If your children have sinned against him, He has delivered them into the hand of their disobedience.
Parallel translations
- KJV If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression;
- BSB When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.
- 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 1:5It was so, when the days of their feasting had run their course, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts.” Job did so continually.
- Job 1:18–19While he was still speaking, there came also another, and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- Job 5:4His children are far from safety. They are crushed in the gate. Neither is there any to deliver them,
- Job 18:16–19His roots shall be dried up beneath. Above shall his branch be cut off.
- Gen 19:13–25for we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown so great before Yahweh that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.”
- Gen 13:13Now the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinners against Yahweh.
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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 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.