Bible Strands
Job 15:24
Distress and anguish terrify him, overwhelming him like a king poised to attack.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Eliphaz addresses Job in the third cycle of the poetic debate. He describes the inescapable fate of the arrogant who have opposed God, framing it as a sudden, inescapable dread.
The words — The Hebrew צַר (tzar, anxiety) and מְצוּקָה (meṣuqâ, distress) join with תִּתְקֹפֶנּוּ (titqōfennû, it overpowers him) to depict a crushing assault. The text explicitly compares this pressure to a king (כְּמֶלֶךְ) already ready (עָתִיד) for battle (לַכִּדּוֹר).
The thread — The theme of measured, overwhelming calamity appears in Job 6:2, while the sudden arrival of need runs through Proverbs 6:11 and 24:34. These passages share a structural focus on how sudden pressure closes in on the unprepared.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that opposition to God does not produce a drawn-out trial but a swift, inescapable confrontation. It asks the reader to acknowledge that dread arrives not as a gradual decline but as a decisive, overwhelming force.
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
Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid; they shall prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle.
Cross-references
- Proverbs 6:11 and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit.
- Proverbs 24:34 and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit.
- Job 6:2 “If only my grief could be weighed and placed with my calamity on the scales.
- Psalms 119:143 Trouble and distress have found me, but Your commandments are my delight.
- Proverbs 1:27 when your dread comes like a storm, and your destruction like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish overwhelm you.
- Isaiah 13:3 I have commanded My sanctified ones; I have even summoned My warriors to execute My wrath and exult in My triumph.
- Matthew 26:37 He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.
- Romans 2:9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Greek;