What Does Job 31:40 Mean in the King James?
Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley. The words of Job are ended.
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 field becomes a witness: nourishing grain may give way to thorn and stench as its verdict.
THE MEANING
A claim of integrity stands exposed to what the ground yields: if the land has been wronged, nourishment gives way to thorn and foul growth. The harvest becomes a verdict, and the words stop there.
THE ROOT
בָּאְשָׁה
bāʾushāh
GROWS FROM
ב־א־ש
b-ʾ-sh
To stink or become foul.
The plant-name translated cockle carries the sense of a stinking growth. Barley is displaced not just by another plant, but by a foul thing; the loss of nourishment becomes something the senses can detect.
ALSO GROWS
bāʾash: To stink, become foul.
בָּאַשׁ
This verb makes explicit the foulness carried by the plant-name.
hibʾîsh: To cause to stink, make foul.
הִבְאִישׁ
The causative form sharpens the image: the replacement crop makes the field’s yield offensive.
יֵצֵא
yēṣēʾ
GROWS FROM
י־צ־א
y-ṣ-ʾ
To go out, come forth.
The verb rendered grow presents the weed as what comes out of the ground. This root also forms words for an exit and an outlet, so the field’s output itself changes from food to thorn and foul growth.
ALSO GROWS
yəṣîʾāh: Going out, an exit.
יְצִיאָה
It shares the sense of something emerging or passing out, as the crop comes forth from the soil.
môṣāʾ: An outlet, source, or what comes out.
מוֹצָא
It makes the field’s yield legible as its output: what emerges can nourish or wound.
THE PATTERN
The harvest can embody the consequence of what has been sown or done.
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.The shared root is יָצָא (yāṣāʾ, to come out or go forth): Genesis describes the earth bringing food forth, while Job imagines the same ground bringing thorn and foul growth instead. The ending turns the ground’s generative output from nourishment toward loss.
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