that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
Parallel translations
- WEB even that it would please God to crush me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!
- KJV Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!
- NKJV That it would please God to crush me, That He would loose His hand and cut me off!
- NASB “Oh, that God would decide to crush me, That He would let loose His hand and cut me off!
- NLT I wish he would crush me. I wish he would reach out his hand and kill me.
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 wishes God would be willing to crush him and cut off his life. In his agony he asks God for death as a release from suffering.
Overview
Job openly desires that God would end his life, seeing death as escape from unbearable pain. His honesty exposes the depths of despair without crossing into self-destruction, for he asks God to act. Scripture treats such anguished prayers with tenderness, and the gospel answers despair not by granting death but by giving, in Christ, a living hope that outlasts the grave.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- 1 Kgs 19:4while he himself traveled on a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
- Jonah 4:3And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
- Job 7:15–16so that I would prefer strangling and death over my life in this body.
- Jonah 4:8As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint and wished to die, saying, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
- Isa 48:10–13See, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
- Num 11:14–15I cannot carry all these people by myself; it is too burdensome for me.
- Job 14:13If only You would hide me in Sheol and conceal me until Your anger has passed! If only You would appoint a time for me and then remember me!
- Ps 32:4For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was drained as in the summer heat. Selah
- Rev 9:6In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will escape them.
- Job 3:20–22Why is light given to the miserable, and life to the bitter of soul,
- Job 19:21Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.
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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 6:9 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.