How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?
Parallel translations
- WEB How much more, those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth!
- BSB how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!
- NKJV How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, Whose foundation is in the dust, Who are crushed before a moth?
- NASB ‘How much more those who live in houses of clay, Whose foundation is in the dust, Who are crushed before the moth!
- NLT how much less will he trust people made of clay! They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a moth.
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
How much more frail are people, who live in houses of clay founded in dust and are crushed like a moth. It stresses human weakness and mortality before God.
Overview
Humans are described as dwelling in bodies of clay, rooted in dust, easily destroyed. The imagery recalls the creation of Adam from the ground and the curse of returning to dust. While humbling, this frailty is precisely what the incarnation answers, for the eternal Son took flesh, sharing our dust to redeem it and to raise mortal bodies to imperishable life.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 17
- Job 10:9Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
- Gen 2:7And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
- Gen 3:19In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
- Job 33:6Behold, I am according to thy wish in God’s stead: I also am formed out of the clay.
- Job 13:28And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
- 2 Cor 5:1For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
- Job 13:12Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.
- Gen 18:27And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD, which am but dust and ashes:
- 2 Cor 4:7But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
- Ps 39:11When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah.
- Job 14:2He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.
- 1 Pet 1:24For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
- Ps 103:15–16As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
- Ps 90:5–7Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
- Job 22:16Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood:
- Eccl 12:7Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
- Ps 146:4His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
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 4:19 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
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