What Does Job 6:27 Mean in the King James?
Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend.
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 joins crushing the fatherless and digging for a friend through one downward motion: making another fall.
THE MEANING
The verse reveals the pattern now: the exposed person is made to fall, and a pit is prepared for someone trusted. It places open exploitation and hidden betrayal inside the same act of turning another person’s vulnerability into a target.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a defenseless person is available to use, or that betrayal becomes harmless when concealed.
THE ROOT
תַּפִּילוּ
tappilu
GROWS FROM
נפל
n-p-l
to fall
The verb translated “overwhelm” is a causative form of נפל (naphal), “to fall”: the act is to make the fatherless fall. The pit dug for the friend completes that downward motion, linking visible force and concealed plotting as two forms of bringing someone down.
ALSO GROWS
naphal: to fall
נָפַל
The root names the fall itself; here its causative form makes that fall happen to someone else.
hippil: to cause to fall, or cast
הִפִּיל
The causative form turns falling into an imposed outcome, matching the force of the verb in this verse.
תִּכְרוּ
tikru
GROWS FROM
כרה
k-r-h
to dig, excavate
“dig” in this verse is tikru. Karah is the work of opening earth; the same excavation can expose water for a well or hollow out a place for someone else’s fall. Here the pit is prepared harm, not accidental ground.
ALSO GROWS
wayikru: they dug a well
וַיִּכְרוּ
Genesis 26:25 uses this root for an opening that yields water, showing that excavation can create provision.
karah: dug a pit
כָּרָה
Psalm 7:15 uses the same root for digging a pit, where excavation becomes a prepared trap.
THE PATTERN
A trap prepared for another sets the maker’s own return in motion.
He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.“Diggeth” in Proverbs comes from כרה (karah), the same root as “dig” in Job. Proverbs makes the pit’s consequence explicit: the one who prepares another’s fall is caught in the outcome he shaped.
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