Why do you persecute me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
Parallel translations
- WEB Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
- KJV Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
- NKJV Why do you persecute me as God does, And are not satisfied with my flesh?
- NASB “Why do you persecute me as God does, And are not satisfied with my flesh?
- NLT Must you also persecute me, like God does? Haven’t you chewed me up enough?
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 asks why his friends persecute him as God does, never satisfied with tormenting his flesh. He accuses them of cruelty that mimics his suffering.
Overview
Job protests that his friends are adding their own relentless attacks to the affliction God has already sent, as if devouring his very flesh. He asks why they will not relent. The rebuke warns against compounding another's God-sent trial with human harshness, calling instead for the gentleness that reflects God's own compassion.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- Ps 69:26For they persecute the one You struck and recount the pain of those You wounded.
- Job 13:25Would You frighten a windblown leaf? Would You chase after dry chaff?
- Isa 51:23I will place it in the hands of your tormentors, who told you: ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you,’ so that you made your back like the ground, like a street to be traversed.”
- Mic 3:3You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”
- Job 2:5But stretch out Your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse You to Your face.”
- Job 10:16Should I hold my head high, You would hunt me like a lion, and again display Your power against me.
- Job 16:11God has delivered me to unjust men; He has thrown me to the clutches of the wicked.
- Job 31:31if the men of my house have not said, ‘Who is there who has not had his fill?’—
- Job 16:13–14His archers surround me. He pierces my kidneys without mercy and spills my gall on the ground.
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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 19:22 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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