What Does Job 39:30 Mean?
Its young also lap up blood, and where the pierced are, there it is.
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
Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls the young “sprouts” and the slain “pierced ones”: new life and death share one feeding scene.
THE MEANING
You see the eagle’s fledglings drinking blood, and the eagle where the pierced lie. New life and death occupy one scene: these young grow by consuming what has fallen.
THE ROOT
אֶפְרֹחָיו
ephroḥav
GROWS FROM
פרח
p-r-ḥ
To sprout, blossom, or shoot forth.
“young ones” in this verse is ephroḥav. The word for the eagle’s young grows from פרח, “to sprout” or “blossom.” English separates fledglings from flowers, but Hebrew places them in one family of emerging life, even as the next clause names the blood that feeds them.
ALSO GROWS
parach: To sprout, blossom, or shoot forth.
פָּרַח
The fledglings are new life breaking forth from the nest.
perach: A blossom or flower.
פֶּרַח
This branch shares the same image of growth with the eagle’s young.
ephroaḥ: A fledgling or chick.
אֶפְרֹחַ
The verse’s “young ones” are the sprouting ones of this root family.
חֲלָלִים
ḥalalim
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or wound.
English “slain” names the outcome; חלל keeps the wound in view: these are the pierced ones. That places the eagle’s feeding at the opened bodies, beside the word for the young as new growth.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālal: To pierce or wound.
חָלַל
This verb names the bodily act beneath the word translated “slain.”
ḥālāl: A pierced or slain person.
חָלָל
The plural in the verse names those lying where the eagle is present.
THE PATTERN
A creature’s hunger draws it to the place where its food is found, even when that food is another creature’s life.
Who prepares for the raven its catch? When its young ones cry out to God, they wander for want of food.The young lions roar for prey; they seek their food from God.Wherever the fallen body is, there the eagles are gathered together.THE THREAD
As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreads its wings, takes him, and lifts him on its pinions.This verse holds the eagle’s care for its young in the same image as Job’s fledglings feeding on blood. Together they show the closeness of the parent to its young alongside the starkness of what sustains them.
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