What Does Job 27:20 Mean?
Terrors overtake him like waters; a whirlwind steals him away in the night.
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
Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night.THE KEY
Job pairs two arrivals: terror reaches him like water, then the storm steals him under cover of night.
THE MEANING
Terror reaches a person with the rise of waters, surrounding and overtaking him. A tempest then steals him in the night, so the danger is both engulfing and sudden. The verse speaks of a collapse that arrives before he can get clear of it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that danger always gives warning: here it overtakes like water and takes its victim by stealth.
THE ROOT
יִשִּׂגֵהוּ
yissigehu
GROWS FROM
נָשַׂג
to reach, catch up with, overtake
“overtake” in this verse is yissigehu. The word carries the sense of something reaching and catching up with him. English “take hold” can sound like a static grip; the Hebrew also pictures terror arriving until he is overtaken.
ALSO GROWS
overtake: they reach and overtake you
הִשִּׂיגוּךָ
The same root describes what catches up with a person, making Job’s terror feel like an arrival that cannot be kept at a distance.
attain: to reach or attain
לְהַשִּׂיג
This branch shows the root’s basic movement: reaching its target, whether as attainment or as the terror that overtakes him.
גְּנָבָתוּ
genavatu
GROWS FROM
גָּנַב
to steal, take secretly
“steals” in this verse is genavatu. The tempest is described with the language of theft: it does not only strike; it carries him off. Beside terror that reaches him like water, this gives the danger two forms, an engulfing rush and a covert taking.
ALSO GROWS
thief: one who steals
גַּנָּב
The storm behaves like a thief, arriving in the night and taking him away.
theft: the act of stealing
גְּנֵבָה
This branch makes the verse’s force plain: the storm’s arrival is figured as a taking, not merely as weather.
THE PATTERN
Calamity is pictured as both an engulfing force that overtakes and a thief that arrives unseen.
The cords of death wrap around me, and torrents of those who do not rise startle me.So they shall stand in awe of the nature of the LORD from the west, and of his weight from the rising of the sun. When the one who presses comes in like a flood, the breath of the LORD shall raise a banner against him.For you yourselves know exactly that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night.THE THREAD
But it shall be, if you do not hear and respond to the voice of the LORD your God, to guard and to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you this day, that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.The word translated “take hold” in Job comes from נָשַׂג (nasag), meaning to reach or overtake; Deuteronomy uses the same root for curses that “overtake” the hearer. In both verses, what seemed distant catches up and reaches its target.
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