What Does Job 29:17 Mean?
And I broke the jaws of the crooked, and made the prey fall from his teeth.
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
And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.THE KEY
The rescue does not stop at breaking the bite; it pulls the seized prey back out of the teeth.
THE MEANING
In you, the power to protect reaches the source of harm: the jaws are broken, and what the predator seized is pulled from its teeth. Rescue holds both interruption and recovery; the taking does not have the final claim.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a predator’s grip is final dissolves here: what has been seized is not beyond recovery.
THE ROOT
טֶרֶף
ṭereph
GROWS FROM
טרף
ṭ-r-p
To tear, rend, or seize as prey.
What the KJV calls “spoil” is טֶרֶף (ṭereph), the word for prey. Its root also means to tear or seize, joining the object taken and the predatory act in one word-family; the verse breaks the devouring mechanism and recovers what it was consuming. The same verb describes an olive leaf “plucked off” in Genesis 8:11, showing how this root can name forceful taking or plucking, with the context revealing its character.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāraph: To tear, rend, or seize as prey.
טָרַף
The verb makes the predator’s action audible in the word for its prey: the teeth are part of the taking, not incidental to it.
ṭereph: Prey or food seized by tearing.
טֶרֶף
This is the word translated “spoil”; the speaker takes the prey back from the teeth that hold it.
וָאֶשְׁבֹּר
va’eshbor
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, fracture, or shatter.
“broke” in this verse is va’eshbor. Psalm 58:6 uses the same root for breaking the teeth of lions, making Job’s image part of a repeated picture of stopping predation at its bite. The word keeps the intervention forceful: the jaws are disabled so the prey can be recovered.
ALSO GROWS
shever: A break, fracture, ruin, or calamity.
שֶׁבֶר
The broken state shares its root with the action here: the jaws’ capacity to prey is broken.
mishbar: Breakers or breaking waves.
מִשְׁבָּר
The same root names a force that breaks against a surface; here, that force is turned against the predator’s grip.
THE PATTERN
Protection is complete when it interrupts the power that consumes and recovers what that power has taken.
Snatch away the low and the needy; from the hand of the wicked, pluck them out.If you hold back from snatching away those seized toward death, and those bent toward the slaughter.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
O God, break their teeth in their mouth; shatter the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.Both verses use שָׁבַר (shābar, “break”) with teeth, placing Job’s jaws in the same image of forceful intervention into a predator’s mouth. Here the broken teeth disable the devouring power so its prey can be released.
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