Job 6:7 is Job’s complaint that the food his friends offer him, meaning their comfort and counsel, has become so repugnant that he cannot bring himself to take it. The verse captures the depth of his suffering: his appetite for their words is gone, and he describes their help as something he finds sickening. Job speaks these words in the middle of a long speech answering his friend Eliphaz, who has been urging him to look for hidden sin and to seek God’s favor.
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.” The Hebrew word translated “soul” here refers to the whole inner person, the appetite and life of the self, not just a disembodied spirit. Job is saying that his inner being will not even reach out toward what is offered. The refusal is not a choice he makes lightly; it is a physical-sounding revulsion, the way a body rejects food it cannot stomach.
The second sentence, “They are as loathsome food to me,” uses the image of spoiled or unclean food. Job is describing his friends’ speeches as something rotten. He is not saying that everything they say is false, but he is saying that, in his present pain, their confident explanations land on him as bitter and unpalatable. The verse does not promise that Job will be fed or that his friends are right. It records a sufferer’s honest report that nothing on the table is nourishing him.
What the verse does not do is settle the question of whether the friends were wrong. Job will go on to argue with them at length, and the book as a whole ends with God rebuking their theology. Job 6:7 shows us the state of a man whose appetite has been destroyed by grief, and it shows us why plain advice can feel like an insult when the wound is that deep.
The Context of Job 6:7
The Book of Job is a wisdom poem set in an unknown ancient past, most likely in the patriarchal period. Its author is unknown, though Jewish and Christian tradition has often connected it with Moses. The original audience was Israelite readers who wrestled with a basic question: why do righteous people suffer? The book does not give a tidy answer, and Job 6:7 belongs to the long dialogue section where Job and his friends trade speeches that grow sharper as the conversation goes on.
The verses just before the line, Job 6:4-6, describe God’s arrows inside Job and a wild donkey and an ox that are content with food, followed by the question of whether anything tasteless can be eaten without salt. The imagery of food and taste runs straight into verse 7. Verses 8 through 10 then turn to Job’s longing for God to end his life. Read in that sequence, verse 7 is not a stray complaint about bland meals. It is one link in a chain showing that Job has lost his taste for life, for comfort, and even for the words of people trying to help him.
Key Phrases in Job 6:7
Psalm 42:3
My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”
(WEB)
This psalm also describes a soul in anguish, with tears as the only food, and it expresses a longing for God that persists even when the speaker feels cut off. Reading it alongside Job 6:7 shows two ways of carrying the same kind of pain, one through protest and one through a yearning that keeps looking toward God.
Lamentations 3:21-22
21 This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope. 22 It is because of the LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassion doesn’t fail.
(WEB)
Here the author of Lamentations recalls God’s steadfast love even while describing ruin. Set beside Job 6:7, it offers a counterpoint: where Job’s appetite is destroyed, this passage turns the mind back to a faithfulness that remains when the taste for comfort has gone.
A Short Prayer From Job 6:7
Lord, when my appetite for comfort is gone and even kind words taste bitter, I bring that emptiness to you without pretending it is not there. You see the places in me that refuse what I once welcomed. Be patient with my dullness, and do not let me despise the people who are trying to help me, even when I cannot receive what they offer. Feed me in the ways only you can, in your time and in your gentleness. Help me trust that you are near even when my soul will not reach out. Amen.
