For affliction doesn’t come out of the dust, neither does trouble spring out of the ground;
Parallel translations
- KJV Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;
- BSB For distress does not spring from the dust, and trouble does not sprout from the ground.
- NKJV For affliction does not come from the dust, Nor does trouble spring from the ground;
- NASB “For disaster does not come from the dust, Nor does trouble sprout from the ground,
- NLT But evil does not spring from the soil, and trouble does not sprout from the earth.
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
Affliction does not simply sprout from the dust or trouble from the ground on its own. Eliphaz means suffering has a cause, hinting it lies in human sin.
Overview
Eliphaz argues that hardship is not random or self-generating from the soil; it comes for a reason. He is steering toward the claim that Job's trouble traces back to wrongdoing. The observation that suffering has causes is fair, but the book complicates his neat moral arithmetic, since Job's affliction has a cause hidden in heaven, not in secret sin, teaching that we cannot always trace suffering to a victim's guilt.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- Isa 45:7I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create calamity. I am Yahweh, who does all these things.
- 1 Sam 6:9Behold; if it goes up by the way of its own border to Beth Shemesh, then he has done us this great evil; but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us. It was a chance that happened to us.”
- Ps 90:7For we are consumed in your anger. We are troubled in your wrath.
- Job 34:29When he gives quietness, who then can condemn? When he hides his face, who then can see him? Alike whether to a nation, or to a man,
- Hos 10:4They make promises, swearing falsely in making covenants. Therefore judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field.
- Amos 3:6Does the trumpet alarm sound in a city, without the people being afraid? Does evil happen to a city, and Yahweh hasn’t done it?
- Lam 3:38Doesn’t evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?
- Heb 12:15looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and many be defiled by it;
- Deut 32:27were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, lest their adversaries should judge wrongly, lest they should say, ‘Our hand is exalted, Yahweh has not done all this.’”
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 5:6 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.