What Does Job 21:20 Mean in the King James?
His eyes shall see his destruction, and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
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 turns judgment from something witnessed into something swallowed: his eyes see the ruin, and he drinks its heat.
THE MEANING
You are shown ruin as something that cannot remain distant: the person sees it, then drinks the Almighty’s anger. The consequence is both visible and bodily, taken inward like heat.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that destruction can remain a spectacle at a safe distance: the one who sees the ruin also drinks its consequence.
THE ROOT
עֵינָיו
ʿênāyw from ʿayin
GROWS FROM
עין
Eye; also spring or fountain, a source of water.
English separates eyes from springs, but עַיִן (ʿayin, eye and spring) carries both meanings. The sentence places seeing beside drinking, joining perception to water imagery just before the man takes the Almighty’s anger inward.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: Eye, the organ of sight.
עַיִן
This is the word used for “his eyes,” placing the ruin within what he sees for himself.
ʿayin: Spring or fountain, a source of water.
עַיִן
The same word also names a water source, echoing the verse’s image of drinking.
חֲמַת
ḥămat from ḥēmāh
GROWS FROM
חמה
Heat; becoming hot, including the heat of anger.
The Hebrew word חֵמָה (ḥēmāh, heat or fury) carries a bodily heat within what English calls wrath. Beside “drink,” that heat becomes something the person takes in and undergoes.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēmāh: Heat, fury, or anger.
חֵמָה
This is the noun in the verse, giving the Almighty’s anger a vivid heat.
ḥam: Hot or warm.
חַם
This related hotness keeps the image rooted in bodily temperature rather than an abstract verdict.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures judgment as a cup or drink that the one under it must take in.
For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:THE THREAD
For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.Jeremiah uses חֵמָה (ḥēmāh, heat or fury) and gives it as a cup to drink, unfolding the same pairing Job compresses into one line. In both verses, anger is something received and undergone, not left as a distant verdict.
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