Please remember that You molded me like clay. Would You now return me to dust?
Parallel translations
- WEB Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again?
- KJV Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
- NKJV Remember, I pray, that You have made me like clay. And will You turn me into dust again?
- NASB ‘Remember that You have made me as clay; Yet would You turn me into dust again?
- NLT Remember that you made me from dust— will you turn me back to dust so soon?
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
Job asks God to remember that He made him from clay and pleads against returning him to dust. He grounds his appeal in human frailty.
Overview
Recalling that he was formed like clay, Job begs God not to crush him back into dust. The imagery echoes humanity's creation from the ground and its return to it (Genesis 2:7; 3:19). Job's mortality cry finds its answer in the resurrection hope, where the God who formed us from dust will raise our bodies through Christ (1 Corinthians 15:42-49).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Gen 2:7Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
- Isa 64:8But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand.
- Gen 3:19By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
- Eccl 12:7before the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
- Jer 18:6“O house of Israel, declares the LORD, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay? Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.
- Isa 45:9Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker—one clay pot among many. Does the clay ask the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?
- Rom 9:21Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?
- Ps 25:6–7Remember, O LORD, Your compassion and loving devotion, for they are from age to age.
- Ps 22:15My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death.
- Ps 90:3You return man to dust, saying, “Return, O sons of mortals.”
- Job 7:7Remember that my life is but a breath. My eyes will never again see happiness.
- Ps 89:47Remember the briefness of my lifespan! For what futility You have created all men!
- Ps 25:18Consider my affliction and trouble, and take away all my sins.
- Ps 106:4Remember me, O LORD, in Your favor to Your people; visit me with Your salvation,
- Job 17:14and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 10:9 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.