What Does Job 41:21 Mean?
His living soul sets coals ablaze, and a flame goes out of his mouth.
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
His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.THE KEY
The word KJV renders “breath” is נַפְשׁוֹ (nafsho), “his living soul”, the fire is pictured as coming from Leviathan’s living being itself.
THE MEANING
You meet a living creature whose nefesh, its living soul, kindles coals, while flame issues from its mouth. The verse holds life and destruction in one image: the fire is the creature’s own outward force.
THE ROOT
נַפְשׁוֹ
nafsho
GROWS FROM
נפש
n-p-sh
Living being; life as the living self.
The word rendered “breath” here is נַפְשׁוֹ (nafsho), “his living soul” or “his life,” from נפש (nefesh). Genesis uses the same root when the formed human becomes a “living soul”; here, the creature’s living being is itself pictured as kindling coals.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living soul; living being or person.
נֶפֶשׁ
Genesis 2:7 calls the formed human a living soul, showing that this word names a living being, not merely a detachable inner part.
naphash: To refresh oneself; to rest.
נָפַשׁ
The related verb connects this life-word with renewal; Job’s image shows that the living creature can also be a source of fierce, consuming force.
THE PATTERN
An unseen force within becomes visible as fire issuing through the mouth.
Smoke rises from his nostrils, and fire from his mouth devours; coals blaze from him.My heart is hot within me, and while I mutter the fire burns. Then I speak with my tongue.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The word rendered “breath” in Job is נַפְשׁוֹ (nafsho), from the root נפש (nefesh); Genesis uses that same root when the human becomes a “living soul.” The shared word places Leviathan’s fire in its living being itself, rather than in a separate force.
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