Bible Strands
Job 36:11
If they obey and serve Him, then they end their days in prosperity and their years in happiness.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Elihu addresses Job in the middle of his speech (Job 32–37), presenting the positive outcome of responding to God's corrective voice (v.10); v.12 immediately supplies the negative branch.
The words — יְכַלּוּ (yêkhaġlû, "they will bring to an end") carries the sense of completing one's days rather than merely living them; נְעִימִים (nê'imîm, "pleasant things") is a rare noun for delight, stacked on the common טוֹב (ṭôb, "good") to sharpen the promise.
The thread — Isaiah 1:19 mirrors the structure most closely: willingness and obedience yield "the best of the land." Jeremiah 26:13 and Jeremiah 7:23 frame the same conditional from the prophetic side — obedience averts disaster and secures the covenant bond.
Why it lands — This is a conditional, not a comfort. It asks the reader to treat God's correction (v.10) as something to be obeyed rather than endured, and to take the alternative (v.12) as real.
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
If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 7:23 but this is what I commanded them: Obey Me, and I will be your God, and you will be My people. You must walk in all the ways I have commanded you, so that it may go well with you.
- Isaiah 1:19 If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best of the land.
- Jeremiah 26:13 So now, correct your ways and deeds, and obey the voice of the LORD your God, so that He might relent of the disaster He has pronounced against you.
- Deuteronomy 4:30 When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the LORD your God and listen to His voice.
- Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going.
- Job 22:23 If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored. If you remove injustice from your tents
- James 5:5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter.
- Job 22:21 Reconcile now and be at peace with Him; thereby good will come to you.
- Revelation 18:7 As much as she has glorified herself and lived in luxury, give her the same measure of torment and grief. In her heart she says, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow and will never see grief.’
- Job 11:13 As for you, if you direct your heart and lift up your hands to Him,