What Does Job 27:21 Mean?
The east wind carries him away, and he goes; a storm hurls him from his place.
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
The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “place” grows from “stand,” so the storm does not merely move him; it strips away his standing.
THE MEANING
The verse gives the reader a picture of a life exposed to displacement: the east wind carries the man off, and the storm throws him from the position he occupies. The second blow intensifies the first until even his place provides no foothold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that having a place means having secure footing; a position can be lost as swiftly as the storm can remove the one who occupies it.
THE ROOT
יִשָּׂאֵהוּ
yissaʾēhû
GROWS FROM
נ־שׂ־א
The root נ־שׂ־א (nāśāʾ) means to lift, carry, or bear.
“carries him away” in this verse is yissaʾēhû. The same root can describe bearing crookedness, with the sense of releasing or forgiving it. Here the person himself becomes what the wind bears away, so the word holds both carrying and removal.
ALSO GROWS
maśśāʾ: burden, load
מַשָּׂא
A burden is something carried; this branch makes the wind’s action feel like bearing a weight away.
nōśēʾ ʿāwōn: bearing or releasing crookedness; forgiving wrongdoing
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
In Exodus, the same root bears crookedness; here it bears a person away.
מִמְּקֹמוֹ
mimmeqōmô
GROWS FROM
ק־ו־ם
The root ק־ו־ם (qûm) means to stand or rise.
The Hebrew word for place belongs to the family of standing and rising. He is hurled away from more than a location: the position that seemed to give him footing is gone.
ALSO GROWS
qûm: rise, stand
קוּם
This verb gives the root’s basic image of taking a stand or rising to one’s feet.
māqôm: place, standing-place
מָקוֹם
This is the noun in the verse: the place from which the man is driven.
hēqîm: raise, establish
הֵקִים
To establish something is to make it stand, echoing the footing his place seemed to offer.
THE PATTERN
When what seems settled lacks enduring footing, a passing force can remove it at once.
The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the breath blows away.And the rain came down, and the rivers came, and the winds breathed and fell against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.THE THREAD
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 word נֹשֵׂא (nōśēʾ, bearing) in Exodus comes from the same root נ־שׂ־א (nāśāʾ, to lift, carry, or bear) as Job’s “carrieth.” In Job the person is borne away; in Exodus crookedness is borne or released, so one root holds carrying away and release together.
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