What Does Job 21:10 Mean in the King James?
Their bull gendereth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf.
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 verse makes fertility an unreliable moral signal: even lives marked as wicked can multiply without loss.
THE MEANING
Here, breeding succeeds and birth does not end in bereavement; life multiplies without loss. Within the chapter’s portrait of the wicked, that flourishing is startling because it cannot be read as a sign of moral alignment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that visible fertility and a life free of loss prove that someone is righteous or favored.
THE ROOT
תְּשַׁכֵּל
teshakkel
GROWS FROM
שׁ־כ־ל
To bereave, be deprived of children, or miscarry.
“casteth not her calf” in this verse is teshakkel. The Hebrew reaches beyond a failed birth to the loss and bereavement bound up with it. The cow does not merely deliver successfully; she is not left bereft of her young.
ALSO GROWS
shikkel: To bereave or deprive of children.
שִׁכֵּל
It makes the verse’s “casteth not” the absence of a real loss, not just a successful bodily process.
shakkul: Bereaved; deprived of children.
שַׁכּוּל
This branch shows the human grief carried within the same root that describes the cow’s spared loss.
פָּרָה
parah
GROWS FROM
פ־ר־ה
To bear fruit or be fruitful.
The word for “cow” shares its form and root with the verb “be fruitful.” The animal is named through the very generative force the verse describes, joining the creature and its abundance in one Hebrew word-family.
ALSO GROWS
parah: To bear fruit; to be fruitful.
פָּרָה
This verb names the generativity seen in the cow’s successful birth.
peri: Fruit; produce or offspring.
פְּרִי
The branch carries fruitfulness into its visible result: what a living thing brings forth.
תְּפַלֵּט
tefallet
GROWS FROM
פ־ל־ט
To escape, slip away, or be delivered.
“calveth” in this verse is tefallet. The verb for calving belongs to a root that also describes escape and survival. Birth appears as an emergence into life, while the next phrase makes clear that the young do not slip away through loss.
ALSO GROWS
palit: A survivor or one who has escaped.
פָּלִיט
This branch casts birth as emergence into safety and continued life.
hiphlit: To cause to escape; to deliver.
הִפְלִיט
It reveals the movement within “calveth”: bringing the young through and out into life.
THE PATTERN
Material abundance does not reliably reveal moral alignment.
The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.THE THREAD
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.The cow is named with פָּרָה (parah, cow), from the root that also means “be fruitful,” the same root behind Genesis’s “Be fruitful.” Genesis places fruitfulness within blessing, while Job shows that flourishing can surround the wicked too; the shared root joins the generative force even as Job challenges what can be inferred from it.
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