Job 6:7
in Job 6My soul refuses to touch them; they are loathsome food to me.
BSB
The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾
ASV
My soul refuseth to touch them; They are as loathsome food to me.
KJV
The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.
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This verse in Job 6
Commentary
11 notes on this verseA commentator
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown1802–1910
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)
To "touch" is contrasted with "meat." "My taste refused even to touch it, and yet am I fed with such meat of sickness." The second clause literally, is, "Such is like the sickness of my food." The natural taste abhors even to touch insipid food, and such forms my nourishment.
This site's exposition
Does a wild donkey bray over fresh grass
on Job 6:5-7
Job defends his complaint with two animal proverbs: "Does a wild donkey bray over fresh grass, or an ox low over its fodder". A creature cries out only when it lacks what it needs, so his crying out proves real want. His suffering becomes food he cannot swallow.
This site's exposition
My soul refuses to touch them
Soul here stands for Job himself, as Barnes reads it. The food his soul once refused to touch is now all he is given, and the loathsome meal is his own sickness. What he refused has become his portion.
The record, by era
The Church Fathers1 voice
Sores and pus were not enough. A new affliction is added. Job's disease has destroyed his entire sensitivity to the extent that even his nourishment has become a torture for him. Indeed, Job says, the nauseating smell of gangrene has deprived him of the capability to distinguish sensations. Is there anything more painful than that torment? Neither sleep gave him rest nor food nourished him. "As the smell of a lion," Job says. That wild beast, in fact, gives a horrible stench.
The Medieval Church3 voices
But though it is true the wise man suffers sadness, nevertheless his reason is not absorbed by this sadness. Job shows as a consequence that although he himself might suffer sadness, he still had the greatest concern and caution to protect himself against sadness, so …
The things which my soul refused to touch are for straitness become my meat. And hence in the voice of the Church it is immediately added by the Prophetic Spirit, The things which my soul refused to touch are for straitness become my meat. For he goes very far wrong, who imagines that the words of blessed Job were delivered with an eye to the historical fact alone. For what would the holy man, and one too borne up by the proclaim of His Maker, have said, that was great, or rather what that was true, if he had said that 'unsavoury meat could not be eaten?' or who had offered deadly food for him to eat, that he should subjoin, Or who can taste, what by being tasted brings death? And if we imagine that was said of his friends' discourse, we are withheld from this view by the sentence that is subjoined, in which he says, The things that my soul refused to touch are for straitness become my meat. For never let it be thought that the holy man, when established in soundness of state, at any time looked down upon the words of his friends; who, as we learn afterwards by himself attesting it, was humble even to his servants, His words then are not void of mystical senses, which, as we gather from the end of the history, the internal Arbiter Himself commends. And these would never have gone on commanding such deep veneration even to the very ends of the world, if they had not been pregnant with mystical meaning. Let blessed Job then, in that he is a member of holy Church, speak in her voice also, saying, The things which my soul refused to touch are for my straitness become my meat. For the Gentile world, after conversion, made eager by the fever of her love, hungers for the food of Holy Scripture, which being filled with pride it disdained for long. And yet these words agree with the voice of Judaea also, if they be a little more attentively made out. […]
MORAL INTERPRETATION The things which my soul refused to touch are for my straitness become my meat.
The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice
Note, It is wisdom not to use ourselves or our children to be nice and dainty about meat and drink, because we know not how we or they may be reduced, nor how that which we now disdain may be made acceptable by necessity.
3 more voices on this verse
The Puritans and the Awakening2 voices
The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.
He complains he had nothing now offered to him for his relief that was proper for him, no cordial, nothing to revive and cheer his spirits; what they had afforded was in itself as tasteless as the white of an egg, and, when applied to him, as loathsome and burdensome as the most sorrowful meat.
The Nineteenth Century1 voice
A commentator
Albert Barnes1798–1870
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
proposed
The things that my soul refused to touch - That I refused to touch - the word “soul” here being used to denote himself. The idea here is, that those things which formerly were objects of loathing to him, had become his painful and distressing food.
The words behind it
6 Hebrew wordsEvery Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.
| Hebrew | Sound | Meaning | Word study | In the Bible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| מֵאֲנָ֣ה | meanah | it refuses | H3985 → | |
| לִנְגּ֣וֹעַ | lingoa' | to touch [them] | H5060 → | 150 times |
| נַפְשִׁ֑י | nafshi | self my | H5315 → | 754 times |
| הֵ֝֗מָּה | hemah | they | H1992 → | 553 times |
| כִּדְוֵ֥י | kidvei | [are] like [the] illness of | H1741 → | |
| לַחְמִֽי׃ | lachmi | food my | H3899 → | 298 times |
מֵאֲנָ֣הit refuses
meanahH3985 →
לִנְגּ֣וֹעַto touch [them]
lingoa'H5060 →150 times
נַפְשִׁ֑יself my
nafshiH5315 →754 times
הֵ֝֗מָּהthey
hemahH1992 →553 times
כִּדְוֵ֥י[are] like [the] illness of
kidveiH1741 →
לַחְמִֽי׃food my
lachmiH3899 →298 times
A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.
The walk
8 stopsEach card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.
Through
Ezekiel 4:14“Ah, Lord GOD,” I said, “I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have not eaten anything found dead or mauled by wild beasts. No unclean meat has ever entered my…
it leads to
- Acts 10:14
“No, Lord!” Peter answered. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
- Ezekiel 9:8
While they were killing, I was left alone. And I fell facedown and cried out, “Oh, Lord GOD, when You pour out Your wrath on Jerusalem, will You destroy the entire remnant of Israel?”
- Deuteronomy 14:3
You must not eat any detestable thing.
- Ezekiel 20:49
Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD, they are saying of me, ‘Is he not just telling parables?’”
- Jeremiah 1:6
“Ah, Lord GOD,” I said, “I surely do not know how to speak, for I am only a child!”
- Acts 10:14
Through
Daniel 10:3I ate no rich food, no meat or wine entered my mouth, and I did not anoint myself with oil until the three weeks were completed.
it leads to
- Matthew 6:17
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,
- Matthew 6:17
Through
Psalms 102:9For I have eaten ashes like bread and mixed my drink with tears
it leads to
- Psalms 42:3
My tears have been my food both day and night, while men ask me all day long, “Where is your God?”
- Psalms 42:3
Through
1 Kings 17:12But she replied, “As surely as the LORD your God lives, I have no bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. Look, I am gathering a…
it leads to
- Matthew 15:33–34
The disciples replied, “Where in this desolate place could we find enough bread to feed such a large crowd?”
- Matthew 15:33–34
Where this verse is studied
On this page
Studies1
About Job

This page draws on 10 works. Open the list of works
This page draws on Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book VII; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Chrysostom, COMMENTARY ON JOB 6:7B; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763); John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Job.
