What Does Job 18:20 Mean?
Those who come after him are stunned at his day, and those who went before are seized by a shudder.
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
They that come after him shall be astonied at his day, as they that went before were affrighted.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “astonied” also carries the sense of desolation: the ruin leaves witnesses appalled across generations.
THE MEANING
A person’s day of ruin reaches beyond the person: those who come after are appalled, and those who came before are seized with horror. The verse shows a collapse becoming visible enough to shock witnesses on both sides of it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that devastation stays private: what happens to one life can become a shock carried across generations.
THE ROOT
נִשַּׁמּוּ
nishammû
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
sh-m-m
Be appalled; become desolate.
“stunned” in this verse is nishammû. The word translated “astonied” comes from a root that also names desolation. English can make astonishment sound like a reaction alone; Hebrew lets the witnesses’ shock echo the ruin they see.
ALSO GROWS
shemāmāh: Desolation, waste.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun makes the root’s link between a ruined condition and the appalled response easier to see.
shammāh: Desolation; an object of astonishment.
שַׁמָּה
This branch keeps ruin and astonishment within the same word-family.
אָחֲזוּ שָׂעַר
ʾāḥăzû śaʿar
GROWS FROM
אחז
ʾ-ḥ-z
Seize, grasp, take hold.
“seized by a shudder” in this verse is ʾāḥăzû śaʿar. The phrase says the earlier witnesses are “seized with horror”: שָׂעַר (saʿar) means horror, and אָחֲזוּ (ʾāḥăzû) comes from a root meaning seize or take hold. Fear is pictured as something that takes hold of the witnesses.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāḥaz: Seize, take hold.
אָחַז
The verb names the grip that horror has on the earlier witnesses.
ʾăḥuzzāh: Holding, possession.
אֲחֻזָּה
This noun extends the root’s sense of something held or taken into possession.
THE PATTERN
Visible ruin can turn into a public astonishment that witnesses carry beyond the person who suffers it.
And you shall become a desolation, a proverb, and a taunt, among all the nations to which the LORD shall drive you.As many were stunned at you, so his look was ruined beyond any man, and his shape beyond the sons of men.THE THREAD
To make their land stunned, and a whistling of the ages. Everyone who crosses by it shall be stunned, and shake his head.Jeremiah uses שְׁמָמָה (shemāmāh, desolation) for the ruined land and a form of שׁמם (sh-m-m, be desolate or appalled) for the passerby’s astonishment. The shared root links ruin in the place with the shock it produces in the witness.
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