Sense: comforter
n. — a person who commiserates with someone who has had misfortune.
I have heard many such things; miserable comforters (נחם) are you all.
Job 16:2 (NRSV)
Lack of a comforter appears to be a theme in the Hebrew Bible. The oppressed have no one to comfort them (Ecc 4:1). Jerusalem has no comforter in the time of siege (Lam 1:2, 9, 16-17, 21). Nowhere will comforters be found for Nineveh in its destruction (Nah 3:7). Job’s situation here may actually, however, be much worse. His problem is not only that he has no one to comfort him. His problem is that those who are supposed to be comforting him are actually making his situation worse. Examine the verbal sense of “to comfort” and ask yourself “how we might comfort those without a comforter and not make matters worse for people who we may be trying to comfort?”
What is the Bible Sense Lexicon?
Sense of the Day is based on content from Logos’ Bible Sense Lexicon, which organizes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words by meaning based on a variety of semantic relationships. Sense of the Day provides examples of senses in context, along with insight into their application for theology and interpretation.
The Bible Sense Lexicon is a Logos dataset available in Logos 5 Gold and higher base packages. If you’re enrolled in the Logos Academic Discount Program, you can also find the Bible Sense Lexicon in the Biblical Languages base package. Take your studies even further by exploring semantic domains, engaging the biblical text like never before.
Learn more about the Bible Sense Lexicon.