What Does Job 21:32 Mean in the King James?
Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb.
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
The tomb is more than a destination here: the verb carries the image of watchfulness over the burial mound.
THE MEANING
A life that appears secure still ends at the grave, where the body is carried and the mound is linked with watchful staying. The verse holds visible advantage and mortality in the same frame: no one is beyond death’s reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that prosperity makes a person exempt from death.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁקֹד
yishqod
GROWS FROM
שקד
sh-q-d
To keep watch, stay alert.
The verb יִשְׁקֹד (yishqod, “keeps watch”) brings the sense of שקד (shaqad, “watch, be alert”) into the tomb scene. The burial mound is not only a place where the dead remain; it is pictured through the language of vigilance.
ALSO GROWS
shoqed: Watching, keeping vigil.
שֹׁקֵד
Jeremiah 1:12 uses this form for the LORD watching over his word, making the shared sense of attentive watch clear.
shaqed: Almond tree.
שָׁקֵד
The almond’s name echoes the root’s association with waking early; Jeremiah 1:11–12 draws the sound-link into a wordplay about watchfulness.
קְבָרוֹת
qebarot
GROWS FROM
קבר
q-b-r
To bury.
The family of קבר (qabar, “bury”) names both the act of burial and the grave itself. That shared seed keeps the verse’s focus on the body’s concrete placement, rather than death as an abstraction.
ALSO GROWS
qavar: To bury.
קָבַר
This verb names the act that brings a body to its resting place in the verse.
qevurah: Burial, a burial place.
קְבוּרָה
This related noun keeps the grave connected to the act of laying someone in it.
THE PATTERN
No rank or fortune keeps embodied life from returning to the grave.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.THE THREAD
Then said the LORD unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.The verb שקד (shaqad, “keep watch”) appears here in the LORD’s description of watching over his word. Job’s tomb scene carries that same root, linking the burial mound with the language of attentive staying.
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