What Does Job 15:30 Mean in the King James?
He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.
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 Hebrew for “branches” is a word for suckling shoots, so the flame dries growth still drawing nourishment.
THE MEANING
Darkness remains around the person, his shoots dry under flame, and the breath at his mouth marks his departure. The verse holds the image without easing it: growth is scorched and life ends. It speaks now of how little visible growth can shield a life from destruction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that visible growth proves a life is secure: the shoots themselves can dry, and breath can leave.
THE ROOT
יֹנַקְתּוֹ
yonaqto
GROWS FROM
ינק
To suck or suckle; to draw nourishment.
The word translated “branches” is יֹנַקְתּוֹ, “his suckling shoots,” from ינק. It pictures growth still drawing nourishment, so the flame dries not just branches but life-bearing shoots.
ALSO GROWS
yōnēq: A suckling; one who draws nourishment by suckling.
יֹנֵק
It shares ינק and makes the nourishment implied in the verse’s shoots explicit.
yōneqet: A shoot or sucker; growth that draws from its source.
יֹנֶקֶת
This same-root word names the kind of living growth the flame dries in the verse.
חֹשֶׁךְ
ḥōshekh
GROWS FROM
חשך
To be dark; darkness.
The verse says the person does not depart from חֹשֶׁךְ, darkness, from the root חשך. The same consonants form words for becoming or making dark, connecting the condition named here with the process of darkening.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāshakh: To grow dark or be dark.
חָשַׁךְ
It shares the root consonants and gives darkness the sense of a condition taking hold.
heḥshikh: To darken.
הֶחְשִׁיךְ
This derived form uses the same root to describe darkness as something that spreads over or obscures.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures vulnerable life as growth that withers beneath passing breath and is consumed by fire.
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.THE THREAD
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.Isaiah uses רוּחַ (ruach: wind, breath, spirit) for the force that blows over the grass; Job uses the same word for breath at the mouth. The shared word joins Job’s departing breath to Isaiah’s withering grass, linking breath and wind with life’s fragility.
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