absence of a future to wait for. The verse lets that exhaustion stand in the present without explaining it away.
THE ROOT
תִּקְוָה
tiqvah
GROWS FROM
קוה
q-w-h
To wait, look for, or expect.
The word rendered “hope,” תִּקְוָה (tiqvah, hope or expectation), can also mean a cord. That makes “without hope” resonate with the weaver’s shuttle: the days keep moving, but the line connecting them to an expected future feels missing.
ALSO GROWS
qavah: To wait, look for, or hope.
קָוָה
The root makes hope an orientation toward what is still awaited, not simply a feeling of optimism.
tiqvah: Hope or expectation; also a cord.
תִּקְוָה
The cord sense draws the verse’s hope into its weaving image: Job’s days move swiftly, but the thread of expectation is absent.
THE PATTERN
Human life can pass with devastating speed, and scripture names that brevity without dressing it up.
Now my days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good.Behold, you have set my days as hand-widths, and my passing is as nothing before you. Surely every man standing is altogether vapor. Selah.For all flesh is as grass, and all its weight is as the blossom of grass. The grass dries, and the blossom falls.THE THREAD
And now, Lord, what am I stretched toward? My holding is toward you.It uses the same Hebrew noun, תִּקְוָה (tiqvah, hope or expectation): Job feels it absent, while the psalm places it in the LORD. The shared word makes the contrast immediate without erasing the despair in Job’s line.
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