What Does Job 4:11 Mean?
The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness come apart.
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
The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, and the stout lion’s whelps are scattered abroad.THE KEY
Even the lion’s strength depends on what sustains it; without prey, it perishes and its young scatter.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks wherever strength looks self-sustaining: power still depends on what feeds it. When that source fails, strength can perish, and what it holds together can scatter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that strength alone guarantees survival or continuity.
THE ROOT
אֹבֵד
ʾōvēḏ
GROWS FROM
אבד
Perish, be lost.
“perishes” in this verse is ʾōvēḏ. The lion’s end is expressed through אבד, a root that holds perishing and being lost together. Here the loss comes through lack of prey: formidable strength cannot keep itself alive when its sustenance is gone.
ALSO GROWS
ʾăḇēḏāh: Loss
אֲבֵדָה
This branch makes the link between perishing and loss explicit: what disappears is also what is lost.
ʾăḇaddôn: Destruction
אֲבַדּוֹן
This branch carries the same root into destruction, extending the image from an individual lion’s end to a more complete vanishing.
טָרֶף
ṭāreph
GROWS FROM
טרף
Tear, seize.
The word for prey carries the sense of what is torn or seized. The lion’s food is bound to the act that obtains it, so the verse reveals a dependence beneath the image of power: without something to seize, the predator cannot endure.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāraph: To tear or rend
טָרַף
The verb names the action held within the word for prey; what feeds the lion is what it tears or seizes.
ṭərēphāh: A torn animal
טְרֵפָה
This branch names what has been torn, showing how the root links the act of predation with its result.
THE PATTERN
Even formidable strength depends on provision, and when its source fails, it cannot preserve itself.
Will you hunt the prey for the lion? Or fill the living soul of the young lions,The young lions roar for prey; they seek their food from God.The young lions go lacking and go hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.THE THREAD
But the wicked will lose the way, and the enemies of the LORD will be like the weight of the pastures. They will run out, and in smoke they will run out.“Perisheth” in Job and “shall perish” here share the Hebrew root אבד (ʾāḇaḏ), meaning to perish or be lost. Job shows a lion perishing when its prey is gone; the shared root carries that image of loss into another verse.
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