Surely all of you have seen it; Why then do you behave with complete nonsense?
Parallel translations
- WEB Behold, all of you have seen it yourselves; why then have you become altogether vain?
- KJV Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain?
- BSB Surely all of you have seen it for yourselves. Why then do you keep up this empty talk?
- NASB “Behold, all of you have seen it; Why then do you talk of nothing?
- NLT But you have seen all this, yet you say all these useless things to me.
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 notes his friends have themselves seen the truth, so why speak emptily. It matters because he charges them with talking vain nonsense against the evidence.
Overview
Job points out that his friends have witnessed reality for themselves, yet they have become utterly vain in their speech. They argue against what their own eyes confirm. The rebuke exposes how rigid theology can blind people to truth, a danger Christ also confronted in those who held tradition over honest sight.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Job 16:3Shall vain words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer?
- Job 19:2–3“How long will you torment me, and crush me with words?
- Job 21:3Allow me, and I also will speak; After I have spoken, mock on.
- Eccl 9:1–3For all this I laid to my heart, even to explore all this: that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hatred, man doesn’t know it; all is before them.
- Job 13:4–9But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value.
- Job 26:2–4“How have you helped him who is without power! How have you saved the arm that has no strength!
- Job 6:25–29How forcible are words of uprightness! But your reproof, what does it reprove?
- Eccl 8:14There is a vanity which is done on the earth, that there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked. Again, there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.
- Job 21:28–30For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’
- Job 17:2Surely there are mockers with me. My eye dwells on their provocation.
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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 27:12 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.