Should your boastings make men hold their peace? When you mock, shall no man make you ashamed?
Parallel translations
- KJV Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed?
- BSB Should your babbling put others to silence? Will you scoff without rebuke?
- NKJV Should your empty talk make men hold their peace? And when you mock, should no one rebuke you?
- NASB “Shall your boasts silence people? And will you scoff, and no one rebuke?
- NLT Should I remain silent while you babble on? When you mock God, shouldn’t someone make you ashamed?
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
Zophar charges that Job's boasts and mockery should not silence others or go unrebuked. He frames Job's defense as arrogant scoffing.
Overview
Zophar interprets Job's protests of innocence as boastful mockery deserving rebuke. He misreads Job's anguished honesty as pride. The misjudgment shows how easily we condemn a suffering brother's words; Scripture instead calls us to mourn with those who mourn and to be slow to accuse (Romans 12:15; James 1:19).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Job 17:2Surely there are mockers with me. My eye dwells on their provocation.
- Job 24:25If it isn’t so now, who will prove me a liar, and make my speech worth nothing?”
- Job 21:3Allow me, and I also will speak; After I have spoken, mock on.
- Ps 35:16Like the profane mockers in feasts, they gnashed their teeth at me.
- Jer 15:17I didn’t sit in the assembly of those who make merry, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of your hand; for you have filled me with indignation.
- 2 Th 3:14If any man doesn’t obey our word in this letter, note that man, that you have no company with him, to the end that he may be ashamed.
- Job 34:7What man is like Job, who drinks scorn like water,
- Titus 2:8and soundness of speech that can’t be condemned; that he who opposes you may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say about us.
- Ps 83:16Fill their faces with confusion, that they may seek your name, Yahweh.
- Job 13:4But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value.
- Job 12:4I am like one who is a joke to his neighbor, I, who called on God, and he answered. The just, the blameless man is a joke.
- Jude 1:18They said to you that “In the last time there will be mockers, walking after their own ungodly lusts.”
- Job 13:9Is it good that he should search you out? Or as one deceives a man, will you deceive him?
- Job 15:2–3“Should a wise man answer with vain knowledge, and fill himself with the east wind?
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 11:3 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.