Bible Strands
Job 34:15
all flesh would perish together and mankind would return to the dust.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Elihu addresses Job and his companions during a debate on divine justice, outlining a hypothetical scenario where God withdraws His breath. He uses this moment to emphasize human dependence on divine sustenance.
The words — The verse hinges on יִגְוַע (yigva), meaning "it will expire," and עָפָר ('afar), meaning "dust." Together with בָּשָׂר (basar, "flesh") and יָשׁוּב (yashuv, "it will return"), they describe the total cessation of life and the physical reversion of humanity to its origin.
The thread — This theme of life ending in dust appears in Genesis 3:19 and Ecclesiastes 12:7. Isaiah 57:16 addresses the parallel reality that human spirit and breath depend on God’s sustained presence.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that human existence is entirely contingent on God’s continuous provision of breath. It requires readers to acknowledge their physical fragility without attributing mortality to divine abandonment.
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 flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.
Cross-references
- Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
- Ecclesiastes 12:7 before the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
- Isaiah 57:16 For I will not accuse you forever, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirit of man would grow weak before Me—the breath of life I have made.
- Job 9:22 It is all the same, and so I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’
- Job 10:9 Please remember that You molded me like clay. Would You now return me to dust?
- Job 30:23 Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.
- Psalms 90:3 You return man to dust, saying, “Return, O sons of mortals.”
- Isaiah 27:4 I am not angry. If only thorns and briers confronted Me, I would march and trample them, I would burn them to the ground.