What Does Job 41:22 Mean?
In his neck lodges strength, and before him wasting leaps.
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
In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.THE KEY
Leviathan’s strength is so settled that dread itself dances in front of it.
THE MEANING
Strength rests in Leviathan’s neck as a resident force, while dismay moves before him like a dancer. Fear is not softened in this image; it becomes part of the creature’s display. The verse holds the frightening force and the spectacle of terror together.
THE ROOT
תָּדוּץ
tadutz
GROWS FROM
דוץ
d-w-ts
To leap, spring, or dance; by extension, to exult.
“wasting leaps” in this verse is tadutz. The Hebrew verb תָּדוּץ (tadutz) comes from דוץ (d-w-ts), to leap or dance. Dismay before Leviathan is pictured in motion, so the KJV’s startling joy-language carries a bodily image: dread itself dances.
ALSO GROWS
duts: To leap, spring, or dance.
דּוּץ
The verse’s verb is an inflected form of this motion, making fear appear as movement rather than a static feeling.
ditsah: Exultation, gladness.
דִּיצָה
This related noun carries the root’s springing movement into joy, illuminating the KJV’s joy wording.
עֹז
oz
GROWS FROM
עזז
ʿ-z-z
To be strong, mighty, or fierce.
עֹז (oz, strength) comes from עזז (ʿ-z-z), to be strong or fierce. The verse places this strength in the neck, as something lodged in the body and enduring rather than a passing outburst.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaz: Strong, fierce.
עַז
This adjective shares the root’s sense of force, sharpening the creature’s embodied might.
ʿazuz: Mighty, powerful.
עָזוּז
This branch makes the root’s strength explicit, echoing the force that remains in Leviathan’s neck.
דְּאָבָה
de’avah
GROWS FROM
דאב
d-ʾ-b
To languish, pine away, or grow faint.
“wasting leaps” in this verse is de’avah. דְּאָבָה (de’avah, dismay or terror) is related to דאב (d-ʾ-b), to languish or pine away. Beneath the KJV’s sorrow is a shade of bodily weakening, which sharpens the contrast: dread dances before a creature with strength lodged in its neck.
ALSO GROWS
da’ab: To languish or pine away.
דָּאַב
The verbal seed names the weakening held inside distress.
de’avah: Dismay, distress, or terror.
דְּאָבָה
This noun supplies the dread that dances before Leviathan.
THE PATTERN
The presence of overwhelming power is revealed by the way fear moves before it.
Tremble, O earth, before the face of the Master, before the face of the God of Jacob.And they feared a great fear, and said to one another, Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea hear and respond to him?THE THREAD
O God, from your set-apart places you are awe-inspiring. The God of Israel gives strength and power to the people. Let God be blessed.Job names the strength lodged in Leviathan’s neck with עֹז (oz, strength); Psalm 68:35 uses that same word for the strength God gives. The shared root holds strength as both embodied might and something bestowed.
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