What Does Job 41:6 Mean in the King James?
Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?
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 exposes the limit of the market: people can divide only what they can first master.
THE MEANING
The verse asks whether a whole company can make Leviathan into food and hew him into shares for traders. Its question exposes the limit of possession: collective appetite cannot turn every living power into inventory.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that whatever a group can name or price can therefore be possessed and divided.
THE ROOT
יַחְצְבוּהוּ
yaḥtzevuhu
GROWS FROM
חצב
ḥāṣab: to hew, quarry, cut out.
The verb behind “part him” carries the force of hewing or quarrying, making the proposed division sound like physical extraction rather than mere bookkeeping. The question presses on whether Leviathan can even be made into something humans can cut up and distribute.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōṣēv: one who hews or quarries
חֹצֵב
This agent of cutting shares the root חצב, making the verb’s force concrete.
maḥtsev: quarry
מַחְצֵב
This place where material is cut out grows from the same root and echoes the verse’s image of extracting shares.
חֲבָרִים
ḥăvārîm
GROWS FROM
חבר
ḥāvar: to join, associate, or form a company.
“Companions” are a joined company, so the verse pictures collective appetite rather than a lone person. Even joined together, they face the question of whether Leviathan can be reduced to a shared meal.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāver: companion or associate
חָבֵר
This singular form shares the root חבר and names one member of the joined company.
ḥibbēr: joined or connected
חִבֵּר
This verb makes the root’s joining sense visible in the group called “companions.”
THE PATTERN
Living creatures remain within the Creator’s care and ordering even when people imagine them as things to possess.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.THE THREAD
There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.Both verses name Leviathan, but they place him in different frames: Job asks whether people can feast on and divide him, while the psalm shows him playing in the sea where God made him. That image opens Job’s question by showing a creature whose life exceeds the market’s claim.
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