What Does Job 9:14 Mean?
How much less shall I answer him, and choose out my words to reason with him?
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
How much less shall I answer him, and choose out my words to reason with him?THE KEY
Even the words carefully chosen to answer God cannot make the encounter one between equals.
THE MEANING
Before God’s immeasurable power, even the effort to choose a reply feels smaller than the encounter itself. The verse gives voice to the limit of what carefully chosen words can accomplish.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that finding the perfect words can put God on your terms.
THE ROOT
אֶבְחֲרָה
ʾevḥarah
GROWS FROM
בחר
b-ḥ-r
to choose, select
“choose out my words” in this verse is ʾevḥarah. The verse pictures the reply as something deliberately selected, word by word. Yet even that care cannot turn the exchange into a contest on equal terms.
ALSO GROWS
baḥir: chosen one
בָּחִיר
The same root can describe the one selected, linking Job’s careful selection of words with the language of being chosen.
mivḥar: choice; choicest selection
מִבְחָר
This branch carries the sense of a deliberate, valued selection, underscoring how carefully Job imagines weighing his reply.
דְּבָרַי
devaray
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
word, matter; speak
“words” in this verse is devaray. The Hebrew davar can mean both a word and a matter or thing. Job is choosing not just phrasing but what he could bring forward; the language holds speech and substance together.
ALSO GROWS
davar: word, matter, thing
דָּבָר
This noun makes clear that the words Job chooses are also the matters he could present.
dibber: he spoke
דִּבֵּר
The related verb keeps the spoken act connected to the words themselves, showing that speech here carries the substance of a response.
THE PATTERN
When the divine exceeds human measure, speech yields to restraint or wonder.
Look, I am light; what shall I return to you? I have set my hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken, and I will not answer; twice, and I will not add.Do not let your mouth be startled, and do not let your heart hurry to bring a word out before the face of God. For God is in the heavens, and you are on the earth. Therefore let your words be few.O the depth of the riches of both wisdom and knowledge of God! How beyond searching out are his judgments, and how beyond tracking are his ways! For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has stood beside him as his counselor?THE THREAD
A word spoken upon its wheels is like apples of gold in frames of silver.Both verses turn on דָּבָר (davar), meaning word and matter. Proverbs shows the beauty of a word placed well; Job wonders whether any chosen words can meet the scale of what stands before him.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us