What Does 1 Kings 2:10 Mean?
So David lay down with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.THE KEY
Here death has neither anonymity nor abstraction: David lies with his fathers, and the city bears the dead man’s name.
THE MEANING
The verse holds mortality in two coordinates: David lies among his fathers, and his body is placed in the city bearing his name. Death remains bodily and located, while kinship and a name persist beside it.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁכַּב
vayyishkav
GROWS FROM
שכב
sh-k-b
To lie down or recline; by extension, to sleep.
“lay down” in this verse is vayyishkav. The Hebrew verb keeps the body’s posture inside the word for sleep: David is described as lying down among his fathers. The image holds death close to bodily rest and kinship.
ALSO GROWS
mishkav: Bed; a place of lying down.
מִשְׁכָּב
The bed grows from the same root of lying down, keeping the physical posture visible in the verse’s language of sleep.
shokhev: One who is lying down.
שֹׁכֵב
This form makes the root’s bodily action explicit: the sleeping one is also one who lies down.
וַיִּקָּבֵר
vayyikkaver
GROWS FROM
קבר
q-b-r
To bury; to place in a grave.
“buried” in this verse is vayyikkaver. The verse moves from lying down with family to the concrete placement of a body in a named city. Sleep and burial sit together, holding death as both an image and a physical event.
ALSO GROWS
qeber: Grave or tomb.
קֶבֶר
The grave is the place named by the same root as the act of burial.
qevurah: Burial or interment.
קְבוּרָה
This noun names the act or state of burial, making clear that the verse speaks of the body’s placement.
דָּוִד
David
GROWS FROM
דוד
d-w-d
Beloved.
David’s name carries the nature of the beloved. The city where he is buried carries that same name, so the sentence places his body and the name that remains in one location.
ALSO GROWS
dod: Beloved; also a kinsman.
דּוֹד
This root word holds affection and kinship together, echoing the verse’s pairing of David with his fathers.
dodi: My beloved.
דּוֹדִי
The possessive form makes the root’s relational quality audible in the name David.
THE PATTERN
Death is spoken of as sleep or lying down, holding the body’s end in a concrete image.
Gaze and answer me, O LORD my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.For now I would lie down and go quiet; I would sleep, and then rest would be mine.But now the Anointed One has been awakened from the dead, and has become the first portion of those who have lain down to sleep.THE THREAD
But I will lie down with my fathers, and you shall lift me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place. And he said, I will do according to your word.Genesis uses the same paired roots: שכב (shakhav, “lie down”) with קבר (qavar, “bury”). Seeing both roots together there opens this verse’s sequence as a linked image of lying with one’s fathers and the body’s burial.
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