What Does Job 18:14 Mean?
What he leans on is torn from his tent, and it marches him to the king of terrors.
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
His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures confidence being severed from its shelter, after which terror itself becomes the ruler that leads.
THE MEANING
When confidence is lodged in a shelter that can be stripped away, its loss leaves a person exposed to terror’s rule. The verse places security and terror side by side, showing how quickly one can give way to the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Confidence alone cannot make a refuge permanent.
THE ROOT
יִנָּתֵק
yinnāṯēq
GROWS FROM
נתק
To detach, tear loose, or sever.
“rooted out” in this verse is yinnāṯēq. The Hebrew verb means being torn loose, so the image is sharper than confidence simply fading: it is cut away from the shelter that held it. The next phrase makes terror the force that leads once that bond is broken.
ALSO GROWS
nāṯaq: To tear away or detach.
נָתַק
It names the severing at the center of the verse’s image.
nittaq: To be torn away or disconnected.
נִתַּק
This form echoes the verse’s picture of security being forcibly separated from its shelter.
מִבְטָחוֹ
mivṭāḥô
GROWS FROM
בטח
To feel secure, trust, or rely upon.
“what he leans on” in this verse is mivṭāḥô. The word translated “confidence” is built from the root for trusting and feeling secure; it can name a refuge or the security placed in one. English can make confidence sound like an inner mood, while the Hebrew holds it close to the place or thing a person relies on.
ALSO GROWS
bāṭaḥ: To trust or feel secure.
בָּטַח
The verb reveals that confidence is a kind of reliance, not just a feeling.
mibṭāḥ: Security, confidence, or refuge.
מִבְטָח
This noun shows how the same root can name both a person’s security and the refuge where it rests.
beṭaḥ: Securely, in safety.
בֶּטַח
This related form carries the root’s sense of being settled in safety.
THE PATTERN
Security fastened to what can fail collapses into exposure when its shelter gives way.
The one who leans his weight upon his riches falls, but the aligned bloom like a leaf.And the rain came down, and the rivers came, and the winds breathed and fell against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.Whose firm stance is cut off, and whose leaning is a spider's house.THE THREAD
Whose firm stance is cut off, and whose leaning is a spider's house.The word translated “trust” here is מִבְטָחוֹ (mivṭāḥô), from the same root בטח (bāṭaḥ, to trust or feel secure) as “confidence” in Job 18:14. Job 8 gives that security the image of a spider’s web; Job 18 shows it torn from its shelter and replaced by terror’s rule.
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