What Does Job 18:17 Mean?
His remembrance loses the way from the earth, and he has no name in the open.
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 remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street.THE KEY
When remembrance disappears, the name, the nature made publicly known, also loses its place in the shared world.
THE MEANING
The verse places total erasure before the reader: remembrance vanishes from the earth, and the name has no place in public life. A human name and the memory attached to it are not guaranteed permanence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a public name guarantees lasting presence: remembrance itself can vanish from the earth.
THE ROOT
זִכְרוֹ
zikhrô
GROWS FROM
זכר
z-k-r
To remember, call to mind, or mention.
English remembrance can sound like private thought, but זכר also carries the sense of bringing something to mind or mention. The verse’s pairing of vanished remembrance with no name in the street reaches from memory into shared speech.
ALSO GROWS
zakhar: To remember, recall, or mention.
זָכַר
The verb shows remembrance as an active bringing to mind or speech, both of which disappear in the verse.
zeker: Remembrance, memorial, or mention.
זֵכֶר
This related noun shows that what vanishes is also the trace by which someone is recalled or spoken of.
zikaron: Memorial or remembrance.
זִכָּרוֹן
This form makes visible the lasting reminder that the verse says is lost.
אָבַד
avad
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾ-b-d
To perish or be lost.
“loses the way” in this verse is avad. The root can describe both perishing and being lost; here remembrance itself is what goes missing. The next clause extends that loss to the name’s place in the public world.
ALSO GROWS
avedah: A lost thing.
אֲבֵדָה
This related form sharpens the image of remembrance as something that can go missing.
avaddon: Destruction or ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This branch shows the root’s harsher reach: loss can become complete destruction.
THE PATTERN
A person’s earthly remembrance and public name can disappear, while scripture also depicts a name as something God can preserve.
The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory from the earth.For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all; there are no more wages for them, and their memory is forgotten.The one who overcomes will be wrapped in white. I will never wipe his name from the scroll of life, but I will speak his name in agreement before the face of my Father, and before the face of his messengers.THE THREAD
O enemy, the dry places are used up forever; you pluck up the cities, and their remembrance loses the way with them.“Perished” here comes from the same root, אבד, as Job’s “perish.” Psalm 9 applies that loss to a memorial too: the trace that keeps someone in memory can itself disappear.
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