“God is leading you away from danger, Job, to a place free from distress. He is setting your table with the best food.
Parallel translations
- WEB Yes, he would have allured you out of distress, into a wide place, where there is no restriction. That which is set on your table would be full of fatness.
- KJV Even so would he have removed thee out of the strait into a broad place, where there is no straitness; and that which should be set on thy table should be full of fatness.
- BSB Indeed, He drew you from the jaws of distress to a spacious and broad place, to a table full of richness.
- NKJV “Indeed He would have brought you out of dire distress, Into a broad place where there is no restraint; And what is set on your table would be full of richness.
- NASB “Then indeed, He induced you away from the mouth of distress, And instead of it, a broad place with no constraint; And your table was full of rich food.
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
Elihu tells Job that God would have led him out of distress into a spacious, abundant place. God's desire was to bless and relieve him.
Overview
Elihu suggests that God's purpose for Job was deliverance into freedom and abundance, pictured as a broad place and a table full of richness. The 'wide place' is a common image of salvation and relief (Ps. 18:19). Though Elihu misjudges Job's situation, the verse rightly portrays God's generous intent, ultimately realized for His people in the abundant life and rest found in Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Ps 23:5You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over.
- Ps 118:5Out of my distress, I called on Yah. Yah answered me with freedom.
- Ps 31:8You have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a large place.
- Ps 63:5My soul shall be satisfied as with the richest food. My mouth shall praise you with joyful lips,
- Ps 18:19He brought me out also into a large place. He delivered me, because he delighted in me.
- Isa 25:6In this mountain, Yahweh of Armies will make all peoples a feast of choice meat, a feast of choice wines, of choice meat full of marrow, of well refined choice wines.
- Ps 40:1–3For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. I waited patiently for Yahweh. He turned to me, and heard my cry.
- Ps 36:8They shall be abundantly satisfied with the abundance of your house. You will make them drink of the river of your pleasures.
- Job 19:8He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths.
- Job 42:10–17Yahweh turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends. Yahweh gave Job twice as much as he had before.
- Isa 55:2Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doesn’t satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in richness.
- Hos 2:14“Therefore behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.
Resources, by level
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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 36:16 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.