Though your beginnings were modest, your latter days will flourish.
Parallel translations
- WEB Though your beginning was small, yet your latter end would greatly increase.
- KJV Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.
- NKJV Though your beginning was small, Yet your latter end would increase abundantly.
- NASB “Though your beginning was insignificant, Yet your end will increase greatly.
- NLT And though you started with little, you will end with much.
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 promises that though Job began small, his future would greatly increase if he repented. Ironically, his words foreshadow Job's actual restoration, though not for his reasons.
Overview
Bildad paints a hopeful picture of restored and multiplied blessing. Remarkably, Job's life does end with doubled blessing (Job 42:12), yet not because Job confessed hidden sin as Bildad supposed. God's later vindication of Job overturns Bildad's premise even as the outcome of abundance is partly fulfilled.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- Job 42:12–13So the LORD blessed Job’s latter days more than his first. He owned 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys.
- Matt 13:31–32He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man planted in his field.
- Prov 19:20Listen to counsel and accept discipline, that you may be wise the rest of your days.
- Zech 4:10For who has despised the day of small things? But these seven eyes of the LORD, which scan the whole earth, will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.”
- Prov 4:18The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday.
- Zech 14:7It will be a day known only to the LORD, without day or night; but when evening comes, there will be light.
- Matt 13:12Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.
- Deut 8:16He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers had not known, in order to humble you and test you, so that in the end He might cause you to prosper.
- 2 Pet 2:20If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, only to be entangled and overcome by it again, their final condition is worse than it was at first.
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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 8:7 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.