What Does Job 20:15 Mean?
He swallows down strength, and vomits it up; God drives it out of his belly.
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
He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “cast them out” also means “possess”, the one who takes possession can be dispossessed from within.
THE MEANING
Riches can be swallowed as if possession settles their fate, yet they remain liable to be forced back out. God is named as the one who brings that reversal, making the taker’s own belly the place where possession fails.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that whatever is taken in and held becomes securely mine; this verse shows it can be forced out again.
THE ROOT
יוֹרִשֶׁנּוּ
yôrîšennû
GROWS FROM
י־ר־שׁ
y-r-sh
To take possession or inherit; in the causative form, to dispossess or drive out.
“drives it out” in this verse is yôrîšennû. The verb translated “cast them out” comes from the same root that can mean “possess” or “inherit.” The reversal is built into the word family: possession can become dispossession, even from inside the belly.
ALSO GROWS
yārash: Possess; inherit.
יָרַשׁ
This is the possession side of the root, linking what is held to what can be lost.
hôrîš: Dispossess; drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form carries the force of expelling what had occupied a place.
môrāšāh: Possession; inheritance.
מוֹרָשָׁה
The noun keeps the root’s sense of something held or received, making the verse’s reversal of possession sharper.
וַיְקִאֶנּוּ
wayqîʾennû
GROWS FROM
ק־י־א
q-y-ʾ
To vomit or disgorge.
“vomits it up” in this verse is wayqîʾennû. The Hebrew names a bodily expulsion, not merely a loss of value. The same root describes the fish releasing Jonah onto dry land, making the movement from swallowed to expelled audible across both verses.
ALSO GROWS
wayyāqē: “And it vomited out” (Jonah 2:10).
וַיָּקֵא
The shared verb shows a swallowed thing being forced back into the open.
qîʾ: Vomit (Isaiah 28:8).
קִיא
The noun preserves the concrete bodily image behind the verb in Job.
THE PATTERN
What is gathered as possession can still leave its holder and pass beyond their control.
Will you make your eyes take flight upon what is not? For riches surely make wings for themselves, and they fly away like an eagle toward the heavens.As he comes from his mother's womb, naked he turns back to go as he comes. He lifts nothing from his toil that he can go away with in his hand.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
And the LORD said to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out onto the dry ground.Job’s verb for “vomit” and Jonah’s verb for the fish’s “vomited” share the Hebrew root קיא (q-y-ʾ), meaning “to vomit or disgorge.” In Job, riches are expelled from the man who swallowed them; in Jonah, Jonah is expelled from the fish, the shared root makes the reversal audible.
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