Bible Strands
Job 20:26
Total darkness is reserved for his treasures. A fire unfanned will consume him and devour what is left in his tent.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Bildad speaks to Job, detailing the fate of the wicked immediately after describing an arrow piercing the liver and immediately before the heavens expose that person’s iniquity.
The words — חֹשֶׁךְ (cho.sheKh) = darkness, denoting the absolute obscurity awaiting the wicked’s hoarded wealth, and נֻפָּח (nu.Pach) = fanned, describing a fire that operates without human bellows to consume what remains.
The thread — This judgment motif appears in Psalms 21:9, where God places the wicked in a fiery furnace, Psalms 120:4, which pairs sharp arrows with burning coals, and Job 18:5, which notes the extinguishing of the wicked man’s lamp.
Why it lands — The text asserts that concealed wealth and secret sin cannot escape divine exposure and uncontrolled destruction, demanding that readers acknowledge the certainty of retribution rather than relying on human preservation.
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
All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle.
Cross-references
- Psalms 21:9 You will place them in a fiery furnace at the time of Your appearing. In His wrath the LORD will engulf them, and the fire will consume them.
- Psalms 120:4 Sharp arrows will come from the warrior, with burning coals of the broom tree!
- 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.
- Psalms 109:9 May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
- Isaiah 8:22 Then they will look to the earth and see only distress and darkness and the gloom of anguish. And they will be driven into utter darkness.
- Isaiah 14:20 You will not join them in burial, since you have destroyed your land and slaughtered your own people. The offspring of the wicked will never again be mentioned.
- Isaiah 30:33 For Topheth has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the king. Its funeral pyre is deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood. The breath of the LORD, like a torrent of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.
- Matthew 3:12 His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
- Matthew 8:12 But the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”