What Does Job 2:13 Mean in the King James?
So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.
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 friends do not fill grief with speech; their silence lets the full weight of the pain be seen.
THE MEANING
Some pain is too large for speech, and care can take the form of remaining beside the person who bears it. The companions’ silence lasts through seven days and nights without claiming to mend what they see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that silence necessarily means abandonment: here, silence stays beside the sufferer.
THE ROOT
כְּאֵב
ke'ev
GROWS FROM
כ־א־ב
k-ʾ-b
To hurt or suffer pain.
The Hebrew names the grief as pain, not as a vague sadness. The same root spans pain felt and pain endured, giving the companions’ silence a concrete suffering to meet.
ALSO GROWS
kāʾab: To hurt or feel pain.
כָּאַב
The verb makes explicit the pain contained in the noun for grief.
makh'ov: Pain, sorrow.
מַכְאוֹב
This related noun shows how the same pain-family can name what English calls sorrow.
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak; the related noun can mean a word, matter, or thing.
“word” in this verse is davar. The text says no one speaks a davar. That Hebrew noun can also name a matter or thing, so the silence falls over both speech and the painful matter before them.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: To speak.
דִּבֵּר
This verb form makes the companions’ silence a pause in speech beside the pain.
davar: Word, matter, thing.
דָּבָר
The noun joins what could be said with the matter they see: his immense pain.
THE PATTERN
When grief is immense, care can meet it through presence and shared sorrow before it has an answer.
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.THE THREAD
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.Job’s כְּאֵב (ke’ev, pain) and Isaiah’s מַכְאֹבוֹת (makh’ovot, pains or sorrows) belong to the same Hebrew pain-family. The shared root lets the KJV’s “grief” and “sorrows” speak in one language of suffering.
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