What Does Job 6:13 Mean in the King James?
Is not my help in me? and is wisdom driven quite from me?
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 question carries an inward exile: help is absent within, and wisdom is pictured as driven away.
THE MEANING
There are moments when no help seems to remain within you and sound judgment feels driven away. This verse gives that depletion language without pretending inner resources are always reachable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief this verse undoes is that a capable person should always be able to summon inward help and clear judgment, however crushing the pressure becomes.
THE ROOT
עֶזְרָתִי
ʿezrātî
GROWS FROM
עזר
To help, support, or come to someone’s aid.
“help” in this verse is ʿezrātî. This word names aid, not an inexhaustible personal reserve. Its root also forms the word for a helper, so Job’s question reaches the point of wondering whether any aid remains within him.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: Help or aid.
עֵזֶר
It shares the root of Job’s “my help,” keeping the focus on assistance that may or may not be available.
ʿōzēr: A helper, one who aids.
עֹזֵר
The same root names both help and the one who provides it, making Job’s question about whether he can still find aid within himself.
נִדְחָה
nidḥāh
GROWS FROM
נדח
To thrust away, drive off, or banish.
“driven away” in this verse is nidḥāh. The verse pictures wisdom as pushed from its place, not simply as a skill that has failed. This root also describes an outcast, giving the loss of inner wisdom the shape of exile.
ALSO GROWS
niddāḥ: One driven away; an outcast.
נִדָּח
The outcast sense makes the verse’s image of wisdom feel like an inward banishment.
nidhê: Driven ones; outcasts.
נִדְחֵי
This plural form shows the root can describe those scattered or cast away, extending the verse’s image beyond a momentary lapse.
THE PATTERN
Distress can exhaust a person’s inner capacity until strength, clarity, and hope feel beyond reach.
My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end.For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:THE THREAD
My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.Job’s עֶזְרָתִי (ʿezrātî, “my help”) and the psalm’s עֶזְרִי (ʿezrî, “my help”) share the root עזר, aid or help. The shared word opens Job’s question about inward help toward the psalm’s picture of help coming from the LORD.
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