What Does Job 30:15 Mean?
Trembling is overturned upon me; they pursue my willing self like the breath, and my deliverance crosses over like a cloud.
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 are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: and my welfare passeth away as a cloud.THE KEY
The word translated “welfare” is יְשׁוּעָתִי (yeshuati), “my deliverance”: what seems to vanish like a cloud is the way out itself.
THE MEANING
Terror can feel as though it is chasing you without pause. The wind makes that pursuit feel everywhere, and the thing called your deliverance seems to pass beyond sight like a cloud. The verse holds the anguish without pretending it has already lifted.
THE ROOT
יְשׁוּעָתִי
yeshuati
GROWS FROM
ישע
yasha
To deliver, bringing someone out of constriction into spaciousness.
The form here means “my deliverance,” giving “welfare” a rescue-shaped depth. Deliverance passing like a cloud means the way out itself feels obscured.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: To deliver, bring out.
יָשַׁע
This verb names the movement toward freedom that feels lost in the verse.
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun names what the verse says passes away like a cloud.
moshia: Deliverer.
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This branch gives the act of bringing out a personal form.
תִּרְדֹּף
tirdof
GROWS FROM
רדף
radaph
To pursue, chase after.
“pursue” in this verse is tirdof. Psalm 23:6 uses this same root where the KJV says goodness and mercy “shall follow” the speaker. The root can describe terror closing in here or goodness and faithful love following there; what pursues is different.
ALSO GROWS
radaph: To pursue or chase.
רָדַף
This verb names the pursuit felt in the verse.
rodef: A pursuer.
רֹדֵף
This form gives a name to what is chasing.
redifah: Pursuit.
רְדִיפָה
This noun makes the act of chasing visible as an ongoing force.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוּחַ
ruach
Moving air, wind; the same Hebrew word also names breath and spirit.
Here רוּחַ (ruach), “wind, breath, spirit,” is rendered “wind,” while Hebrew holds these under one word. The pursuit is pictured as moving air, the same word that also names the air moving within a living body.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Wind, moving air.
רוּחַ
This is the verse’s explicit image for pursuit.
ruach: Breath, air moving within a living body.
רוּחַ
The same word lets the wind image touch the body’s most immediate movement.
ruach: Spirit, animating presence.
רוּחַ
This sense shows how one Hebrew word spans what English separates into wind and inward life.
THE PATTERN
What follows a person gives pursuit its felt meaning: terror can chase, and goodness and faithful love can also follow.
To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, A Psalm of David. Deliver me, O God, for the waters have come up to my living soul.Then he said to them, My living soul is pained all around, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.Surely goodness and faithful love pursue me all the days of my life, and I settle in the house of the LORD for the length of days.THE THREAD
Surely goodness and faithful love pursue me all the days of my life, and I settle in the house of the LORD for the length of days.Job’s “pursue” and the Psalm’s “follow” draw on רדף (radaph), “pursue.” Here terror carries that verb; there goodness and faithful love do, so the root reveals that what chases a person can change.
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