What strength do I have, that I should still hope? What is my future, that I should be patient?
Parallel translations
- WEB What is my strength, that I should wait? What is my end, that I should be patient?
- KJV What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?
- NKJV “What strength do I have, that I should hope? And what is my end, that I should prolong my life?
- NASB “What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my end, that I should endure?
- NLT But I don’t have the strength to endure. I have nothing to live for.
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
Job asks what strength he has to wait and what end he has to be patient. He feels he lacks the resources to endure any longer.
Overview
Job questions whether he has the strength or any prospect that would warrant continued patience. He feels emptied of the power to go on. The honest admission of human weakness sets the stage for the gospel truth that God's strength is made perfect in weakness, and that those who wait on the Lord, finally in Christ, find renewed strength they cannot summon on their own.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Ps 103:14–16For He knows our frame; He is mindful that we are dust.
- Ps 102:23He has broken my strength on the way; He has cut short my days.
- Ps 39:5You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing before You. Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. Selah
- Job 17:1“My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished; the grave awaits me.
- Job 13:28So man wastes away like something rotten, like a moth-eaten garment.
- Ps 90:5–10You whisk them away in their sleep; they are like the new grass of the morning—
- Job 21:4Is my complaint against a man? Then why should I not be impatient?
- Job 13:25Would You frighten a windblown leaf? Would You chase after dry chaff?
- Job 17:14–16and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’
- Job 10:20Are my days not few? Withdraw from me, that I may have a little comfort,
- Job 7:5–7My flesh is clothed with worms and encrusted with dirt; my skin is cracked and festering.
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 6:11 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.