What Does Job 2:11 Mean in the King James?
Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.
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 Hebrew root for “comfort” also carries “relent” and “be moved to pity,” so comfort begins as a response changed by another’s pain.
THE MEANING
When grief reaches you, comfort can begin with someone coming near enough to mourn beside you. Their presence meets your pain before offering an explanation. The verse holds this as a real intention, even though proximity alone does not guarantee understanding.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that comfort must begin by explaining suffering; here, it begins with coming near and mourning together.
THE ROOT
לְנַחֲמוֹ
lenachamo
GROWS FROM
נחם
n-ḥ-m
To console; in another biblical stem, to relent or be moved to pity.
English separates consolation from relenting, but Hebrew keeps them in one word family. The friends’ comfort is their intention to be moved toward Job’s suffering; the verse does not yet say that they succeed.
ALSO GROWS
niḥēm: To comfort, console.
נִחֵם
This is the form behind the friends’ stated intention to comfort Job.
niḥam: To relent or be moved to pity.
נִחַם
This related form links consolation with a response that changes when faced with another’s distress.
לָנוּד
lānûd
GROWS FROM
נוד
n-w-d
To move to and fro or wander; in this phrase, to show sympathy by mourning with someone.
“mourn” in this verse is lānûd. The Hebrew for mourning with Job belongs to a root of movement. It pictures grief met through shared sympathy, rather than pain watched from a distance.
ALSO GROWS
nûd: To move to and fro; to wander.
נוּד
The root’s movement gives the act of mourning a sense of being drawn into the grieving person’s presence.
nād: A wanderer or fugitive.
נָד
This related form preserves the root’s sense of movement, while Job’s phrase turns movement toward another into sympathy.
THE PATTERN
Comfort meets grief by drawing near to it, then carries received comfort onward.
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.THE THREAD
Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.Job’s לָנוּד (lānûd, to mourn with) and the psalm’s לָנוּד (lānûd, to show pity) share נוד (nûd, to move to and fro or show sympathy); both verses also use forms of נחם (n-ḥ-m, to console). Together they show the hope carried by Job’s friends’ arrival and the ache when that companionship is absent.
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