What Does Job 20:21 Mean?
None is left of his food; therefore his goods do not live.
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
There shall none of his meat be left; therefore shall no man look for his goods.THE KEY
The verb behind “look for” means “hope for”: the loss reaches beyond an empty store to a future with no good left to expect.
THE MEANING
Nothing remains of what he consumes, and no one can expect lasting good from what he has. The verse speaks now to the gap between using what is at hand and having anything beneficial that endures.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that consuming or possessing enough can secure a lasting future of good.
THE ROOT
יָחִיל
yachil
GROWS FROM
יחל
y-ḥ-l
To wait for, hope for, or expect.
“look for” in this verse is yachil. The Hebrew verb carries the sense of waiting in expectation, so the line reaches beyond nobody searching for his goods: nobody can hope for what comes from them. What has been consumed leaves no future good to await.
ALSO GROWS
yachal: To wait or hope.
יָחַל
The root makes “look for” an expectation about the future, not just a search for belongings.
tohelet: Expectation or hope.
תּוֹחֶלֶת
This noun from the same root appears in Proverbs 11:7, where expectation perishes, echoing the future that Job’s verse leaves empty.
טוּבוֹ
tubo
GROWS FROM
טוב
ṭ-w-b
Goodness, benefit, or what is good.
The Hebrew word is literally “his good” or “his prosperity,” while “goods” can sound like possessions alone. The verse says that what is left to hope for is not merely property, but lasting benefit.
ALSO GROWS
tov: Good or beneficial.
טוֹב
It is the core word within “his good,” showing that the verse speaks of benefit as well as material possessions.
tovah: Goodness, benefit, or welfare.
טוֹבָה
This feminine form from the same root makes clear that tov can name a condition of well-being, not only a thing someone owns.
THE PATTERN
What a person consumes or accumulates cannot guarantee lasting satisfaction or control over future good.
Surely every man walks in a shadow. Surely for vapor they roar. He heaps up, and does not perceive who will gather them.The lover of silver is not filled with silver, and the lover of the crowd is not filled with the harvest. This too is vapor.And he said to them, Watch, and guard yourselves against grasping, for a person's life does not lie in the overflow of what they hold.THE THREAD
When a wicked one dies, his hope perishes, and the expectation of the strong is lost.Job’s “look for” comes from יחל (yachal), “to wait or hope for”; Proverbs uses תּוֹחֶלֶת (tohelet), “expectation,” from the same root. The shared root makes the connection plain: when his goods are gone, there is no future good left to wait for.
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