Bible Strands
Job 15:23
He wanders about as food for vultures; he knows the day of darkness is at hand.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Eliphaz addresses Job within a poetic discourse on the fate of the wicked, positioned between descriptions of despair and impending terror. The speech targets the arrogant man who opposes divine order.
The words — נֹדֵד (no.Ded) = [is] wandering and נָכוֹן (na.Khon) = [has been] prepared. These terms frame the subject’s aimless flight and the fixed nature of his coming judgment.
The thread — The motif of prepared calamity and scavenging appears in Job 18:12, Psalms 59:15, and Psalms 109:10. These passages consistently link wickedness with inevitable ruin and exposure.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that flight from judgment is futile and that divine reckoning operates on a fixed schedule. It requires the reader to confront the certainty of consequences rather than the illusion of escape.
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
He wandereth abroad for bread, saying, Where is it? he knoweth that the day of darkness is ready at his hand.
Cross-references
- Job 18:12 His strength is depleted, and calamity is ready at his side.
- Psalms 59:15 They scavenge for food, and growl if they are not satisfied.
- Psalms 109:10 May his children wander as beggars, seeking sustenance far from their ruined homes.
- Ecclesiastes 11:8 So if a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is futile.
- Amos 5:20 Will not the Day of the LORD be darkness and not light, even gloom with no brightness in it?
- Genesis 4:12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield its produce to you. You will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
- Job 18:5 Indeed, the lamp of the wicked is extinguished; the flame of his fire does not glow.
- Job 18:18 He is driven from light into darkness and is chased from the inhabited world.
- Job 30:3 Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night.
- Lamentations 5:6 We submitted to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread.