What Does Job 20:14 Mean in the King James?
Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him.
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
What enters as nourishment can be turned within into poison.
THE MEANING
The verse shows food changing inside the body into the venom of asps. Its image speaks now: taking something in does not guarantee it will nourish; within, it can become bitter and harmful.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what feels nourishing is guaranteed to remain nourishing once it is inside.
THE ROOT
נֶהְפָּךְ
nehpakh
GROWS FROM
הפך
h-p-k
To turn over, overturn, or change into another state.
The verse’s hinge is a change of state: food is turned into venom within. The root can describe transformation or overthrow, so the image is not just food moving through the body but nourishment becoming its opposite.
ALSO GROWS
haphakh: To turn, overturn, or transform.
הָפַךְ
This verb names the change that makes what enters as food become something harmful.
mahpekhah: Overthrow or upheaval.
מַהְפֵּכָה
This noun from the same root carries the force of a reversal that overturns what was there before.
מְרֹרַת
merorat
GROWS FROM
מרר
m-r-r
To be bitter.
The word for gall carries the taste of bitterness within it. The verse joins that bitter quality to asp venom, making the inner result both toxic and bitter.
ALSO GROWS
mar: Bitter.
מָר
The shared root makes the bitterness of the inner substance audible in the word for gall.
merorim: Bitter herbs.
מְרֹרִים
This related form names bitterness as something taken in, echoing the verse’s image of what is inside.
THE PATTERN
What enters sweetly or as nourishment can change within and yield bitterness or harm.
Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.THE THREAD
Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;Psalm 30:11 uses the same root, הָפַךְ (haphakh), for turning mourning into dancing. The shared root reveals the hinge in Job’s verse: what is within can be changed into another state, though here the result is venom rather than gladness.
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