What Does Job 6:27 Mean?
Yes, you cast down upon the fatherless, and dig a pit for your friend.
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
Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend.THE KEY
The verse joins crushing the fatherless and digging for a friend through one downward motion: making another fall.
THE MEANING
The verse reveals the pattern now: the exposed person is made to fall, and a pit is prepared for someone trusted. It places open exploitation and hidden betrayal inside the same act of turning another person’s vulnerability into a target.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a defenseless person is available to use, or that betrayal becomes harmless when concealed.
THE ROOT
תַּפִּילוּ
tappilu
GROWS FROM
נפל
n-p-l
to fall
“cast down upon” in this verse is tappilu. The verb translated “overwhelm” is a causative form of נפל (naphal), “to fall”: the act is to make the fatherless fall. The pit dug for the friend completes that downward motion, linking visible force and concealed plotting as two forms of bringing someone down.
ALSO GROWS
naphal: to fall
נָפַל
The root names the fall itself; here its causative form makes that fall happen to someone else.
hippil: to cause to fall, or cast
הִפִּיל
The causative form turns falling into an imposed outcome, matching the force of the verb in this verse.
תִּכְרוּ
tikru
GROWS FROM
כרה
k-r-h
to dig, excavate
“dig a pit” in this verse is tikru. Karah is the work of opening earth; the same excavation can expose water for a well or hollow out a place for someone else’s fall. Here the pit is prepared harm, not accidental ground.
ALSO GROWS
wayikru: they dug a well
וַיִּכְרוּ
Genesis 26:25 uses this root for an opening that yields water, showing that excavation can create provision.
karah: dug a pit
כָּרָה
Psalm 7:15 uses the same root for digging a pit, where excavation becomes a prepared trap.
THE PATTERN
A trap prepared for another sets the maker’s own return in motion.
He digs a pit and hollows it out, and falls into the pit he works.Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.“Diggeth” in Proverbs comes from כרה (karah), the same root as “dig” in Job. Proverbs makes the pit’s consequence explicit: the one who prepares another’s fall is caught in the outcome he shaped.
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