While he was still speaking, another messenger came and reported: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
Parallel translations
- WEB While he was still speaking, there came also another, and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- KJV While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
- NKJV While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- NASB While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- NLT While he was still speaking, another messenger arrived with this news: “Your sons and daughters were feasting in their oldest brother’s home.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
A final messenger comes while the others are still speaking. The worst loss is about to be announced.
Overview
The breathless overlap of messengers conveys disaster piling on disaster without pause. This last report concerns not property but Job's children, gathered at their eldest brother's feast. The verse heightens the dread before the climactic blow to Job's family.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Job 1:4Job’s sons would take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.
- Job 1:13One day, while Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- Job 27:14Though his sons are many, they are destined for the sword; and his offspring will never have enough food.
- 2 Sam 13:28Now Absalom had ordered his young men, “Watch Amnon until his heart is merry with wine, and when I order you to strike Amnon down, you are to kill him. Do not be afraid. Have I not commanded you? Be courageous and valiant!”
- Job 23:2“Even today my complaint is bitter. His hand is heavy despite my groaning.
- Ps 34:19Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him from them all.
- Job 6:2–3“If only my grief could be weighed and placed with my calamity on the scales.
- Isa 28:19As often as it passes through, it will carry you away; it will sweep through morning after morning, by day and by night.” The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror.
- Job 8:4When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.
- Jer 51:31One courier races to meet another, and messenger follows messenger, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured from end to end.
- Amos 4:6–11“I beset all your cities with cleanness of teeth and all your towns with lack of bread, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.
- Eccl 9:2It is the same for all: There is a common fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as it is for the one who makes a vow, so it is for the one who refuses to take a vow.
- Lam 1:12Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see! Is there any sorrow like mine, which was inflicted on me, which the LORD made me suffer on the day of His fierce anger?
- Job 19:9–10He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.
- Job 16:14He breaks me with wound upon wound; He rushes me like a mighty warrior.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 1:18 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.