“Why do you persecute me as God does, And are not satisfied with 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?
- BSB Why do you persecute me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
- NKJV 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 him whom you have wounded. They tell of the sorrow of those whom you have hurt.
- Job 13:25Will you harass a driven leaf? Will you pursue the dry stubble?
- Isa 51:23and I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to your soul, ‘Bow down, that we may walk over you;’ and you have laid your back as the ground, like a street to those who walk over.”
- Mic 3:3who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as meat within the cauldron.
- Job 2:5But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.”
- Job 10:16If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion. Again you show yourself powerful to me.
- Job 16:11God delivers me to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
- Job 31:31if the men of my tent have not said, ‘Who can find one who has not been filled with his meat?’
- Job 16:13–14His archers surround me. He splits my kidneys apart, and does not spare. He pours out 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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