What Does Job 21:21 Mean in the King James?
For what pleasure hath he in his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off in the midst?
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
A house may outlast its owner, but it cannot carry the owner’s capacity for pleasure beyond the counted months of that life.
THE MEANING
Your home may remain after you, but your own share in its pleasures is bound to your months. This question sets the household that continues beside a life cut short and asks what enjoyment can remain to the one who has gone. It exposes the limit of possession: what survives you cannot extend your experience.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a household continuing after you can preserve your own enjoyment: what remains in the house does not lengthen your months.
THE ROOT
מִסְפַּר
mispar
GROWS FROM
ספר
To count, recount, or tell.
The word translated “number” comes from a root that also carries the sense of recounting and recording. The months are a measured account of a life, while the house remains beyond the span in which its owner can take pleasure in it.
ALSO GROWS
safar: To count, reckon, or recount.
סָפַר
The months are presented as something measurable, with a count that can be cut short.
sefer: A book, writing, or record.
סֵפֶר
This branch echoes the sense of a life’s months as a counted account, while the verse asks what that account means for the person who is gone.
sipper: To relate or recount.
סִפֵּר
The shared root holds counting and telling together: the months can be numbered, then recounted as the span of a life.
THE PATTERN
A life has a bounded span, so what remains around a person cannot extend that person’s share in it.
Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah.Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.THE THREAD
Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass;Job 14:5 uses the same Hebrew מִסְפַּר (mispar, number) for the months of a life, then speaks of their bounds. That shared root sharpens Job 21:21’s question: the house may remain, but the months in which its owner can take pleasure are counted.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us