What Does Job 21:19 Mean?
God stores up his crookedness for his children; he repays him, and he perceives it.
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
God layeth up his iniquity for his children: he rewardeth him, and he shall know it.THE KEY
The final “he shall know it” turns stored wrongdoing into an account the wrongdoer himself must face.
THE MEANING
Wrongdoing does not become weightless when its cost reaches a household: this verse says the account returns to the one who must know it. It holds generational harm and personal reckoning together, leaving the tension visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It unsettles the belief that a wrongdoer can pass the cost of harm to descendants and remain untouched: repayment still reaches the one who must know.
THE ROOT
יְשַׁלֵּם
yeshallēm
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
To be whole or complete; in this verb form, to make good or repay.
“repays” in this verse is yeshallēm. יְשַׁלֵּם (yeshallēm) carries the sense of repaying or making good, from שׁלם (sh-l-m), the family that also gives שָׁלוֹם (shalom), wholeness. The stored wrong moves toward a completed account, and the verse says its doer comes to know it.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
The shared root links repayment with bringing something to completion.
shalom: Wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
This branch shows the root’s wider sense of a settled, complete state beneath the verb translated “rewardeth.”
וְיֵדָע
veyedaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“perceives” in this verse is veyedaʿ. יֵדָע (yedaʿ) can name knowing as recognition, not merely receiving information. The verse ends with the person meeting the reality of the account himself.
ALSO GROWS
yodea: One who knows
יֹדֵעַ
This form makes knowing a person’s direct state, echoing the verse’s final claim that he will know.
daʿat: Knowledge, understanding
דַּעַת
This noun belongs to the same ידע family, showing knowing as a formed understanding rather than a distant report.
THE PATTERN
Wrongdoing has a real account: its effects may reach a family, while each person remains answerable for their own deeds.
Guarding faithful love for thousands, carrying crookedness, rebellion, and falling short, and who by no means leaves the guilty clean, visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.The living soul that is missing shall die. The son shall not bear the crookedness of the father, nor shall the father bear the crookedness of the son; the alignment of the aligned shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
And yours, O Lord, is faithful love, for you repay each man according to his deed.The verb translated “renderest” is תְּשַׁלֵּם (teshallēm), from the same שׁלם (sh-l-m) root as Job’s “rewardeth.” The shared root links repayment with a completed account returned according to a person’s work.
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