What Does Job 38:29 Mean in the King James?

Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?

Job 38:29 · 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

The verse gives frost a birth story: even ice is something brought forth from a hidden womb.

THE MEANING

The ice before you has a hidden origin; it is pictured as coming from a womb, born from heaven. The same birth language used for human life reaches into the weather, so even frost belongs to a world continually brought forth.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the assumption that what feels lifeless has no hidden source or relation: even ice is named as something born.

THE ROOT

יְלָדוֹ

yelado

GROWS FROM

ילד

to bear, give birth, or beget

The word translated “gendered” is the birth verb ⁨ילד⁩ (yalad, “to give birth or beget”), applied here to ice. That root makes frost an offspring of a hidden origin, not merely something lying in the cold.

ALSO GROWS

yalad: To bear, give birth, or beget

יָלַד

This is the verb behind “gendered,” bringing the language of birth directly into the description of frost.

yeled: A child

יֶלֶד

The shared root makes the birth image concrete: what is brought forth can be called an offspring.

THE PATTERN

The unseen origin of created things is pictured as birth, whether what is brought forth is weather or a living person.

Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?

Job 38:28 · KJVRain and dew, like the ice in Job 38:29, are described through the language of parentage and birth.

For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:13 · KJVThe hidden beginning of a human life is also pictured as taking shape within a womb.

Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

James 1:18 · KJVThe language of being brought forth reaches beyond weather and the womb to describe human life as begotten.

THE THREAD

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

Ecclesiastes 3:2 · KJV

Job’s “gendered” and Ecclesiastes’ “born” share the Hebrew root ⁨ילד⁩ (yalad, “to give birth or be born”). The root carries the verse’s birth language from frost to human life, placing both within the same act of being brought forth.

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