Bible Strands
Job 4:17
‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Eliphaz poses this question to Job immediately following Job’s description of a terrifying nocturnal vision and a whispering voice (Job 4:16). The remark functions as an immediate rhetorical response to that supernatural encounter.
The words — יִצְדָּ֑ק (yitz.Dak) translates literally as “will he be righteous,” and יִטְהַר (yit.har) translates as “will he be pure.” These future tense verbs structure the verse’s challenge regarding human standing before the divine.
The thread — The identical rhetorical pattern appears in Job 9:2, Job 25:4, and Ecclesiastes 7:20, where the text repeatedly juxtaposes mortal limitation against divine holiness.
Why it lands — The text states that no human can surpass God in righteousness or purity, which requires a reader to abandon claims of inherent moral superiority before approaching the divine.
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
Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Cross-references
- Job 9:2 “Yes, I know that it is so, but how can a mortal be righteous before God?
- Job 25:4 How then can a man be just before God? How can one born of woman be pure?
- Ecclesiastes 7:20 Surely there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
- Psalms 143:2 Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You.
- Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
- Romans 11:33 O, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways!
- Job 15:14 What is man, that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?
- Job 35:2 “Do you think this is just? You say, ‘I am more righteous than God.’
- Job 35:10 But no one asks, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives us songs in the night,
- Job 40:8 Would you really annul My justice? Would you condemn Me to justify yourself?