Bible Strands
Job 3:14
with kings and counselors of the earth, who built for themselves cities now in ruins,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks in a solitary curse over the day of his birth, addressing no specific listener while describing his wish to join the dead in death’s realm.
The words — מְלָכִים (melakhim) means “kings,” and חֳרָבֹת (choravot) means “ruins,” marking the shift from earthly construction to present desolation.
The thread — The convergence of ruined cities and inescapable death recurs in Job 15:28, Psalms 49:14, and Psalms 89:48, where human status yields to Sheol.
Why it lands — The verse states that political power and architectural achievement leave no lasting shelter, demanding the reader acknowledge mortality’s equalizing claim.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;
Cross-references
- Job 15:28 he will dwell in ruined cities, in abandoned houses destined to become rubble.
- Psalms 49:14 Like sheep they are destined for Sheol. Death will be their shepherd. The upright will rule them in the morning, and their form will decay in Sheol, far from their lofty abode.
- Psalms 89:48 What man can live and never see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah
- Isaiah 14:10 They will all respond to you, saying, “You too have become weak, as we are; you have become like us!”
- 1 Kings 11:43 And Solomon rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of his father David. And his son Rehoboam reigned in his place.
- Job 12:17 He leads counselors away barefoot and makes fools of judges.
- Job 30:23 Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.
- Psalms 49:6 They trust in their wealth and boast in their great riches.
- Ecclesiastes 8:8 As no man has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has authority over his day of death. As no one can be discharged in wartime, so wickedness will not release those who practice it.
- Isaiah 5:8 Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field until no place is left and you live alone in the land.