What Does Job 24:5 Mean?
Look, like wild donkeys in the desert they go out to their work, rising at dawn to tear; the plain gives bread to them and to their children.
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
Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children.THE KEY
Their work begins in the word for dawn: rising early and searching for prey are fused into a single daily pursuit.
THE MEANING
This verse sees a life organized around the first hunt of the day: like wild asses, these people go out early to find prey. The wilderness yields food for them and their children, tying the day’s search to the young ones’ survival.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a wilderness is only empty: here, it yields food for the seekers and their children.
THE ROOT
מְשַׁחֲרֵי
meshacharei
GROWS FROM
שחר
š-ḥ-r
Dawn; in its verbal form, to seek at dawn or early.
“rising at dawn” in this verse is meshacharei. The phrase translated “rising betimes” also carries the sense of seeking at dawn, so early rising and the hunt are one action. The day begins as a search for what will feed them and their young.
ALSO GROWS
šaḥar: Dawn, the break of day.
שַׁחַר
This branch names the hour when their search begins.
šiḥēr: To seek early or diligently.
שִׁחֵר
The same root joins daybreak with active pursuit.
טֶרֶף
ṭereph
GROWS FROM
טרף
ṭ-r-p
To tear or seize; food taken by tearing.
“to tear” in this verse is ṭereph. The word for prey carries the action of tearing or seizing within it. The English noun can make the food sound separate from the struggle that obtains it.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāraph: To tear, seize, or pluck off.
טָרַף
This verb describes the dove’s olive leaf as plucked off in Genesis 8:11, extending the root beyond the hunt.
ṭereph: Prey or food seized.
טֶרֶף
The noun names the result of the pursuit these wild ones make at daybreak.
THE PATTERN
Living creatures meet the need for food through the place and rhythm of their lives.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to every creeping thing upon the earth, in which there is living soul, I have given every green herb for food. And it was so.The young lions roar for prey; they seek their food from God.Look at the birds of the air, for they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into storehouses; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?THE THREAD
The young lions roar for prey; they seek their food from God.The Hebrew word for “prey” here is the same word used for the lions’ “prey” in the Psalm. The shared root places Job’s dawn hunt within the same creaturely hunger the Psalm describes, with food sought from God.
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