The Meaning of Job 6:7 Explained

Job 6:7

KJV: The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.

YLT: My soul is refusing to touch! They are as my sickening food.

Darby: What my soul refuseth to touch, that is as my loathsome food.

ASV: My soul refuseth to touch them ; They are as loathsome food to me.

KJV Reverse Interlinear

The things [that] my soul  refused  to touch  [are] as my sorrowful  meat. 

What does Job 6:7 Mean?

Context Summary

Job 6:1-30 - "a Deceitful Brook"
The burden of Job's complaint is the ill-treatment meted out by his friends. They had accused him of speaking rashly, but they had not measured the greatness of his pain, Job 6:4, or they would have seen it to be as natural as the braying and lowing of hungry and suffering beasts, Job 6:8-10. A man would not take insipid food without complaint; how much more reason had he to complain whose tears were his meat day and night, Job 6:6-7! So bitter were his pains that he would welcome death, and exult in the throes of dissolution, Job 6:5. It could hardly be otherwise than that he should succumb, since he had only the ordinary strength of mortals, and both strength and wisdom were exhausted, Job 6:11-13.
Job next characterizes the assistance of his friends as winter brooks, turbid with melted ice and snow, which bitterly disappoint the travelers who had hoped to find water, and perish beside the dry heaps of stones, Job 6:17. They had found fault with his words, which, in the circumstances, were not a true index to his heart, Job 6:26; but a look into his face would have sufficed to attest his innocence of the sin of which they accused him, Job 6:28-30.
From these complaints of faithlessness and disappointment we turn to Him who, having been made perfect through suffering, has become "the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him," Hebrews 5:9. [source]

Chapter Summary: Job 6

1  Job shows that his complaints are not causeless
8  He wishes for death, wherein he is assured of comfort
14  He reproves his friends of unkindness

What do the individual words in Job 6:7 mean?

refuses to touch them My soul they [are] as loathsome food to me
מֵאֲנָ֣ה לִנְגּ֣וֹעַ נַפְשִׁ֑י הֵ֝֗מָּה כִּדְוֵ֥י לַחְמִֽי

מֵאֲנָ֣ה  refuses 
Parse: Verb, Piel, Perfect, third person feminine singular
Root: מָאַן  
Sense: (Piel) to refuse.
לִנְגּ֣וֹעַ  to  touch  them 
Parse: Preposition-l, Verb, Qal, Infinitive construct
Root: נָגַע  
Sense: to touch, reach, strike.
נַפְשִׁ֑י  My  soul 
Parse: Noun, feminine singular construct, first person common singular
Root: נֶפֶשׁ  
Sense: soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion.
הֵ֝֗מָּה  they  [are] 
Parse: Pronoun, third person masculine plural
Root: הֵם 
Sense: they, these, the same, who.
כִּדְוֵ֥י  as  loathsome 
Parse: Preposition-k, Noun, masculine singular construct
Root: דְּוַי  
Sense: illness, languishing.
לַחְמִֽי  food  to  me 
Parse: Noun, masculine singular construct, first person common singular
Root: לֶחֶם  
Sense: bread, food, grain.