“What a help you are to the weak! You have saved the arm without strength!
Parallel translations
- WEB “How have you helped him who is without power! How have you saved the arm that has no strength!
- KJV How hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest thou the arm that hath no strength?
- BSB “How you have helped the powerless and saved the arm that is feeble!
- NKJV “How have you helped him who is without power? How have you saved the arm that has no strength?
- NLT “How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the weak!
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 sarcastically thanks Bildad for how greatly he has helped the powerless. It matters because Job exposes the emptiness of his friends' counsel.
Overview
With biting irony, Job asks how Bildad has helped one without power or saved the weak arm. The friends have offered no real comfort to a man in his weakness. The sarcasm reveals Job's frustration with counsel that crushes rather than restores, in contrast to the true Comforter God provides.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Job 4:3–4Behold, you have instructed many, you have strengthened the weak hands.
- Isa 35:3–4Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.
- Job 6:12Is my strength the strength of stones? Or is my flesh of brass?
- 1 Kgs 18:27At noon, Elijah mocked them, and said, “Cry aloud; for he is a god. Either he is deep in thought, or he has gone somewhere, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he sleeps and must be awakened.”
- Job 16:4–5I also could speak as you do. If your soul were in my soul’s place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you,
- Isa 41:5–7The islands have seen, and fear. The ends of the earth tremble. They approach, and come.
- Job 6:25How forcible are words of uprightness! But your reproof, what does it reprove?
- Ps 71:9Don’t reject me in my old age. Don’t forsake me when my strength fails.
- Job 12:2“No doubt, but you are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.
- Isa 40:14Who did he take counsel with, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?
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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 26:2 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.