“Behold, He tears down, and it cannot be rebuilt; He imprisons a person, and there is no release.
Parallel translations
- WEB Behold, he breaks down, and it can’t be built again. He imprisons a man, and there can be no release.
- KJV Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.
- BSB What He tears down cannot be rebuilt; the man He imprisons cannot be released.
- NKJV If He breaks a thing down, it cannot be rebuilt; If He imprisons a man, there can be no release.
- NLT What he destroys cannot be rebuilt. When he puts someone in prison, there is no escape.
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
What God tears down cannot be rebuilt, and whom He imprisons cannot be freed. Job stresses the finality of God's sovereign acts.
Overview
Job affirms that God's actions to break down or confine are irreversible by human power. This underscores His absolute and unchallengeable authority over the affairs of men. The same sovereign power that none can resist is exercised by the risen Christ, who holds the keys of death and Hades and opens and shuts as He wills (Revelation 1:18; 3:7).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Rev 3:7“To the angel of the assembly in Philadelphia write: “He who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one can shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says these things:
- Isa 22:22I will lay the key of David’s house on his shoulder. He will open, and no one will shut. He will shut, and no one will open.
- Mal 1:4Whereas Edom says, “We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places”; Yahweh of Armies says, “They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them ‘The Wicked Land,’ even the people against whom Yahweh shows wrath forever.”
- Job 11:10If he passes by, or confines, or convenes a court, then who can oppose him?
- Job 37:7He seals up the hand of every man, that all men whom he has made may know it.
- 1 Sam 26:8Then Abishai said to David, “God has delivered up your enemy into your hand today. Now therefore please let me strike him with the spear to the earth at one stroke, and I will not strike him the second time.”
- 1 Sam 17:46Today, Yahweh will deliver you into my hand. I will strike you, and take your head from off you. I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines today to the birds of the sky, and to the wild animals of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel,
- Job 19:10He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. My hope he has plucked up like a tree.
- Job 9:12–13Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’
- Jer 51:58Yahweh of Armies says: “The wide walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown. Her high gates will be burned with fire. The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”
- Job 16:11God delivers me to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
- Isa 25:2For you have made a city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city. It will never be built.
- Jer 51:64Then you shall say, ‘Thus will Babylon sink, and will not rise again because of the evil that I will bring on her; and they shall be weary.’” Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.
- Rom 11:32For God has shut up all to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all.
- Isa 14:23“I will also make it a possession for the porcupine, and pools of water. I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” says Yahweh of Armies.
- 1 Sam 24:18You have declared today how you have dealt well with me, because when Yahweh had delivered me up into your hand, you didn’t kill me.
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 12:14 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.