What Does Job 38:21 Mean in the King James?
Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or because the number of thy days is great?
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 exposes age as a false witness: your many days cannot testify to what came before your first day.
THE MEANING
You enter a world already underway, so the length of your life cannot make you an eyewitness to what came before it. Time may deepen what you perceive, but it does not erase the boundary of your beginning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that living long enough means you were present for, or can fully know, everything that came before you.
THE ROOT
יָדַעְתָּ
yadaʿta
GROWS FROM
י־ד־ע
To know, perceive, or recognize.
“Knowest” in this verse is yadaʿta. The question uses yadaʿ, “know” or “perceive”: it asks whether you can truly know this because you were already there. The root makes the issue one of perception and knowing, while the verse points to the limit that no number of days crosses.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: knowledge
דַּעַת
This noun shares the root and shows that “knowing” belongs to the same word family as the verse’s question about what you can perceive.
hodiʿa: made known, informed
הוֹדִיעַ
This causative form of the root means to make something known; it highlights the difference between receiving knowledge and having lived through what came before your birth.
תִּוָּלֵד
tivvaled
GROWS FROM
י־ל־ד
To give birth or bring forth.
The verse ties the claim to know to being born “then”: your own beginning is the measure of what you could have witnessed. The root also gives Hebrew words for a child and for generations, keeping birth connected to the unfolding of life across time.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
A child is one who has been brought forth; this branch makes the personal starting point in “because thou wast then born” concrete.
toledot: generations, offspring
תּוֹלְדוֹת
Generations are what is brought forth over time, echoing the verse’s contrast between a beginning and the events that precede it.
מִסְפַּר
mispar
GROWS FROM
ס־פ־ר
To count or recount.
The “number” of your days comes from a root associated with counting and recounting. The verse tests whether a life tallied as long can serve as testimony to events from before that life began; the count itself cannot supply that witness.
ALSO GROWS
safar: count, recount
סָפַר
This verb shares the root and makes the verse’s “number of thy days” a count of lived time.
sefer: book, written record
סֵפֶר
This related word evokes a record: a long count of days is still not a record of what you could not witness.
THE PATTERN
A human lifespan cannot supply eyewitness knowledge of what preceded human life.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.THE THREAD
Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.“Knowest” here is the same Hebrew root, י־ד־ע (y-d-ʿ; yadaʿ), as “Knowest thou it” in verse 21. Verse 18 questions whether you perceive the earth in its full breadth; verse 21 asks whether your days make you a witness to what preceded your birth.
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