What Does Job 14:9 Mean in the King James?
Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.
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 blooms at the scent of waters, showing life answering nourishment before water reaches it.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the possibility of response before contact: the tree begins to bloom at the scent of waters. In Job’s surrounding image, a tree can renew its shoots, and that possibility makes the human limit feel sharper. The verse holds that contrast open; it does not turn the tree’s renewal into an easy promise about human death.
THE ROOT
יַפְרִיחַ
yafriaḥ
GROWS FROM
פרח
p-r-ḥ
To break forth, blossom, or put out a flower or shoot.
The verse’s “bud” is a form of פרח, to break into blossom. The plant does not merely survive; it flowers, and the same root names the blossom itself, folding the act and its visible result together.
ALSO GROWS
peraḥ: Blossom or flower.
פֶּרַח
The bud’s response becomes visible as a flower: the root carries both the beginning of growth and what that growth produces.
hifriaḥ: To cause to blossom or make bloom.
הִפְרִיחַ
This causative form makes the root’s force vivid: the plant moves into open flowering.
רֵיחַ
rēaḥ
GROWS FROM
ריח
r-y-ḥ
Smell, scent, or fragrance.
The Hebrew says the plant blooms “from the scent” of waters. Nourishment is perceived before contact is described, and the tree responds to the sign of what sustains it.
ALSO GROWS
hērîaḥ: To smell or perceive by scent.
הֵרִיחַ
The same root makes scent an act of perception, matching the tree’s response to what it can sense.
rēaḥ nîḥōaḥ: A soothing or pleasing aroma.
רֵיחַ נִיחוֹחַ
This familiar biblical phrase also uses רֵיחַ for an aroma that is sensed; here, the scent of waters signals the possibility of renewed growth.
THE PATTERN
Living growth can answer nourishment before its full renewal is visible.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.THE THREAD
The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.The same Hebrew root פרח (p-r-ḥ), meaning to blossom or break forth, describes the tree’s response to the scent of waters and the desert’s flowering. Isaiah widens Job’s image from one plant to an entire landscape moving from barrenness into bloom.
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