What Does Job 14:20 Mean?
You press him forever, and he walks off; you change his face, and you send him away.
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
Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.THE KEY
The final verb, שָׁלַח (shalach, “send forth” or “release”), makes this death a sending away under God’s hand, with the altered face marking the departure.
THE MEANING
This verse holds you beneath a stark truth: life can be overpowered, the face changed, and the person sent away. It does not soften death; it names the departure as something God does to him, beyond his power to resist.
THE ROOT
שָׁלַח
shalach
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send, send forth, release, or let go.
“send him away” in this verse is shalach. The root שלח (shalach, “send forth” or “release”) carries the movement of sending outward. Its branches include an envoy who is sent, Shiloach’s “sent” waters, and שֻׁלְחָן (shulchan, “table”), provision extended outward; here that same movement is severe, as the changed face is followed by the person’s departure.
ALSO GROWS
shaliach: Messenger; one who is sent.
שָׁלִיחַ
The same root names someone sent outward; in Job, the sending is final and directed away from the living.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of a spring or watercourse.
שִׁלֹחַ
The root also names waters sent toward a healing encounter, showing that the verb names the act of sending while the destination shapes its outcome.
shulchan: Table; provision extended outward.
שֻׁלְחָן
The root’s outward movement also appears in provision spread on a table; in Job, the movement instead sends a person away.
THE PATTERN
Human life appears as brief and vulnerable, with its departure beyond the person’s control.
Man, born of a woman, is short of days and full of trembling.You turn mortals back to what is crushed, and say, Turn back, children of humankind.You do not know what tomorrow holds. For what is your life? You are a mist, showing itself for a little while, and then made unseen.THE THREAD
And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, the Sent. So he went and washed, and came seeing.The pool’s name derives from שִׁלֹחַ (Shiloach, “sent forth”) and appears here as Σιλωάμ (Siloam, “Sent”); both connect to שָׁלַח (shalach, “send” or “release”), the root behind “sendest him away” in Job. One sending leads toward sight, while the other is a departure under overpowering force, so the shared root holds the act of sending together with its starkly different outcomes.
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