What Does Job 8:14 Mean?
Whose firm stance is cut off, and whose leaning is a spider's house.
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 hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web.THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures trust as a spider’s house, making the shelter beneath hope the measure of whether it can stand.
THE MEANING
This verse names the danger of placing confidence in a shelter that cannot bear it. Hope can feel like refuge, yet when its support is as fragile as a spider’s dwelling, the trust itself gives way.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that strong confidence can compensate for fragile support.
THE ROOT
מִבְטָחוֹ
mivtaḥo
GROWS FROM
בָּטַח
bāṭaḥ
to trust, feel secure, be confident
“leaning” in this verse is mivtaḥo. The word מִבְטָחוֹ (mivtaḥo, his trust or security) comes from בָּטַח (bāṭaḥ, to trust or feel secure). The phrase בֵּית עַכָּבִישׁ (bêt ʿakkāḇîš, a spider’s house) makes the support beneath that confidence visible: feeling secure cannot make a fragile refuge hold.
ALSO GROWS
mivṭāḥ: security, refuge, confidence
מִבְטָח
This noun makes trust concrete as a place or condition of security; the verse measures that security by the shelter it provides.
bāṭûaḥ: secure, safe, confident
בָּטוּחַ
This adjective names the felt state of being secure; the verse tests whether that feeling rests on something that can hold.
THE PATTERN
Confidence takes its shape from the support beneath it; what cannot bear weight cannot secure trust.
He leans upon his house, but it does not stand; he grips it, but it does not rise.Some lean their full weight on chariots, and some on horses; but we remember in the nature of the LORD our God.And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not respond will be likened to a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain came down, and the rivers came, and the winds breathed and fell against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.THE THREAD
On the day I tremble, I lean my weight upon you.Job’s מִבְטָחוֹ (mivtaḥo, his trust or security) and the psalm’s אֶבְטָח (ʾevṭāḥ, I will trust) share the root בָּטַח (bāṭaḥ, to trust or feel secure). The psalm places that trust in God amid fear, while Job’s image exposes the fragility of the shelter holding confidence.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us