For distress does not spring from the dust, and trouble does not sprout from the ground.
Parallel translations
- WEB For affliction doesn’t come out of the dust, neither does trouble spring out of the ground;
- KJV Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of 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 the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity. I, the LORD, do all these things.
- 1 Sam 6:9but keep watching it. If it goes up the road to its homeland, toward Beth-shemesh, it is the LORD who has brought on us this great disaster. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not His hand that punished us and that it happened by chance.”
- Ps 90:7For we are consumed by Your anger and terrified by Your wrath.
- Job 34:29But when He remains silent, who can condemn Him? When He hides His face, who can see Him? Yet He watches over both man and nation,
- Hos 10:4They speak mere words; with false oaths they make covenants. So judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of a field.
- Amos 3:6If a ram’s horn sounds in a city, do the people not tremble? If calamity comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?
- Lam 3:38Do not both adversity and good come from the mouth of the Most High?
- Heb 12:15See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up to cause trouble and defile many.
- Deut 32:27if I had not dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest their adversaries misunderstand and say: ‘Our own hand has prevailed; it was not the LORD who did all this.’”
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 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.