What Does Job 21:17 Mean in the King James?
How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! and how oft cometh their destruction upon them! God distributeth sorrows in his anger.
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 repeated “How oft?” exposes the gap between the tidy claim that wickedness is promptly punished and the world the reader can actually see.
THE MEANING
This question meets the reader where moral explanations fail: wicked people do not always see their lamp go out or calamity arrive on any schedule. The verse still names sorrows as apportioned in anger, leaving that judgment present but difficult to read from outward circumstances. Visible fortune does not settle what a person deserves or what God is doing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that visible disaster reliably proves a person is wicked, or that wickedness always brings immediate public ruin.
THE ROOT
יִדְעָךְ
yidʿakh
GROWS FROM
דעך
To fade, die down, or be quenched.
“put out” in this verse is yidʿakh. This verb can picture a light dwindling out, not only a sudden punishment. Its repeated use for the wicked person’s lamp makes the image a familiar moral formula, and “How oft?” puts that formula under pressure.
ALSO GROWS
yidʿakh: “Shall be put out” or “shall fade.”
יִדְעָךְ
The same verb states the wicked person’s extinguishing as certain; here its frequency becomes a question.
yidʿakh: “Shall be put out” or “shall fade.”
יִדְעָךְ
The same lamp-and-wickedness image shows how readily the phrase becomes a rule about visible judgment.
THE PATTERN
Moral character and visible fortune do not line up as an immediate, dependable verdict.
Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.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
Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine.The Hebrew verb for “put out” is the same דעך (daʿakh, fade or die down) in both lines. Job 18:5 states the lamp’s extinguishing as certain; Job 21:17 repeats the image and asks how often it happens, exposing the distance between a moral formula and what the reader sees.
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