Bible Strands
Job 28:6
Its rocks are the source of sapphires, containing flecks of gold.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job’s wisdom discourse describes human excavation into the earth’s depths, contrasting extracted resources with the unsearchable path to divine understanding. The speaker addresses the reader’s assumption that material wealth reveals ultimate value.
The words — סַפִּיר (sa.Pir) denotes sapphire, while זָהָב (za.Hav) means gold. The phrase מְקוֹם־ (me.kom) literally renders “place of” or source, indicating the rocks yield these materials.
The thread — Sapphire appears in Exodus 24:10 as a pavement beneath God’s feet, in Job 28:16 as a commodity that cannot purchase wisdom, and in Song of Solomon 5:14 as an ornamental inlay on a beloved’s body.
Why it lands — The text states that human labor extracts sapphire and gold from stone, then asks the reader to acknowledge that material discovery does not equate to finding the source of true value.
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
The stones of it are the place of sapphires: and it hath dust of gold.
Cross-references
- Exodus 24:10 and they saw the God of Israel. Under His feet was a work like a pavement made of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself.
- Job 28:16 It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire.
- Song of Solomon 5:14 His arms are rods of gold set with beryl. His body is polished ivory bedecked with sapphires.
- Isaiah 54:11 “O afflicted city, lashed by storms, without solace, surely I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires.
- Revelation 21:19 The foundations of the city walls were adorned with every kind of precious stone: The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald,