What Does Job 20:7 Mean?
Yet he loses his way forever, like his own dung; those who see him say, "Where is he?"
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
Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?THE KEY
Here, a person’s end is pictured as discarded refuse, and even those who saw him are left unable to say where he is.
THE MEANING
The verse holds you before a brutal image: he perishes like his own dung, utterly discarded. Those who have seen him are left with one question, “Where is he?”, as presence gives way to absence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that being seen guarantees a lasting presence; here, even the witnesses cannot locate him.
THE ROOT
יֹאבֵד
yōʾvēd
GROWS FROM
אבד
Perish, be lost, disappear
“loses his way” in this verse is yōʾvēd. The verb יֹאבֵד comes from אבד, a root whose reach includes both perishing and being lost. Its branches connect the one who is perishing with destruction itself, giving the verse’s disappearance a force beyond mere passing: what is lost leaves no trace for the witnesses to find.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōvēd: A perishing one; one ready to be lost.
אֹבֵד
This form can describe a person in the state of perishing, echoing Job’s picture of a person vanishing.
ʾăvaddōn: Destruction or ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This related noun names destruction itself, showing that the root can describe both being lost and the ruin that marks that loss.
THE PATTERN
A life that seems present and substantial can vanish so completely that its former place holds no trace.
Yet a little while, and the wicked will not be. You will look closely at his place, and he will not be.For breath passes over it, and it is gone; and its place no longer sees it.For the sun rises with its scorching heat, and dries the grass, and its flower falls, and the beauty of its shape perishes; so also the rich one withers in his goings.THE THREAD
You rebuke the nations; you make the wicked lose the way; you wipe out their name for the ages and ages.Psalm 9:5 uses the same root אבד (ʾābad, perish or be lost) in “destroyed.” It extends Job’s disappearance to the loss of a name, so “Where is he?” opens onto the erasure of the trace he left.
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