Do not long for the night, when people vanish from their homes.
Parallel translations
- WEB Don’t desire the night, when people are cut off in their place.
- KJV Desire not the night, when people are cut off in their place.
- NKJV Do not desire the night, When people are cut off in their place.
- NASB “Do not long for the night, When people vanish in their places.
- NLT Do not long for the cover of night, for that is when people will be destroyed.
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 warns Job not to long for the night when peoples are cut off. He cautions against desiring death or judgment.
Overview
This difficult verse seems to warn Job against longing for the 'night,' likely a desire for death or for divine judgment to fall. Job had at times wished for death (Job 3), and Elihu counsels against such longing. The verse calls sufferers to entrust their times to God rather than crave escape, finding instead hope in the Lord who holds life and death in His hands.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Job 34:25Therefore, He recognizes their deeds; He overthrows them in the night and they are crushed.
- 2 Kgs 19:35And that very night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!
- Exod 12:29Now at midnight the LORD struck down every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon, as well as all the firstborn among the livestock.
- Job 34:20They die in an instant, in the middle of the night. The people convulse and pass away; the mighty are removed without human hand.
- Eccl 11:3If the clouds are full, they will pour out rain upon the earth; whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie.
- Dan 5:30That very night Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans was slain,
- Prov 14:32The wicked man is thrown down by his own sin, but the righteous man has a refuge even in death.
- Job 6:9that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
- Job 14:13If only You would hide me in Sheol and conceal me until Your anger has passed! If only You would appoint a time for me and then remember me!
- Luke 12:20But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. Then who will own what you have accumulated?’
- Acts 1:25to take up this ministry and apostleship, which Judas abandoned to go to his rightful place.”
- 1 Th 5:2–3For you are fully aware that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
- Job 7:15so that I would prefer strangling and death over my life in this body.
- Job 3:20–21Why is light given to the miserable, and life to the bitter of soul,
- Job 17:13–14If I look for Sheol as my home, if I spread out my bed in darkness,
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 36:20 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.