Bible Strands
Job 34:7
What man is like Job, who drinks up derision like water?
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Elihu addresses Job and the gathered friends, responding to Job’s declaration of innocence in the preceding verse. He frames his reply with a rhetorical question that contrasts his own conduct with Job’s perceived behavior.
The words — The Hebrew לַעַג (la‘ag) translates to mockery or derision, paired with יִשְׁתֶּה (yishte), literally “he drinks.” The phrase כַּמַּיִם (ka-mayim, “like water”) establishes a simile of habitual, effortless consumption.
The thread — Elihu adapts the drinking metaphor from Job 15:16, where it describes human corruption. The same idiom appears in Proverbs 1:22 to characterize the simple and scoffers.
Why it lands — The text requires a direct evaluation of whether Job’s actual conduct matches Elihu’s claim of arrogant mockery. It forces the reader to test the rhetorical question against Job’s stated innocence rather than accept the accusation as fact.
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
What man is like Job, who drinketh up scorning like water?
Cross-references
- Job 15:16 how much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks injustice like water?
- Deuteronomy 29:19 because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.’ This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.
- Proverbs 1:22 “How long, O simple ones, will you love your simple ways? How long will scoffers delight in their scorn and fools hate knowledge?
- Proverbs 4:17 For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.