Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defenses are defenses of clay.
- BSB Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay.
- NKJV Your platitudes are proverbs of ashes, Your defenses are defenses of clay.
- NASB “Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defenses are defenses of clay.
- NLT Your platitudes are as valuable as ashes. Your defense is as fragile as a clay pot.
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 dismisses his friends' sayings as worthless ashes and crumbling clay. Their proverbs offer no real defense.
Overview
Job calls their 'memorable sayings' mere 'proverbs of ashes' and their defenses 'defenses of clay.' Their traditional maxims, however polished, cannot withstand reality and crumble under the weight of his suffering. Borrowed wisdom misapplied provides no shelter to the afflicted or footing for the wise.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Gen 18:27And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD, which am but dust and ashes:
- Job 18:17His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street.
- Ps 34:16The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
- Exod 17:14And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.
- Prov 10:7The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.
- Isa 26:14They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.
- Gen 2:7And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
- Ps 102:12But thou, O LORD, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.
- 2 Cor 5:1For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
- Job 4:19How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?
- Ps 109:15Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
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 13:12 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
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