Biblical Meaning Of Bind In Job And New Testament
The Hebrew verb חָבַשׁ (chavash) appears in Job 5:18 and 40:13, carrying the sense of "bind up" or "bandage" in contexts of healing and restraint. In Job 5:18, Eliphaz declares, "For he wounds, and binds up. He injures, and his hands make whole" [2], where the binding imagery conveys God's restorative action after discipline. The verb here suggests medical care—wrapping a wound—rather than imprisonment. Job 40:13 uses the same root in God's challenge to Job: "bind up" (chavosh) the faces of the proud in dust [3], a call to exercise divine judgment that Job cannot fulfill.
A related Hebrew root, חָבַל (chaval), means "bind" in the sense of taking a pledge or security [4]. This term appears in Job 22:6 and 24:3, 9, where it describes the oppressive practice of seizing garments or property as collateral. Job 22:6 accuses Job of taking pledges from brothers without cause, while Job 24:9 laments the wicked who "bind" the fatherless as a pledge [4]. The semantic range here shifts from healing to economic bondage, illustrating how "binding" in Job encompasses both restoration and exploitation.
In the New Testament, the Greek vocabulary of binding takes on ecclesial and spiritual dimensions. The verb δέω (deō) appears in Matthew 16:18 and 18:18, where Jesus grants the church authority to "bind" and "loose"—a power interpreted by Calvin as the authority to excommunicate and restore members through discipline [5, 6]. This binding is not physical but declarative, exercising the "keys of the kingdom" [5]. Charles Hodge notes that this power, when misunderstood as priestly absolution, reduces people to "absolute subjection" [7], a distortion the Reformation corrected by grounding ministerial authority in Scripture rather than sacerdotal claims.
Paul uses "bond" (desmos) metaphorically in Ephesians 4:3 and Colossians 3:14, where the Spirit's influences are the "bond of peace" and love is the "bond of perfectness" [1]. Here binding signifies unity rather than constraint. The term also denotes affliction or oppression in Psalm 116:16 and Philippians 1:7 [1], showing how New Testament usage retains the dual sense of restraint and connection found in Job's Hebrew vocabulary.
Sources
- Easton's Bible Dictionary “Easton's Bible Dictionary: Bond — An obligation of any kind (Num. 30:2, 4, 12). The word means also oppression or affliction (Ps. 116:16; Phil. 1:7). Christian love is the "bond of perfectness" (Col. 3:14), and the influences of the Spirit are the "bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3).”
- Job “For he wounds, and binds up. He injures, and his hands make whole. -- Job 5:18”
- STEPBible TAHOT “Job.40.13#05=L — Hebrew tagged text (TAHOT): חֲבֹ֣שׁ [cha.Vosh] "bind up"”
- Brown-Driver-Briggs “[BDB H2254] chabal (part 1/3) — H2254. chabal I. [חָבַל] verb bind, pledge (Arabic bind; compare Aramaic , travail; חֲבַל pledge (but rare and dubious); especially cord, field, חַבְלָא cord, , חֶבְלָא pain, especially of travail; Sabean חבל border-territory, or field, SabDenkm48.49; Ethiopic ZimBP 93 n., compare Assyrian na—balu, rope, snare (but — = )) — Qal Perfect חָבָ֑ל Ezek 18:16 Imperfect יַחֲבֹל Deut 24:6; 2masculine singular תַּחֲבֹל 24:17; תַּחְבֹּל Ezek 22:25; Job 22:6; יַחְבְּלוּ 24:3; יַחְבֹּ֑לוּ 24:9; Imperative suffix חַבְלֵהוּ Prov 20:16; 27:13; Infinitive absolute חָבֹל Exod 22”
- CCEL (Reformed) “John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, section 59: entrance into Paradise; that the priest, moreover has the power of the keys, by which he can loose and bind the sinner; because the declaration of Christ is not in vain: “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” ( Mt. 18:18 ). Concerning this power, however they wage a fierce war among themselves. Some say there is only one key essentially—viz. the power of binding and loosing; that knowledge, indeed, is requisite for the proper use of it, but only as an accessory, not as essentially inherent in it. Others seein”
- CCEL (Reformed) “John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, section 93: passage, in which binding and loosing are mentioned, is in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, where Christ says, “If he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church: but if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and 2441 a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” ( Mt. 18:17, 18 ). This passage is not altogether similar to the former, but is to be understood somewhat differently”
- CCEL (Reformed (Old Princeton)) “Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, section 95: one man may pray for another, but as having the power to forgive sins. They have therefore the power of life and death; the keys of the kingdom of heaven. They bind, and no man can loose; they loose, and no man can bind. This is the highest power which man has ever assumed over his fellow-men, and when recognized, reduces the people to a state of the most absolute subjection. No greater benefit was rendered the world by the Reformation than the breaking of this iron yoke. This was done by demonstrating, from Scripture, that the ministers ”