Bible Strands
Job 27:21
The east wind carries him away, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Job addresses his three friends during his final extended discourse, contrasting his own maintained integrity with the sudden ruin awaiting the wicked. He speaks this in the midst of defending his blamelessness against their accusations of hidden sin.
The words — The Hebrew קָדִים (qadim) names the scorching east wind, while יִשּׂאֵהוּ (yissaehu) and יִשְׁעָרֵהוּ (yishaarehu) describe it lifting him up and whirling him away from his place. These terms depict a forceful, irreversible displacement rather than a natural weather event.
The thread — The same wind imagery executes divine judgment in Psalms 11:6 and Psalms 83:15, where tempests and scorching gusts are God’s portion for the wicked. The motif parallels Job 7:10, which notes that the destroyed never return to their house or place.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to acknowledge that human stability is entirely dependent on God’s permission and can be revoked instantly. It demands a sober assessment of earthly security as temporary and subject to sovereign reversal.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.
Cross-references
- Psalms 11:6 On the wicked He will rain down fiery coals and sulfur; a scorching wind will be their portion.
- Psalms 83:15 so pursue them with Your tempest, and terrify them with Your storm.
- Job 7:10 He never returns to his house; his place remembers him no more.
- Job 21:18 Are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a storm?
- Psalms 58:9 Before your pots can feel the burning thorns—whether green or dry—He will sweep them away.
- Exodus 9:23 So Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning struck the earth. So the LORD rained down hail upon the land of Egypt.
- Jeremiah 18:17 I will scatter them before the enemy like the east wind. I will show them My back and not My face in the day of their calamity.”
- Hosea 13:15 Although he flourishes among his brothers, an east wind will come—a wind from the LORD rising up from the desert. His fountain will fail, and his spring will run dry. The wind will plunder his treasury of every precious article.
- Nahum 1:3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.
- Matthew 7:27 The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its collapse!”