What Does Job 15:27 Mean?
Because he covers his face with his fat, and makes folds of fat upon his loins.
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
Because he covereth his face with his fatness, and maketh collops of fat on his flanks.THE KEY
The fatness here does not merely mark plenty; it becomes a veil that hides the face.
THE MEANING
The verse shows a person whose own fatness covers his face while more gathers on his flanks. His fullness becomes an enclosure, obscuring the very face it gathers around.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that fullness always makes a person more visible or secure; here, the very fullness that accumulates around him covers his face.
THE ROOT
כִּסָּה
kissah
GROWS FROM
כסה
Cover; conceal from sight
“covereth” in this verse is kissah. This root means to cover and can carry the sense of concealing. Here, the covering is the man’s own fatness, so what gathers around him also hides the face by which he is seen.
ALSO GROWS
hitkassah: Cover oneself
הִתְכַּסָּה
This form makes the subject part of the covering action, echoing the verse’s image of a person enclosed by what surrounds him.
mekhasseh: Covering; one that covers
מְכַסֶּה
The root’s covering form makes the action a screen over a surface, as the fatness lies over and hides the face.
חֵלֶב
chelev
GROWS FROM
חלב
Fat; richness or the choicest portion
The verse uses this word for fatness. The same consonants also form the word for milk, while this noun can describe the rich portion of the land; bodily fullness and nourishing abundance meet in the image of what has gathered around the man.
ALSO GROWS
chalav: Milk
חָלָב
The same consonants name milk, the body’s nourishing yield, alongside the fatness accumulated on the body in this verse.
chelev ha’aretz: The richness or choicest portion of the land
חֵלֶב הָאָרֶץ
The same noun describes the land’s abundance; here that richness is pictured as gathered within a body and covering its face.
THE PATTERN
Accumulated abundance can enclose the self and obscure what lies beyond it.
But Jeshurun, the Straight One, grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, you grew thick, you were covered in fatness; then he let go of God who made him, and made light of the Rock of his deliverance.Their eyes come out from fat; they cross beyond the gazes of the heart.And I will say to my living soul, Living soul, you have much good stored for many years. Rest, eat, drink, and be glad. But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
They shut in their own fat, and their mouth speaks with swelling.Psalm 17 uses the same Hebrew word for fat and makes it the thing that encloses the people described. The shared root links bodily surplus with enclosure: in both verses, the self is hidden inside what has gathered around it.
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