What Does Job 3:13 Mean in the King James?
For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
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’s final “rest” is imagined as the end of disturbance, reached through lying down, quiet, and sleep.
THE MEANING
When pain feels inescapable, death can appear as silence, sleep, and rest. The verse lets that longing speak plainly, without decorating it or hurrying past it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that despair must be hidden behind hopeful language; here, the wish for death is spoken without disguise.
THE ROOT
יָנוּחַ
yanuach
GROWS FROM
נוח
To settle or come to rest.
The verb pictures settling, an end to disturbance. After lying down, quiet, and sleep, rest is the condition the speaker imagines when life is over.
ALSO GROWS
menuḥah: Rest or a resting place.
מְנוּחָה
It makes rest a place or condition of settling, echoing the stillness the speaker longs for.
heniaḥ: To set down or let rest.
הֵנִיחַ
This form carries the sense of something being laid down, deepening the verse’s image of release from strain.
וְאֶשְׁקוֹט
ve’eshqot
GROWS FROM
שקט
To be quiet or become still.
The verse gives quiet its own place between lying down and sleeping. It is not merely a peaceful feeling here; it is the imagined absence of disturbance.
ALSO GROWS
sheqet: Quietness or stillness.
שֶׁקֶט
The noun makes explicit the condition the speaker imagines after life’s turmoil.
shaqet: Quiet, calm, or undisturbed.
שָׁקֵט
This related form shows the root’s range from becoming quiet to being in a quiet state.
THE PATTERN
When suffering overwhelms life, scripture can name death as a longing for the end of disturbance and labor.
There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.THE THREAD
There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.The same Hebrew root נוח (nuach), “settle” or “come to rest,” appears in both verses. Job 3:13 voices rest as a private longing; verse 17 extends the image to the weary, who are no longer troubled.
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