So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there remains only falsehood?”
Parallel translations
- KJV How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood?
- BSB So how can you comfort me with empty words? For your answers remain full of falsehood.”
- NKJV How then can you comfort me with empty words, Since falsehood remains in your answers?”
- NASB “So how dare you give me empty comfort? For your answers remain nothing but falsehood!”
- NLT “How can your empty clichés comfort me? All your explanations are lies!”
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 concludes that his friends' comfort is empty and their answers are nothing but falsehood. Their words fail because their premise is false.
Overview
Job closes his speech by rejecting the friends' counsel as worthless 'nonsense' built on a lie, namely that suffering always proves sin. Their attempt to comfort only wounds. This is a lasting warning that true comfort must be grounded in truth and humility before God's mystery, not in glib formulas applied to those who suffer.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 4
- Job 16:2“I have heard many such things. You are all miserable comforters!
- Job 13:4But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value.
- Job 32:3Also his wrath was kindled against his three friends, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.
- Job 42:7It was so, that after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has.
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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 21:34 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.