how could I face God? What could I say when he questioned me?
Parallel translations
- WEB What then shall I do when God rises up? When he visits, what shall I answer him?
- KJV What then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him?
- BSB what will I do when God rises to judge? How will I answer when called to account?
- NKJV What then shall I do when God rises up? When He punishes, how shall I answer Him?
- NASB What then could I do when God arises? And when He calls me to account, how am I to answer Him?
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 asks what he would do when God rises to judge if he had wronged his servants. The fear of divine accountability shaped his treatment of others.
Overview
Job reflects that mistreating his servants would leave him with no answer when God calls him to account. His ethics flow not merely from social convention but from reverence for the God who judges all. This awareness that we must answer to God for how we treat others undergirds biblical justice and finds its fullest motive in the gospel, where grace received compels grace given.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Jas 2:13For judgment is without mercy to him who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
- Ps 9:12For he who avenges blood remembers them. He doesn’t forget the cry of the afflicted.
- Ps 44:21won’t God search this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart.
- Ps 9:19Arise, Yahweh! Don’t let man prevail. Let the nations be judged in your sight.
- Ps 10:12–15Arise, Yahweh! God, lift up your hand! Don’t forget the helpless.
- Zech 2:13Be silent, all flesh, before Yahweh; for he has roused himself from his holy habitation!”
- Rom 3:19Now we know that whatever things the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God.
- Job 10:2I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me. Show me why you contend with me.
- Mic 7:4The best of them is like a brier. The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge. The day of your watchmen, even your visitation, has come; now is the time of their confusion.
- Ps 7:6Arise, Yahweh, in your anger. Lift up yourself against the rage of my adversaries. Awake for me. You have commanded judgment.
- Job 9:32For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.
- Ps 76:9when God arose to judgment, to save all the afflicted ones of the earth. Selah.
- Ps 143:2Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous.
- Isa 10:3What will you do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? Where will you leave your wealth?
- Hos 9:7The days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come. Israel will consider the prophet to be a fool, and the man who is inspired to be insane, because of the abundance of your sins, and because your hostility is great.
- Mark 7:2Now when they saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled, that is unwashed, hands, they found fault.
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 31:14 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.