What Does Job 39:3 Mean?
They bow down, they bring forth their young, they send out their cords.
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
They bow themselves, they bring forth their young ones, they cast out their sorrows.THE KEY
The verse’s final verb comes from the same root as “Let my people go”: birth ends by sending the pangs out.
THE MEANING
A living body bows under labor, brings forth its young, and sends the pangs away. Pain belongs to the process of emergence here, but it does not remain the final state: life comes forth as the pangs are released.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief that labor’s pain is the whole story; here, the pangs are sent out as the young emerge.
THE ROOT
תְּשַׁלַּחְנָה
teshallachnah
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send, send forth, or release.
“send out” in this verse is teshallachnah. The Hebrew verb behind “cast out” is שָׁלַח (shalach), the root of sending and release. The pangs are not merely described as sorrow; they are sent forth, so the verse presents birth as a movement that releases what it has carried.
ALSO GROWS
shallach: Send away; release.
שַׁלַּח
The same root appears in Exodus 5:1 in “Let my people go,” making release the shared action in both verses.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of a watercourse.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name carries the same sending-root into the image of waters flowing forth, echoing the pangs sent out here.
יַלְדֵיהֶן
yaldeihen
GROWS FROM
ילד
To bear, bring forth, or beget.
The Hebrew word for “young ones” belongs to the same root that names begetting and giving birth. English separates the offspring from the act of birth, while the Hebrew holds them in one word-family: the ones brought forth are bound to the bringing forth.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: To bear or give birth.
יָלַד
This birth-verb shares the root of “their young,” linking the process and its outcome.
toledot: Generations; an account of begetting.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The same root extends from the young arriving here to generations unfolding through birth.
THE PATTERN
Birth moves through travail toward emergence, so the pangs are not the final word.
Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to writhe and bear in one day? Shall a nation be born in a single stroke? For when Zion ached, she bore her children.A woman, when she brings forth, has pain, because her hour has come. But when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the pressure, for the joy that a human has been brought forth into the world.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.The Hebrew verb translated “cast out” in Job comes from שָׁלַח (shalach), the same root behind “Let my people go.” In Job, it sends out the pangs of labor; in Exodus, it names release from bondage, the same movement from constriction toward freedom.
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