“Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defenses are defenses of clay.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defenses are defenses of clay.
- KJV Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies 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.
- 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 18:27Abraham answered, “See now, I have taken it on myself to speak to the Lord, although I am dust and ashes.
- Job 18:17His memory shall perish from the earth. He shall have no name in the street.
- Ps 34:16Yahweh’s face is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory from the earth.
- Exod 17:14Yahweh said to Moses, “Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under the sky.”
- Prov 10:7The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.
- Isa 26:14The dead shall not live. The departed spirits shall not rise. Therefore you have visited and destroyed them, and caused all memory of them to perish.
- Gen 2:7Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
- Ps 102:12But you, Yahweh, will remain forever; your renown endures to all generations.
- 2 Cor 5:1For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.
- Job 4:19How much more, those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth!
- Ps 109:15Let them be before Yahweh continually, that he may cut off their memory 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
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.