“Do not long for the night, When people vanish in their places.
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.
- BSB Do not long for the night, when people vanish from their homes.
- NKJV Do not desire the night, When people are cut off in their place.
- 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 takes knowledge of their works. He overturns them in the night, so that they are destroyed.
- 2 Kgs 19:35That night, Yahweh’s angel went out, and struck one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
- Exod 12:29At midnight, Yahweh struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of livestock.
- Job 34:20In a moment they die, even at midnight. The people are shaken and pass away. The mighty are taken away without a hand.
- Eccl 11:3If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth; and if a tree falls toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falls, there shall it be.
- Dan 5:30In that night Belshazzar the Chaldean King was slain.
- Prov 14:32The wicked is brought down in his calamity, but in death, the righteous has a refuge.
- Job 6:9even that it would please God to crush me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!
- Job 14:13“Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would keep me secret, until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
- Luke 12:20“But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared — whose will they be?’
- Acts 1:25to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas fell away, that he might go to his own place.”
- 1 Th 5:2–3For you yourselves know well that the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night.
- Job 7:15so that my soul chooses strangling, death rather than my bones.
- Job 3:20–21“Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,
- Job 17:13–14If I look for Sheol as my house, if I have spread my couch in the darkness,
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 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.