Bible Strands
Job 1:18
While he was still speaking, another messenger came and reported: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — A second messenger interrupts Job’s listener immediately after the first report to relay the family’s location. The speaker addresses Job directly, stating that his children were gathered at their eldest brother’s residence.
The words — The Hebrew phrase עַד־זֶה מְדַבֵּר ('ad-zeh meḏabber) literally renders “until this [one] was speaking,” marking the exact moment of interruption. The verb בָּא (baʿ) denotes the sudden arrival of the second messenger.
The thread — The location matches the earlier pattern of family feasts at the oldest brother’s house recorded in Job 1:4 and Job 1:13. The sequential reporting of disasters aligns with the affliction-to-delivery sequence later summarized in Psalms 34:19.
Why it lands — The verse records a factual interruption that precedes the announcement of total familial loss, requiring the reader to track the chronological sequence of the calamities. It demands attention to the precise timing of the messenger’s report rather than immediate theological resolution.
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
While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
Cross-references
- 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.
- Job 1:13 One day, while Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- Psalms 34:19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him from them all.
- Lamentations 1:12 Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see! Is there any sorrow like mine, which was inflicted on me, which the LORD made me suffer on the day of His fierce anger?
- 2 Samuel 13:28 Now Absalom had ordered his young men, “Watch Amnon until his heart is merry with wine, and when I order you to strike Amnon down, you are to kill him. Do not be afraid. Have I not commanded you? Be courageous and valiant!”
- Job 6:2 “If only my grief could be weighed and placed with my calamity on the scales.
- Job 8:4 When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.
- Job 16:14 He breaks me with wound upon wound; He rushes me like a mighty warrior.
- Job 19:9 He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.
- Job 23:2 “Even today my complaint is bitter. His hand is heavy despite my groaning.