For the morning is to all of them like thick darkness, for they know the terrors of the thick darkness.
Parallel translations
- KJV For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death: if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death.
- BSB For to them, deep darkness is their morning; surely they are friends with the terrors of darkness!
- NKJV For the morning is the same to them as the shadow of death; If someone recognizes them, They are in the terrors of the shadow of death.
- NASB “For the morning is the same to him as thick darkness, For he is familiar with the terrors of thick darkness.
- NLT The black night is their morning. They ally themselves with the terrors of the darkness.
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
For these evildoers, morning feels like deep darkness because they are at home with night's terrors. It matters because sin inverts what is good and fearful.
Overview
Job observes that to the wicked the dawn is like thick gloom, for they are familiar with the dread of darkness. Their moral world is so inverted that daylight, which should bring safety, threatens exposure. The verse shows how sin reorders the soul, a disorder healed only by the transforming light of Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 5
- Job 3:5Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it.
- 2 Cor 5:10–11For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
- Jer 2:26As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets;
- Ps 73:18–19Surely you set them in slippery places. You throw them down to destruction.
- Rev 6:16–17They told the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb,
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 24:17 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.