For now you are nothing, You see terror and 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.
- BSB For now you are of no help; you see terror, and you 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 lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away.
- 2 Tim 4:16At my first defense, no one came to help me, but all left me. May it not be held against them.
- Jer 17:5–6Yahweh says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from Yahweh.
- Job 13:4But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value.
- Job 2:11–13Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him.
- Rev 18:9–10The kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived wantonly with her, will weep and wail over her, when they look at the smoke of her burning,
- Job 6:15My brothers have dealt deceitfully as a brook, as the channel of brooks that pass away;
- Rev 18:17–18For in an hour such great riches are made desolate.’ Every ship master, and everyone who sails anywhere, and mariners, and as many as gain their living by sea, stood far away,
- Isa 2:22Stop trusting in man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for of what account is he?
- Jer 51:9“We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed. Forsake her, and let us each go into his own country; for her judgment reaches to heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.
- Ps 62:9Surely men of low degree are just a breath, and men of high degree are a lie. In the balances they will go up. They are together lighter than a breath.
- Matt 26:31Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’
- Matt 26:56But all this has happened, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him, and fled.
- Prov 19:7All the relatives of the poor shun him: how much more do his friends avoid him! He pursues them with pleas, but they are gone.
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.