What Does Job 14:18 Mean?
And surely the mountain falls and melts, and the rock is moved from its place.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place.THE KEY
The Hebrew describes the mountain with the language of withering and the rock with the language of displacement, so even what looks immovable has no promise of staying in place.
THE MEANING
A mountain can wither and a rock can be shifted from its standing place; sheer mass does not guarantee permanence. The lines around this verse extend the image: water wears down stone, and human hope is washed away.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that something solid or long familiar is therefore secure from change.
THE ROOT
יִבּוֹל
yibbōl
GROWS FROM
נבל
נבל (n-b-l): to wither, fade, or decay.
“melts” in this verse is yibbōl. The verb translated “cometh to nought” carries the image of withering. Job applies that fading language to a mountain, making even the landscape’s emblem of permanence sound vulnerable to the same wearing away seen in plants.
ALSO GROWS
nāḇēl: To wither or fade.
נָבֵל
Isaiah uses this same root for grass that withers, linking the mountain’s decline to the familiar image of a plant losing its life.
nəḇēlāh: A carcass or dead body.
נְבֵלָה
This related noun names what is left lifeless; the root’s language of decay reaches from gradual fading to its spent result.
יֶעְתַּק
yeʿtaq
GROWS FROM
עתק
עתק (ʿ-t-q): to move, shift, or remove from a position.
The rock is pictured as shifted from its location, not simply vanishing. The same root can describe the removal of something as massive as a mountain, joining the rock’s displacement to a wider image of the world’s strongest forms being moved.
ALSO GROWS
heʿtiq: To remove or move away.
הֶעְתִּיק
Job 9:5 uses this related form for removing mountains, showing the same root at work on an even larger scale.
ʿatiq: Ancient or aged.
עָתִיק
The root’s range also reaches what has advanced through time, adding temporal change to the image of spatial movement.
מִמְּקֹמוֹ
mimmeqōmō
GROWS FROM
קום
קום (q-w-m): to rise or stand.
The Hebrew word for place, מָקוֹם (maqōm, place), is formed from קוּם (qūm, rise or stand): a place is where something stands. The rock being moved from its place is its standing position being undone.
ALSO GROWS
qūm: To rise or stand.
קוּם
This base verb supplies the image of standing that lies beneath the word for place.
hēqîm: To raise, establish, or set up.
הֵקִים
This related form describes bringing something into a standing or established position, sharpening the force of the rock being displaced.
THE PATTERN
What seems fixed in the created order can still pass, wear away, or be moved.
They perish, but you stand. All of them wear thin like a garment; as a robe you exchange them, and they are exchanged.The grass dries, the flower withers, because the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people is grass.Heaven and earth pass by, but my words do not pass by.THE THREAD
Who removes the mountains, and they do not perceive; who overturns them in the burning of his anger.The verb translated “removed” here comes from עתק (ʿ-t-q, to shift or remove), the same root used in Job 9:5 for removing mountains. The connection enlarges the image: the rock’s displacement belongs to a Hebrew language that can speak of mountains being moved.
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