What Does Job 7:15 Mean in the King James?
So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.
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 names a living self so constricted by anguish that death feels preferable to life.
THE MEANING
This verse gives a present voice to anguish so severe that the living self names death as preferable to continuing life. Strangling makes that preference bodily: life feels constricted. The line lets the wish stand in its starkness, without disguising its pain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a wish for death is too shameful or irreverent to be spoken: scripture gives this anguish an unsoftened sentence.
THE ROOT
מַחֲנָק
machanaq
GROWS FROM
חנק
to choke or strangle
“strangling” in this verse is machanaq. The image is physical: the desire is voiced as constriction. The root gives the anguish its sharp, bodily edge.
ALSO GROWS
ḥānaq: to choke, strangle
חָנַק
The verb names the force closing the throat inside the verse’s noun.
ḥeneq: choking, strangling
חֶנֶק
This related noun keeps the image concrete: constriction rather than a detached preference.
נַפְשִׁי
nafshi
GROWS FROM
נפש
living soul; the living person
The word rendered soul names the living self, not a separate, abstract part. Its root family also includes restoration, a striking echo beside a voice that feels unable to continue.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: living soul; person
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the word at the heart of my soul, keeping the verse’s subject a living person.
naphash: to be refreshed or restored
נָפַשׁ
The same-root verb brings restoration into the word family even as this verse voices anguish.
מָוֶת
mavet
GROWS FROM
מות
to die; death
Hebrew uses one root for dying and death, linking the process with its outcome. Here death is the stark alternative the living self names.
ALSO GROWS
mût: to die
מוּת
The verb carries the same root from the noun’s state into the act of dying.
mēt: dead
מֵת
This related form makes the root’s range visible across dying, death, and being dead.
THE PATTERN
When anguish overwhelms, scripture preserves the wish for death and despair of life without euphemism.
Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:THE THREAD
And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.Job’s מָוֶת (mavet, death) and Jonah’s מוֹתִי (moti, my death) share the root מוּת (mût, to die), and Jonah echoes the same comparison: death feels preferable to life. The repeated root places Job’s line within a scriptural language for suffering that makes life feel constricted.
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