Bible Strands
Job 15:28
he will dwell in ruined cities, in abandoned houses destined to become rubble.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Eliphaz addresses Job in a poetic discourse, describing the fate of the wicked immediately after noting their physical prosperity in the preceding line.
The words — The verse centers on וַיִּשְׁכֹּן (va/i.yishkon, "and he dwelt") and נִכְחָדוֹת (nikhchadot, "destroyed"), coupled with לֹא־יֵשְׁבוּ (lo-yeshevu, "which not people will dwell") to describe structures left empty.
The thread — This desolation motif runs through Job 3:14, where kings and counselors built cities now in ruins, and Jeremiah 51:37, which describes Babylon becoming a heap of rubble without inhabitants.
Why it lands — The text states that physical bulk and current wealth do not prevent eventual abandonment and total loss, requiring the reader to acknowledge the impermanence of earthly security.
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 he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.
Cross-references
- Job 3:14 with kings and counselors of the earth, who built for themselves cities now in ruins,
- Jeremiah 51:37 Babylon will become a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals, an object of horror and scorn, without inhabitant.
- Job 18:15 Fire resides in his tent; burning sulfur rains down on his dwelling.
- Isaiah 5:8 Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field until no place is left and you live alone in the land.
- Jeremiah 9:11 “And I will make Jerusalem a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”
- Jeremiah 26:18 “Micah the Moreshite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah and told all the people of Judah that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.’
- Micah 3:12 Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.
- Micah 7:18 Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?