When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.
Parallel translations
- WEB If your children have sinned against him, He has delivered them into the hand of their disobedience.
- KJV If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression;
- NKJV If your sons have sinned against Him, He has cast them away for their transgression.
- NASB “If your sons sinned against Him, Then He turned them over to the power of their wrongdoing.
- NLT Your children must have sinned against him, so their punishment was well deserved.
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
Bildad bluntly suggests Job's children died because they sinned and God justly handed them over to their guilt. It is a cruel and presumptuous claim.
Overview
Bildad coldly reasons that the death of Job's children (Job 1:18-19) was deserved punishment for their sin. The statement is heartless and oversteps what anyone can know. The narrative has shown the children died as part of Job's testing, not as exposed guilt, exposing the danger of judging others' tragedies.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 6
- Job 1:5And when the days of feasting were over, Job would send for his children to purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.
- Job 1:18–19While he was still speaking, another messenger came and reported: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- Job 5:4His sons are far from safety, crushed in court without a defender.
- Job 18:16–19The roots beneath him dry up, and the branches above him wither away.
- Gen 19:13–25because we are about to destroy this place. For the outcry to the LORD against its people is so great that He has sent us to destroy it.”
- Gen 13:13But the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD.
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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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 8:4 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.