What Does Job 3:14 Mean?
With kings and counselors of the earth, who built dry ruins for themselves.
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
With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;THE KEY
The verse calls the powerful builders of “desolate places,” placing ruin inside the very work meant to endure.
THE MEANING
The verse places kings and counselors beside you in death’s stillness, among those who build for themselves. Rank cannot secure a separate resting place, and the work they raise is held together with desolation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that power or monumental work can guarantee a private refuge from death: even kings and builders share the same rest.
THE ROOT
חֳרָבוֹת
choravot
GROWS FROM
חרב
To become dry, desolate, or laid waste.
“dry ruins” in this verse is choravot. The word for these places belongs to the same root family as drying up and being laid waste. The line lets the ruin remain present inside what is built for oneself.
ALSO GROWS
charav: To dry up or be laid waste.
חָרַב
The ruin in the verse carries the sense of something dried out or made waste.
chorbah: A ruin or desolation.
חָרְבָּה
This related noun makes the desolate place a state of ruin, not merely an empty location.
הַבֹּנִים
habbonim
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build or establish.
“built” in this verse is habbonim. The Hebrew pictures these people as “the builders,” keeping their act of building vivid beside the word for ruin. The verse’s striking tension is that their building is named through the desolation it leaves or embodies.
ALSO GROWS
banah: To build or establish.
בָּנָה
This is the root verb behind “the builders,” naming the act that leads directly into the verse’s image of ruins.
mivneh: A structure or building.
מִבְנֶה
This related noun names what building produces; here, the built place remains bound to desolation.
THE PATTERN
Death exposes the limits of self-built permanence: rank and stored works cannot secure the builder.
For in his dying he takes nothing, and his weight does not go down after him.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?For we brought nothing into the world, and it is clear that we can carry nothing out.THE THREAD
Those who come from you shall build the dry ruins of the ages. You shall raise up the foundations of generation to generation, and you shall be called the mender of the breach, the one who turns the paths back to dwell in.Isaiah pairs building with ancient ruins too: בנה (banah, build) and חרב (charav, become desolate). In Job, the builders make desolate places for themselves; in Isaiah, building restores ruined places for others.
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