What Does Job 18:16 Mean?
His roots dry up beneath, and his harvest withers above.
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 roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch be cut off.THE KEY
The loss reaches both ends of the tree: its hidden source dries below while its visible growth is cut away above.
THE MEANING
You see the damage reach the whole tree: its roots dry beneath the ground while its branch is cut above. The hidden source and visible growth belong to one connected life, and neither part escapes the collapse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This dissolves the belief that hidden damage can stay separate from visible life: what dries at the root reaches the branch.
THE ROOT
קְצִירוֹ
qetsiro
GROWS FROM
קצר
To cut short or reap.
The word for “branch” is qetsir, a word also used for harvest and bough. Job 14:9 uses the same Hebrew noun for boughs that bud after water returns, so the contrast here turns on the tree’s drying roots and severed growth.
ALSO GROWS
qatsar: To reap; cut short.
קָצַר
This verb shows the action at the root of the word family: reaping or cutting short.
qatsir: Harvest; bough or branch.
קָצִיר
The same noun can name what is reaped and a tree’s bough, connecting the branch image with cutting.
יִבָּשׁוּ
yibbashu
GROWS FROM
יבשׁ
To dry up or wither.
“dry up” in this verse is yibbashu. Yibbashu describes a process: the roots themselves are drying and withering. The root also names dry ground, tying the tree’s collapse to the loss of moisture at its base.
ALSO GROWS
yavesh: Dry; wither.
יָבֵשׁ
This form shows the same root’s basic sense of becoming dry.
yabbashah: Dry land or ground.
יַבָּשָׁה
This noun carries the same root into the condition of ground without water, echoing the drying at the tree’s base.
THE PATTERN
A tree’s visible endurance follows the condition of what sustains it at the root.
And he becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.Therefore, as the tongue of fire eats the stubble, and the flame lets the dry grass drop, so their root shall be as rot, and their blossom shall rise like dust, because they have rejected the instruction of the LORD of hosts, and spurned the word of the Set-Apart One of Israel.And already the axe lies at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut out and thrown into the fire.THE THREAD
Yet at the scent of water it buds, and makes branches like a sapling.The Hebrew word קָצִיר (qatsir), meaning “bough” or “branch,” appears in both verses. Job 14:9 shows that bough budding at the scent of water; here, the same word names growth cut away as the roots dry.
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