What Does Job 14:7 Mean in the King James?
For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The tree’s hope is not that it escapes being cut down, but that life in it can answer the cut with new growth.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the tree’s cutting and its future in the same frame: the cut does not exhaust what is alive in it. Hope here is an expectation made visible in the tender shoot that continues to emerge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being cut down means every future is over.
THE ROOT
תִּקְוָה
tiqvah
GROWS FROM
קוה
q-w-h
To wait for, look for, or expect.
The word names an expectation directed toward what is still ahead, not a wish that the cutting never happened. The tree’s hope is carried in the possibility of renewed growth.
ALSO GROWS
qavah: To wait, look for, or hope.
קָוָה
This verb shares the root of Job’s noun for hope and makes its forward-looking expectancy plain.
miqveh: A gathering, collection, or pool.
מִקְוֶה
This related form shows another branch of the same consonantal root; Job uses its expectation sense.
יֹנַקְתּוֹ
yonaqto
GROWS FROM
ינק
y-n-q
To suck or draw nourishment.
The word translated “tender branch” comes from the word family for sucking or nursing: the new growth is pictured as a suckling shoot. Hope takes visible form as a shoot still drawing life.
ALSO GROWS
yanaq: To suck or nurse.
יָנַק
The verb gives the root’s basic sense of drawing nourishment, which illuminates the image of the shoot.
yoneq: A suckling or nursing child.
יוֹנֵק
This related word names the young one by its drawing of nourishment, like the tree’s new shoot.
THE PATTERN
Life can persist through apparent cutting or ending and emerge again as new growth.
Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.THE THREAD
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.The same root behind Job’s “hope” appears here as “wait”: both carry an expectation directed toward what is still ahead. The tree’s continuing shoot and the renewed strength of those who wait make hope a living capacity to continue.
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