What Does Job 16:7 Mean in the King James?
But now he hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my company.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse names suffering as a double devastation: the speaker is worn down, and the whole circle around him is left desolate.
THE MEANING
This verse gives words to the moment when you feel spent and the people gathered around you seem devastated too. It holds both wounds together: your own exhaustion and the loss reaching your company. Its shift from “he” to “thou” leaves the charge direct and unresolved.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that being worn down is only a private weakness: here the speaker names the exhaustion as imposed and its damage as reaching the whole company.
THE ROOT
הֲשַׁמּוֹתָ
hashimmota
GROWS FROM
שמם
To become desolate or devastated; also to be appalled.
“desolate” in this verse is hashimmota. The root holds desolation and being appalled together: this is more than simple absence; it is devastation that leaves a scene stunned. The form in this verse makes the whole company the object of that desolation.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, waste.
שְׁמָמָה
Isaiah 49:8 uses this same-root word for desolate inheritances, showing that what is desolate can later be inherited.
shamem: To become desolate or be appalled.
שָׁמֵם
The root’s appalled sense presents desolation as a condition that shocks those who see it, as in Jeremiah 18:16.
עֲדָתִי
ʿadati
GROWS FROM
יעד
To appoint, designate, or meet; עֵדָה (edah) is an assembly or company.
“company” in this verse is ʿadati. עֵדָה (edah) is linked with יעד (yaʿad), appointing or gathering for a meeting. The desolation reaches a gathered body of people, not only the speaker’s private solitude.
ALSO GROWS
yaʿad: To appoint, designate, or meet.
יָעַד
The gathering sense behind the word for company makes clear that the verse’s loss falls on a group bound together.
moʿed: An appointed time, meeting, or meeting place.
מוֹעֵד
This related word carries the sense of people or events brought together by appointment, sharpening what it means for the whole company to be made desolate.
הֶלְאַנִי
heʾelani
GROWS FROM
לאה
To tire, grow weary, or become exhausted.
“weary” in this verse is heʾelani. The root names real depletion, and the form here presents the speaker’s weariness as something brought upon him. Set beside the desolated company, his exhaustion is one part of a wider affliction.
ALSO GROWS
vayyilʾu: They became weary; they wearied themselves.
וַיִּלְאוּ
In Genesis 19:11 the same root describes people exhausting themselves trying to find a door, giving weariness the force of effort spent without relief.
nilʾeiti: I have grown weary.
נִלְאֵיתִי
In Jeremiah 20:9 the same root names a speaker’s exhaustion, echoing the personal depletion expressed here.
THE PATTERN
Suffering can wear down a person while also emptying the circle of companionship around them.
For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.THE THREAD
Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;The same root, שמם (shamem), names Job’s desolated company and Isaiah’s desolate inheritances. Isaiah speaks of those inheritances being received again, showing desolation as a condition with a future beyond itself.
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