What Does Job 22:20 Mean?
Surely our standing is not cut off, and fire eats their remainder.
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
Whereas our substance is not cut down, but the remnant of them the fire consumeth.THE KEY
“Substance” carries the sense of what stands, setting enduring standing against the remnant fire eats.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two outcomes together: a substance that is not cut down, and a remnant that fire consumes. It places the reader before the difference between what remains standing and what is left to be consumed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that visible loss means all substance is gone: what stands remains distinct from the remnant fire consumes.
THE ROOT
קִימָנוּ
qîmānu
GROWS FROM
קום
Rise, stand, become established.
The word translated “substance” carries the sense of “our standing” or “what stands.” The root opens the verse as a contrast between what remains established and what fire consumes.
ALSO GROWS
qām: He rose or stood.
קָם
It shows the root’s basic image of rising into a standing position.
māqôm: Place, a standing place.
מָקוֹם
A place is where something stands, extending the root’s image from standing to the ground on which it stands.
אֹכְלָה
ʾokhlāh
GROWS FROM
אכל
Eat, consume.
The fire does not merely surround the remnant: the verse says it eats it. The image makes consumption an action, with the remainder exposed as what the fire takes in.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākal: To eat.
אָכַל
This is the root’s basic action and gives “consumeth” its concrete force.
maʾăkāl: Food, something eaten.
מַאֲכָל
This branch names what the root’s action takes in, sharpening the image of the remnant as what fire eats.
יֶתֶרָם
yeterām
GROWS FROM
יתר
Remain, be left over; exceed.
“their remainder” in this verse is yeterām. The remnant is what is left over. Beside the word for standing substance, it makes the verse’s distinction vivid: what stands and what remains to be consumed are not the same.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: Remainder, surplus.
יֶתֶר
It preserves the idea of what is left after something has been removed.
hôtîr: Leave over, spare.
הוֹתִיר
It shows the root’s action of leaving something behind, illuminating the remnant in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Fire consumes and tests, making the difference between what remains and what cannot endure visible.
For the LORD your God is a fire that eats, a jealous God.But who can hold the day of his coming? And who will stand when he is seen? For he is like the fire of the refiner, and like the lye of those who tread cloth.Each one's work will be made visible, for the day will show it, because it is uncovered in fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.THE THREAD
For the LORD your God is a fire that eats, a jealous God.Job’s “consumeth” comes from אָכַל (ʾākal), meaning “eat.” Deuteronomy’s “consuming” uses the same root, so both verses picture fire as an eater and bring the remnant in Job into sharper focus.
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