What Does Job 14:7 Mean?
For there is a cord for a tree; if it is cut down, it sprouts again, and its suckling shoot does not stop.
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
For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.THE KEY
The tree’s hope is not that it escapes being cut down, but that life in it can answer the cut with new growth.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the tree’s cutting and its future in the same frame: the cut does not exhaust what is alive in it. Hope here is an expectation made visible in the tender shoot that continues to emerge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being cut down means every future is over.
THE ROOT
תִּקְוָה
tiqvah
GROWS FROM
קוה
q-w-h
To wait for, look for, or expect.
“cord” in this verse is tiqvah. The word names an expectation directed toward what is still ahead, not a wish that the cutting never happened. The tree’s hope is carried in the possibility of renewed growth.
ALSO GROWS
qavah: To wait, look for, or hope.
קָוָה
This verb shares the root of Job’s noun for hope and makes its forward-looking expectancy plain.
miqveh: A gathering, collection, or pool.
מִקְוֶה
This related form shows another branch of the same consonantal root; Job uses its expectation sense.
יֹנַקְתּוֹ
yonaqto
GROWS FROM
ינק
y-n-q
To suck or draw nourishment.
The word translated “tender branch” comes from the word family for sucking or nursing: the new growth is pictured as a suckling shoot. Hope takes visible form as a shoot still drawing life.
ALSO GROWS
yanaq: To suck or nurse.
יָנַק
The verb gives the root’s basic sense of drawing nourishment, which illuminates the image of the shoot.
yoneq: A suckling or nursing child.
יוֹנֵק
This related word names the young one by its drawing of nourishment, like the tree’s new shoot.
THE PATTERN
Life can persist through apparent cutting or ending and emerge again as new growth.
Yet at the scent of water it buds, and makes branches like a sapling.And a shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse, and a sprout from his roots will bear fruit.Truly, truly, I say to you. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.THE THREAD
But those who wait upon the LORD exchange their strength; they rise on wings like eagles; they run and do not tire; they walk and do not faint.The same root behind Job’s “hope” appears here as “wait”: both carry an expectation directed toward what is still ahead. The tree’s continuing shoot and the renewed strength of those who wait make hope a living capacity to continue.
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