What Does Job 15:20 Mean?
All his days the wicked one writhes, and the number of years is hidden away for the one who presses.
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
The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor.THE KEY
Power over others does not become power over one’s own life: the oppressor’s days writhe, and their number remains hidden from him.
THE MEANING
The oppressor spends all his days in anguish, while his own lifespan remains concealed from him. Power over others does not grant him command over the length or end of his life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that domination can make a life secure or its end predictable.
THE ROOT
מִתְחוֹלֵל
mithcholel
GROWS FROM
חוּל
ḥûl
To whirl or writhe; the same root also carries the sense of laboring to bring forth.
“writhes” in this verse is mithcholel. The word translated “travaileth” describes a life caught in continual turning and anguish. The same root reaches into dance and birth pangs, linking the oppressor’s daily unrest to bodily movement that cannot settle.
ALSO GROWS
machol: A dance.
מָחוֹל
The dance branch shares the root’s turning movement, showing how the same motion can be joyful or anguished.
cholelekha: One who gives birth or brings forth.
חוֹלְלֶךָ
This branch carries the root into labor and birth, sharpening the sense of a life continually writhing under strain.
נִצְפְּנוּ
nits’penu
GROWS FROM
צָפַן
tsaphan
To conceal or store away.
The years are “hidden” by a root that can also mean to store something away. The word leaves the oppressor without access to the count of his own days, as though that knowledge is held beyond his reach.
ALSO GROWS
yitspon: He stores or lays something up.
יִצְפֹּן
This form shows that what is hidden can also be kept in reserve, giving the verse’s concealed years a sense of something held beyond view.
tsafun: Concealed or kept out of sight.
צָפוּן
This related form makes clear that the years are not merely unknown in the moment; they remain beyond the oppressor’s sight.
THE PATTERN
No human power secures life or gives anyone full knowledge of its span.
No one has power over the breath to hold in the breath, and no one has power in the day of death. There is no sending away in the war, and wickedness does not slip its owners free.Behold, you have set my days as hand-widths, and my passing is as nothing before you. Surely every man standing is altogether vapor. Selah.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
He stores up sound wisdom for the straight ones; he is a shield to those who walk in wholeness.Job’s word for “hidden” comes from צָפַן (tsaphan, to conceal or store away), the same root behind “layeth up” in Proverbs. The shared root connects what remains beyond the oppressor’s sight with what is stored up as wisdom for the upright.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us