“His strength is famished, And disaster is ready at his side.
Parallel translations
- WEB His strength shall be famished. Calamity shall be ready at his side.
- KJV His strength shall be hungerbitten, and destruction shall be ready at his side.
- BSB His strength is depleted, and calamity is ready at his side.
- NKJV His strength is starved, And destruction is ready at his side.
- NLT Hunger depletes their strength, and calamity waits for them to stumble.
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
The wicked man's strength is famished, and calamity stands ready to strike him. His vigor fails as disaster waits.
Overview
Bildad pictures the godless weakened by hunger or want, with destruction poised at his side to seize him. The image conveys a man depleted and on the brink of ruin. This relentless portrait of the wicked's downfall serves Bildad's argument, yet ironically describes the outward state of Job, whom the book declares righteous, exposing the friends' error.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- 2 Pet 2:3In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn’t linger, and their destruction will not slumber.
- Ps 34:10The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but those who seek Yahweh shall not lack any good thing.
- 1 Th 5:3For when they are saying, “Peace and safety,” then sudden destruction will come on them, like birth pains on a pregnant woman; and they will in no way escape.
- 1 Sam 2:36It will happen, that everyone who is left in your house will come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread, and will say, “Please put me into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat a morsel of bread.”’”
- Job 15:23–24He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that the day of darkness is ready at his hand.
- 1 Sam 2:5Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread. Those who were hungry are satisfied. Yes, the barren has borne seven. She who has many children languishes.
- Ps 109:10Let his children be wandering beggars. Let them be sought from their ruins.
- Isa 8:21They will pass through it, very distressed and hungry; and it will happen that when they are hungry, they will worry, and curse by their king and by their God. They will turn their faces upward,
- Ps 7:12–14If a man doesn’t relent, he will sharpen his sword; he has bent and strung his bow.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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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 18:12 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.