Bible Strands
Job 1:13
One day, while Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The narrator reports that Job’s children were eating and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house. This description occurs immediately after God permits Satan to seize Job’s possessions while sparing his life, and just before a messenger arrives to deliver the news.
The words — The Hebrew construction וַ/יְהִי הַ/יּוֹם (va/y.Hi hai./Yom) literally means “and it was the day,” functioning as a narrative marker for an impending event. The participles אֹֽכְלִים (o.khe.Lim) and וְ/שֹׁתִ֣ים (ve./sho.Tim) specify the simultaneous actions of eating and drinking wine.
The thread — The text places ordinary celebration before sudden disaster, echoing the warning in Proverbs 27:1 against presuming tomorrow’s security. It aligns with Luke 21:34’s caution against hearts weighed down by dissipation and Ecclesiastes 9:12’s observation that calamity strikes without warning.
Why it lands — The passage records that routine prosperity provides no automatic shield against sudden loss. It requires the reader to abandon reliance on temporal security and maintain sober readiness for unforeseen disruption.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
Cross-references
- Proverbs 27:1 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
- Luke 21:34 But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare.
- Ecclesiastes 9:12 For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a cruel net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them.
- Luke 17:27 People were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
- Job 1:4 Job’s sons would take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.
- Luke 12:19 Then I will say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take it easy. Eat, drink, and be merry!”’