What Does Job 6:18 Mean?
The paths of their way bend aside; they climb into the emptiness and lose the way.
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 paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and perish.THE KEY
A path can carry you forward while carrying you nowhere.
THE MEANING
A route may look like progress and still turn into waste. The Hebrew תֹּהוּ (tohu, “waste, emptiness”) is where the travelers arrive; וְיֹאבֵדוּ (wə-yōʾvēdū, “and they are lost or perish”) names what follows. The verse gives present language to effort that keeps moving while losing its way.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that forward motion guarantees arrival.
THE ROOT
וְיֹאבֵדוּ
wə-yōʾvēdū
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾ-b-d
To be lost, disappear, or perish.
“lose the way” in this verse is wə-yōʾvēdū. This root holds being lost and being destroyed in one word family: the line does not merely say these routes disappoint; their end is disappearance. A traveler can keep moving while becoming lost.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: To be lost, perish, or disappear.
אָבַד
This verb makes loss itself the outcome of the journey.
ʾavēdāh: Something lost; lost property.
אֲבֵדָה
The same root names what is no longer at hand, giving “perish” the concrete sense of being gone.
ʾăvaddōn: Destruction; a place or state of ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
It shows how the root’s movement from loss can extend to destruction.
אָרְחוֹת
ʾorḥōṯ
GROWS FROM
ארח
ʾ-r-ḥ
To travel or journey; a traveled route.
“paths” in this verse is ʾorḥōṯ. The same consonants also form אֹרֵחַ (ʾōrēaḥ, “traveler, guest”), tying the path to the person moving along it. The danger is not only a direction gone wrong; the route and its traveler are caught in the same failed journey.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōraḥ: A path, route, or course.
אֹרַח
This is the route the verse shows turning away from its destination.
ʾōrēaḥ: A traveler, wayfarer, or guest.
אֹרֵחַ
The related word brings the traveler into the path’s meaning: this route is being walked, not merely imagined.
דַּרְכָּם
darkām
GROWS FROM
דרך
d-r-k
To tread or step; a way made by walking.
The verse stacks אָרְחוֹת (ʾorḥōṯ, “paths”) beside דֶּרֶךְ (derek, “way”), then gives that route a bodily image: a way is what feet tread. The movement is real, but its destination is emptiness.
ALSO GROWS
derek: A way, road, or course.
דֶּרֶךְ
Paired with “paths,” it makes the verse’s concern a traveled route rather than an abstract idea.
dārakh: To tread, step, or walk.
דָּרַךְ
The verb beneath “way” puts footsteps into the image: the travelers really go, but their going leads nowhere.
THE PATTERN
A way is exposed by its destination: movement toward emptiness reveals a route that cannot sustain the traveler.
For the LORD perceives the way of the aligned, but the way of the wicked loses its way.There is a way straight before a man, but its latter end is the ways of death.Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and roomy is the way that leads to perishing, and many are those who go in through it.THE THREAD
For the LORD perceives the way of the aligned, but the way of the wicked loses its way.Job’s וְיֹאבֵדוּ (wə-yōʾvēdū, “they are lost or perish”) and Psalm’s יֹאבֵד (yōʾvēd, “shall perish”) share the root אבד (ʾ-b-d, “be lost, disappear, perish”). In Job the travelers are lost at the end of the way; in the psalm the way itself perishes, making loss both the traveler’s end and the route’s end.
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