For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
Parallel translations
- WEB For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.
- BSB I sigh when food is put before me, and my groans pour out like water.
- NKJV For my sighing comes before I eat, And my groanings pour out like water.
- NASB “For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, And my cries pour out like water.
- NLT I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water.
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's sighing and groaning have become his daily bread. His suffering is constant and overwhelming.
Overview
Job describes grief so pervasive that sighs come before he can even eat and his groans pour out like water. The imagery conveys ceaseless, all-consuming sorrow. His honest expression of physical and emotional pain shows that lament has a rightful place in the life of faith.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Ps 102:9For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,
- Ps 80:5Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink in great measure.
- Ps 42:3–4My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
- Ps 38:8I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.
- Ps 22:1–2My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
- Isa 59:11We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.
- Ps 32:3When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.
- Job 6:7The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.
- Job 33:20So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat.
- Job 7:19How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?
- Lam 3:8Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.
Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
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 3:24 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.