how much less will he trust people made of clay! They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a 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!
- KJV How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which 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!
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 beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again?
- Gen 2:7Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
- Gen 3:19By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
- Job 33:6Behold, I am toward God even as you are. I am also formed out of the clay.
- Job 13:28though I am decaying like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.
- 2 Cor 5:1For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.
- Job 13:12Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defenses are defenses of clay.
- Gen 18:27Abraham answered, “See now, I have taken it on myself to speak to the Lord, although I am dust and ashes.
- 2 Cor 4:7But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
- Ps 39:11When you rebuke and correct man for iniquity, You consume his wealth like a moth. Surely every man is but a breath.” Selah.
- Job 14:2He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue.
- 1 Pet 1:24For, “All flesh is like grass, and all of man’s glory like the flower in the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls;
- Ps 103:15–16As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
- Ps 90:5–7You sweep them away as they sleep. In the morning they sprout like new grass.
- Job 22:16who were snatched away before their time, whose foundation was poured out as a stream,
- Eccl 12:7and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
- Ps 146:4His spirit departs, and he returns to the 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
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.