“For he has said, ‘It is of no use to a man When he becomes friends with God.’
Parallel translations
- WEB For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should delight himself with God.’
- KJV For he hath said, It profiteth a man nothing that he should delight himself with God.
- BSB For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should delight in God.’
- NKJV For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing That he should delight in God.’
- NLT He has even said, ‘Why waste time trying to please God?’
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
Moses pleads for God to go with His stiff-necked people, pardon their sin, and take them as His inheritance. He intercedes on the basis of the grace just revealed.
Overview
Building on God's proclamation of mercy, Moses asks for the very things God has revealed Himself to give: presence, pardon, and possession. He freely admits the people's stubbornness, appealing only to grace. To ask God to take them as His 'inheritance' anticipates the wonder that God's people become His treasured possession in Christ (Ephesians 1:18).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- Job 35:3That you ask, ‘What advantage will it be to you? What profit shall I have, more than if I had sinned?’
- Job 21:14–16They tell God, ‘Depart from us, for we don’t want to know about your ways.
- Job 9:22–23“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
- Mal 3:14You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God;’ and ‘What profit is it that we have followed his instructions, and that we have walked mournfully before Yahweh of Armies?
- Job 9:30–31If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
- Job 27:10Will he delight himself in the Almighty, and call on God at all times?
- Ps 37:4Also delight yourself in Yahweh, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
- Job 21:30that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, That they are led out to the day of wrath?
- Job 22:17who said to God, ‘Depart from us;’ and, ‘What can the Almighty do for us?’
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 34:9 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.