What Does 1 Kings 2:10 Mean in the King James?

So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.

1 Kings 2:10 · KJV

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

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.

“slept” 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.

Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;

Psalm 13:3 · KJVThe speaker names death directly through sleep, making the bodily image explicit.

For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

Job 3:13 · KJVThe verse pairs sleeping with rest, preserving death as a lying down.

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

1 Corinthians 15:20 · KJVThe verse calls the dead those who have slept, carrying the same image into its words about rising.

THE THREAD

But I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their buryingplace. And he said, I will do as thou hast said.

Genesis 47:30 · KJV

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.

Read the SDV Bible.

Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.

Get Selah Verse

The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.

Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us