Job 6:13

Indeed, there is no help for me,

   Effective aid has been cut off from me.

 

Effective aid does not sound very poetic. Maybe it is just my technical side coming out that I picked it. My wife and I often talk about how my personality produces different results that hers does for the same inputs. Not always in a logical or poetic fashion. God made each of us different with no two people, even identical twins, having the same skills, gifts, tendencies, etc.

“Indeed” was also presented as “in truth” and “truly”. From there the options expand greatly. One concept was that Job could not help himself. The other was that there was no one else to help him.  Only one source actually had “help for me”, but it was the one I followed. Similarly, the second stitch has two big options of 1) Job has had help cut off from him or 2) Job just is not able to obtain it. I followed the first path and had it cut off from him. But now I wonder if I missed the intent.

Stitch 1:

• I have no help in me.
• Do I have any power to help myself?
• Is my help not within me?
• Is not my help in me?
• I cannot help myself.
• Is there no help within myself?
• There is no help within me.
• There is no help for me.

Let’s look at context.

Verse 11:

• What strength have I?

Verse 12:

• Is my strength the strength of stone?

Could verse 13 be this?

• Indeed, there is no strength in me.

However, verse 14 talks about the need to not focus on help from anyone but God.

Therefore, I think the intent of 13 is that others cannot help him rather than he cannot help himself.  God is his source for effective aid and God has yet to respond.

Beyond “effective aid”, my sources used “any resource”, “success”, “wisdom”, “resourcefulness”, “common sense”, and “prudence”.  I like “success” as it acknowledges the great life he had, but I feel this is about now and moving forward, not the past. The sheer number of other options leads me to believe the Hebrew word was either overly general or had no direct translation, but the common thread of most seemed to rest on his own ability, so I picked the one that was clearly not. The verb choices included “driven”, “deprived”, and “cut off”.  Driven off was by far the more popular choice, but I feel it has too much “action” compared to the ability of God to simple “cut off” something. “Deprived” and “cutoff” seemed similar, but “cutoff” more Biblical.

Note that I really like verse 14 and I am glad I used it to map out the form for 13. The number 13 was my favorite aspect of rebellion when I was younger as I was not superstitious, and I felt I was thumbing my nose at anyone who felt 13 was evil or whatever. I am reading a book that contains biblical references and how 7 is the number for God and 6 is the number of man. From that perspective God plus man is 13, so it should be a positive number from our view of being on God’s side. I no longer play sports with numbers, but I have also backed away from the need to rebel and thumb my nose at others. My goal is to use my gifts and personality to draw others towards God, not push them away. Those things that make me me ensure that I am not like anyone else, but they can be used to make me seem more like Christ. I am constantly wanting to be better, but constantly not succeeding when I try to do it by myself. My success comes from turning to God and ensuring that I give Him the glory. There is help for me (and you) and I have not been cutoff from effective aid in following God’s will.