Bible Strands
Job 13:12
Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks to his three companions during his direct defense before God, immediately after warning that divine majesty should terrify them.
The words — אֵפֶר ('Efer) means ashes and חֹמֶר (Chomer) means clay, denoting the brittle materials used to construct the friends' arguments.
The thread — The ash and dust imagery appears in Genesis 2:7 where God forms humanity, Genesis 18:27 where Abraham acknowledges his mortality, and Exodus 17:14 where God commands Moses to record a promise to blot out Amalek.
Why it lands — The text states that the friends' arguments are structurally worthless, demanding that listeners judge wisdom by its durability rather than its volume.
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
Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.
Cross-references
- Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
- Genesis 18:27 Then Abraham answered, “Now that I have ventured to speak to the Lord—though I am but dust and ashes—
- Exodus 17:14 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as a reminder and recite it to Joshua, because I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”
- Job 4:19 how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!
- Job 18:17 The memory of him perishes from the earth, and he has no name in the land.
- Psalms 34:16 But the face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to wipe out all memory of them from the earth.
- Psalms 102:12 But You, O LORD, sit enthroned forever; Your renown endures to all generations.
- Psalms 109:15 May their sins always remain before the LORD, that He may cut off their memory from the earth.
- Proverbs 10:7 The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.
- Isaiah 26:14 The dead will not live; the departed spirits will not rise. Therefore You have punished and destroyed them; You have wiped out all memory of them.