What Does Job 3:19 Mean in the King James?
The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
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
In the place where all ranks meet, even the servant is beyond the master’s reach.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks from the far edge of suffering: the small and the great share one place, and there even a servant is outside the master’s claim. It gives voice to death as release from a hierarchy that feels otherwise inescapable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The master’s power can never end; this verse names death as the point where the servant is free of that claim.
THE ROOT
חָפְשִׁי
ḥop̄šî
GROWS FROM
חפשׁ
Freedom from bondage or forced service.
The word for “free” names the servant’s release from a master’s claim. English gives the state of freedom, while the Hebrew word family also holds חֹפֶשׁ, “freedom,” making the release itself visible.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōp̄eš: Freedom
חֹפֶשׁ
The noun makes explicit the freedom that Job’s verse locates beyond the grave.
ḥop̄šî: Free; released from service
חָפְשִׁי
The same form appears in Deuteronomy’s description of a servant released from a master.
עֶבֶד
ʿeved
GROWS FROM
עבד
To work or serve.
The servant is named through the work and service that define the role. Beside “free,” the root exposes the verse’s reversal: the one bound to service is no longer under the master’s authority.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāvad: To work or serve
עָבַד
The verb shows the activity bound up in the servant’s status.
ʿavodah: Work or service
עֲבֹדָה
This noun makes the bond concrete as service that can come to an end.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names death as a shared boundary where earthly distinctions and claims lose their hold.
There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.For he that is dead is freed from sin.THE THREAD
And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.The same word חָפְשִׁי (ḥop̄šî, free) appears in both verses. Job locates a servant’s freedom beyond the grave; Deuteronomy uses the word for release from a master’s service in the seventh year.
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