What Does Job 5:20 Mean?
In hunger he buys you back from death, and in battle from the hand of the sword.
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 famine he shall redeem thee from death: and in war from the power of the sword.THE KEY
The verse puts famine and the sword under one verb of release, showing deliverance reaching the threats that bear down on the body.
THE MEANING
When hunger threatens life or violence brings the sword near, the verse speaks of deliverance reaching the body under threat. It holds the danger in view and names release from death and from the sword’s grasp.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that bodily danger, hunger or violence, puts a life beyond the reach of deliverance.
THE ROOT
פָּדְךָ
padkha
GROWS FROM
פדה
פדה (padah): to ransom or redeem; to release someone from a claim or peril.
“buys you back” in this verse is padkha. פָּדְךָ (padkha, “he redeems you”) is a form of פדה (padah, “to ransom or redeem”). The root pictures a life being released from a claim; here, that release reaches death itself and the sword’s power without making either danger unreal.
ALSO GROWS
podeh: Redeeming; one who redeems.
פֹּדֶה
Psalm 34:22 uses this form for the LORD redeeming the life of his servants, showing the same act as present release.
yifdeh: He will redeem.
יִפְדֶּה
Psalm 49:7 uses this verb while saying a person cannot redeem another from death, sharpening the scale of the deliverance named in Job.
מִלְחָמָה
milchamah
GROWS FROM
לחם
לחם (lacham): to fight or wage battle.
The verse names מִלְחָמָה (milchamah, “war”) and then מִיַּד חֶרֶב (miyyad cherev, literally “from the hand of a sword”), narrowing the danger from battle to the weapon’s grasp. Deliverance means being taken out of that grasp.
ALSO GROWS
lacham: To fight.
לָחַם
This verb shares the root of “war,” showing the word’s link between conflict and the act of fighting.
nilcham: He fought or waged war.
נִלְחַם
This form keeps the same root in view as an action, making the threat in the verse an active conflict rather than a vague danger.
בְּרָעָב
b-ra'av
GROWS FROM
רעב
רעב (ra’av): to hunger or experience scarcity of food.
The word for famine belongs to the same root family as the word for a hungry person. Scarcity is not remote abstraction here: it is hunger carried into a condition that threatens life.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ev: Hungry.
רָעֵב
This form names the person experiencing the same hunger that famine makes widespread.
hir'iv: To cause to hunger or let go hungry.
הִרְעִיב
This causative form shows the root extending from hunger itself to the condition that brings it about.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance is spoken into life-threatening conditions and reaches the danger where it holds power.
To snatch their living souls free from death, and to keep them alive in hunger.Then they cry out to the LORD in their narrowness, and he snatches them out of their narrow places.Who brought us out of so great a death, and brings us out; in whom we hope that he will yet bring us out.THE THREAD
The LORD ransoms the living soul of his servants, and none who take shelter in him are emptied.Job’s פָּדְךָ (padkha, “he redeems you”) and Psalm’s פֹּדֶה (podeh, “redeeming”) share פדה (padah, “to ransom or redeem”). Psalm directs the same root toward נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “living soul”), opening Job’s rescue from death as release that reaches the person whose life is at stake.
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