Job 6:7 is Job’s bitter description of his own state: his appetite for ordinary things has gone, and the food his friends offer him now disgusts him. Job is saying that his suffering has robbed him of the desire to take in anything, even what should nourish him. The words come from Job himself, the man who lost his children, his property and his health, speaking during a long speech in which he answers the friends who have been trying to explain his troubles.
My soul refuses to touch them. They are as loathsome food to me.
Job 6:7 (WEB)
What Job 6:7 Means
The verse opens with “My soul refuses to touch them.” Job uses “soul” in the Hebrew sense of the whole living self, not only an inner spirit. So he is saying that his entire being pulls back from the words and comforts being set before him. The word “touch” is a strong one. It suggests not merely ignoring a thing but refusing even to put a hand on it.
The second sentence uses a picture from eating: “They are as loathsome food to me.” Job compares his friends’ arguments to food that has gone bad or is simply revolting to the stomach. He does not say the food is poisonous, only that it is sickening to him. The verse therefore describes a feeling of revulsion rather than a claim that his friends are lying. What it does not promise is any resolution. It is a lament, an honest report of a heart that cannot take in what it is given.
The Context of Job 6:7
The book of Job is a wisdom poem that wrestles with why righteous people suffer. Its authorship and date are uncertain, though it is traditionally linked with Moses, and most scholars place its final form in the post-exilic period. The audience is primarily the reader, who is invited to watch a dialogue between a suffering man and his companions who insist that his pain must be the result of hidden sin.
Just before verse 7, Job describes God’s arrows and terrors as being set against him (verse 4), and then he asks whether a wild donkey brays when it has grass (verse 5). Verse 6 continues the food imagery with unsalted and tasteless food, so verse 7 is the climax of a sequence about things that have lost their savor. Immediately afterward, in verses 8 and 9, Job says he wants God to crush him. Reading the verse inside this section shows that its disgust is part of a larger despair, not a random complaint.
Key Phrases in Job 6:7
Psalm 42:5
Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence.
(WEB)
This psalm also speaks of a soul cast down and disquieted, and it ends by urging the soul to hope in God. Reading it beside Job 6:7 shows that despair can be honest and still be directed toward God rather than away from him.
Lamentations 3:19-20
19 Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness. 20 My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me.
(WEB)
Here the writer recalls bitterness and wormwood, then says his soul remembers and sinks within him. It pairs naturally with Job’s images of tasteless and loathsome food by showing how grief can make the ordinary taste of life disappear.
A Short Prayer From Job 6:7
Lord, some days my heart does not want the food You put in front of me, whether that is Your word, the kindness of friends, or the simple comforts of home. I bring that refusal to You without pretending it is not there. You know the weight I am carrying and the words that have fallen flat. Be patient with my dulled appetite, and let whatever You give me be gentle enough to receive. Keep me close while I heal, and in Your time restore the taste for what is good. Amen.
