What Does Job 5:5 Mean?
The hungry eats his harvest, taking it even from among the thorns, and the thirsty pant after their wealth.
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
Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb behind “swalloweth up” also means “pant after,” so the verse pictures possession being consumed as an appetite in pursuit.
THE MEANING
Your gathered provision can be eaten by those who hunger, reached even from among thorns. What remains can be consumed by those who pursue it, leaving possession exposed rather than absolute.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that what you gather is secure simply because it is yours is undone: hunger can reach it, and another can take what remains.
THE ROOT
שָׁאַף
sha'af
GROWS FROM
שׁאף
sha'af
To pant or gasp after; to pursue eagerly and consume.
“pant after” in this verse is sha'af. The verb translated “swalloweth” carries the image of panting pursuit. Beside the hungry eating the harvest, it makes the taking of wealth feel like appetite closing in.
ALSO GROWS
ha-sho'afim: Those who pant after or greedily pursue
הַשֹּׁאֲפִים
Amos uses this form for those who pant after the dust on the poor’s head, linking the taking here with predatory pursuit.
esh'af: I pant, gasp, or devour
אֶשְׁאַף
Isaiah uses the same root in a word rendered “devour,” carrying the overlap between eager pursuit and consumption.
חֵילָם
cheilam
GROWS FROM
חיל
chayil
Strength, force, capacity; by extension, wealth or an army.
“their wealth” in this verse is cheilam. The word translated “substance” can also name strength, force, or wealth. What is consumed is not only a store of goods but accumulated capacity in material form.
ALSO GROWS
chayil: Strength, force, or an army
חַיִל
This branch makes the substance in Job sound like concentrated strength, something that can be seized and spent.
eshet chayil: A woman of strength or valor
אֵשֶׁת־חַיִל
Proverbs uses the same word for a person’s capability, showing that this root can name strength embodied as well as wealth possessed.
קָצִיר
qatsir
GROWS FROM
קצר
qatsar
To reap or cut short.
A harvest is what has been cut from its source and gathered. This root also carries the sense of shortness, so even abundance bears the mark of something severed and finite.
ALSO GROWS
qatsar: To reap or cut down
קָצַר
The verb names the cutting that makes a harvest, showing that what can be gathered can also be taken away.
qotser: Shortness
קֹצֶר
This noun appears in the phrase “shortness of spirit” in Exodus 6:9, connecting the harvest root with what is cut short.
THE PATTERN
What is amassed remains vulnerable to loss, consumption, or transfer beyond the gatherer’s control.
Surely every man walks in a shadow. Surely for vapor they roar. He heaps up, and does not perceive who will gather them.There is a sickening harm I have seen under the sun, wealth guarded for its owners to their harm.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
That pant after the dust of the earth upon the head of the poor, and bend aside the way of the bowed ones; and a man and his father go in to the same young woman, to profane my set-apart name.The Hebrew verb שָׁאַף (sha’af), “pant after,” links Job’s “swalloweth up” with Amos’s “pant after.” The shared root lets consumption carry the feel of acquisitive pursuit: wealth is not merely transferred but hungrily drawn in.
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