“He will not allow me to get my breath, But He saturates me with bitterness.
Parallel translations
- WEB He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
- KJV He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness.
- BSB He does not let me catch my breath, but overwhelms me with bitterness.
- NKJV He will not allow me to catch my breath, But fills me with bitterness.
- NLT He will not let me catch my breath, but fills me instead with bitter sorrows.
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 says God will not even let him catch his breath but fills him with bitterness. His suffering is relentless and saturating.
Overview
Job feels granted no respite, his life flooded with bitterness at every turn. The relentlessness of his trial leaves no room to recover. This honest expression of overwhelming grief shows that faith does not require pretending all is well; Scripture makes space for the suffering to voice their pain to God.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Job 7:19How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone until I swallow down my spittle?
- Lam 3:15He has filled me with bitterness. He has sated me with wormwood.
- Job 27:2“As God lives, who has taken away my right, the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter
- Heb 12:11All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised thereby.
- Lam 3:18–19I said, “My strength has perished, along with my expectation from Yahweh.”
- Ps 39:13Oh spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go away, and exist no more.”
- Ps 88:7Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves. Selah.
- Ps 88:15–18I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted.
- Job 3:20“Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,
- Lam 3:3Surely against me he turns his hand again and again all day long.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 9:18 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.