Bible Strands
Job 1:14
a messenger came and reported to Job: “While the oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby,
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — A messenger addresses Job during the day his children were feasting, delivering urgent news of an ongoing crisis.
The words — `cho.re.Shot` (plowing) and `ha.Yu` (they were) describe the routine agricultural activity abruptly interrupted by the report.
The thread — Urgent couriers delivering critical updates to leaders recur in 1 Samuel 4:17, Jeremiah 51:31, and 2 Samuel 15:13.
Why it lands — The verse requires the reader to track how ordinary daily labor is immediately superseded by catastrophic news, framing the subsequent trials as a sequential series of reports rather than isolated incidents.
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 came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them:
Cross-references
- 1 Samuel 4:17 The messenger answered, “Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there has been a great slaughter among the people. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are both dead, and the ark of God has been captured.”
- Jeremiah 51:31 One courier races to meet another, and messenger follows messenger, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured from end to end.
- 2 Samuel 15:13 Then a messenger came to David and reported, “The hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom.”