“Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed?
Parallel translations
- WEB “Remember, now, whoever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off?
- KJV Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?
- BSB Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?
- NKJV “Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright ever cut off?
- NASB ¶“Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright 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
Eliphaz claims the innocent never perish and the upright are never cut off. This states his flawed retribution principle.
Overview
Eliphaz argues that no truly innocent person is ever destroyed, implying Job's calamities prove guilt. This rigid doctrine of exact earthly retribution is the friends' core error, which God later rebukes. The cross overturns it decisively, for the wholly innocent Christ was cut off, yet for our salvation rather than His own sin.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Ps 37:25I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his children begging for bread.
- 2 Pet 2:9the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment;
- Job 36:7He doesn’t withdraw his eyes from the righteous, but with kings on the throne, he sets them forever, and they are exalted.
- Acts 28:4When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he has escaped from the sea, yet Justice has not allowed to live.”
- Job 8:20“Behold, God will not cast away a blameless man, neither will he uphold the evildoers.
- Eccl 7:15All this I have seen in my days of vanity: there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who lives long in his evildoing.
- Eccl 9:1–2For all this I laid to my heart, even to explore all this: that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hatred, man doesn’t know it; all is before them.
- Job 9:22–23“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
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 4:7 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.