Bible Strands
Job 23:13
But He is unchangeable, and who can oppose Him? He does what He desires.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks in third person about God, sandwiched between his claim of fidelity (v. 12) and his acknowledgment that God executes a decree against him (v. 14). He is not teaching; he is naming the wall he has hit.
The words — בְּאֶחָד (bē-'eḥāḏ), literally "in one," is the basis for "unchangeable" in the BSB. The word carries no theological baggage of its own; it simply means singular, undivided, and the verse's force depends on that bare fact.
The thread — Psalms 115:3 states the same sovereignty without the personal wound; Proverbs 19:21 and Isaiah 46:10 frame it as God's purpose prevailing over human plans. Job 23:13 is the only place the idea is voiced from the side that has lost.
Why it lands — The verse removes the option of appealing to God's character as a lever for change. It asks the reader to hold fidelity and defeat in the same hand without resolving them.
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
But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth.
Cross-references
- Psalms 115:3 Our God is in heaven; He does as He pleases.
- Proverbs 19:21 Many plans are in a man’s heart, but the purpose of the LORD will prevail.
- Isaiah 46:10 I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish.’
- Daniel 4:35 All the peoples of the earth are counted as nothing, and He does as He pleases with the army of heaven and the peoples of the earth. There is no one who can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’”
- Job 12:14 What He tears down cannot be rebuilt; the man He imprisons cannot be released.
- Ecclesiastes 3:14 I know that everything God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God does it so that they should fear Him.
- Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?
- Psalms 135:6 The LORD does all that pleases Him in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and in all their depths.
- Isaiah 14:24 The LORD of Hosts has sworn: “Surely, as I have planned, so will it be; as I have purposed, so will it stand.
- Ecclesiastes 1:15 What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.