For now you are of no help; you see terror, and you are afraid.
Parallel translations
- WEB For now you are nothing. You see a terror, and are afraid.
- KJV For now ye are nothing; ye see my casting down, and are afraid.
- NKJV For now you are nothing, You see terror and are afraid.
- NASB “Indeed, you have now become such, You see terrors and are afraid.
- NLT You, too, have given no help. You have seen my calamity, and you are afraid.
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 tells his friends they have now become nothing to him, seeing his terror and growing afraid. They have failed him by recoiling from his suffering.
Overview
Job makes the application plain: his friends, like the dried brook, have become useless, frightened off by the sight of his calamity. Fear of being associated with the afflicted has dried up their compassion. This exposes the cowardice that can lurk behind failed friendship, in stark contrast to Christ, who did not shrink from the suffering and the outcast but drew near to bear their burdens.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Ps 38:11My beloved and friends shun my disease, and my kinsmen stand at a distance.
- 2 Tim 4:16At my first defense, no one stood with me, but everyone deserted me. May it not be charged against them.
- Jer 17:5–6This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes the flesh his strength and turns his heart from the LORD.
- Job 13:4You, however, smear with lies; you are all worthless physicians.
- Job 2:11–13Now when Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, each of them came from his home, and they met together to go and sympathize with Job and comfort him.
- Rev 18:9–10Then the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her will weep and wail at the sight of the smoke rising from the fire that consumes her.
- Job 6:15But my brothers are as faithless as wadis, as seasonal streams that overflow,
- Rev 18:17–18For in a single hour such fabulous wealth has been destroyed!” Every shipmaster, passenger, and sailor, and all who make their living from the sea, will stand at a distance
- Isa 2:22Put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?
- Jer 51:9“We tried to heal Babylon, but she could not be healed. Abandon her! Let each of us go to his own land, for her judgment extends to the sky and reaches to the clouds.”
- Ps 62:9Lowborn men are but a vapor, the exalted but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.
- Matt 26:31Then Jesus said to them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of Me. For it is written: ‘I will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’
- Matt 26:56But this has all happened so that the writings of the prophets would be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted Him and fled.
- Prov 19:7All the brothers of a poor man hate him—how much more do his friends avoid him! He may pursue them with pleading, but they are nowhere to be found.
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 6:21 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.