“Though your beginning was insignificant, Yet your end will increase greatly.
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.
- BSB Though your beginnings were modest, your latter days will flourish.
- NKJV Though your beginning was small, Yet your latter end would increase abundantly.
- 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 Yahweh blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand female donkeys.
- Matt 13:31–32He set another parable before them, saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field;
- Prov 19:20Listen to counsel and receive instruction, that you may be wise in your latter end.
- Zech 4:10Indeed, who despises the day of small things? For these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. These are Yahweh’s eyes, which run back and forth through the whole earth.”
- Prov 4:18But the path of the righteous is like the dawning light, that shines more and more until the perfect day.
- Zech 14:7It will be a unique day which is known to Yahweh; not day, and not night; but it will come to pass, that at evening time there will be light.
- Matt 13:12For whoever has, to him will be given, and he will have abundance, but whoever doesn’t have, from him will be taken away even that which he has.
- Deut 8:16who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers didn’t know; that he might humble you, and that he might prove you, to do you good at your latter end:
- 2 Pet 2:20For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the 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.