Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend.
Parallel translations
- WEB Yes, you would even cast lots for the fatherless, and make merchandise of your friend.
- BSB You would even cast lots for an orphan and barter away your friend.
- NKJV Yes, you overwhelm the fatherless, And you undermine your friend.
- NASB “You would even cast lots for the orphans, And barter over your friend.
- NLT You would even send an orphan into slavery or sell a friend.
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 accuses them of being so heartless they would cast lots for an orphan and barter away a friend. He charges them with cruelty that exploits the vulnerable.
Overview
In sharp rebuke, Job says their treatment of him is like gambling over orphans or selling a friend, the height of callousness. He exposes how their failure of compassion betrays a deeper hardness. Such exploitation of the helpless is precisely what God condemns and what Christ overturns, for he defends the orphan and the friendless and gives himself for those the world would discard.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 19
- 2 Pet 2:3And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.
- Nah 3:10Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.
- Jas 1:27Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
- Joel 3:3And they have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.
- Job 24:3They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.
- Ps 7:15He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.
- Job 22:9Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
- Job 24:9They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.
- Mal 3:5And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.
- Ezek 22:7In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow.
- Job 29:12Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.
- Prov 23:10–11Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:
- Jer 18:22Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet.
- Ps 82:3Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.
- Jer 18:20Shall evil be recompensed for good? for they have digged a pit for my soul. Remember that I stood before thee to speak good for them, and to turn away thy wrath from them.
- Job 31:17Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof;
- Ps 57:6They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. Selah.
- Exod 22:22–24Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.
- Job 31:21If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate:
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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 6:27 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
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