Bible Strands
Job 42:16
After this, Job lived 140 years and saw his children and their children to the fourth generation.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The narrator speaks, not a character; this is the final narrative beat of Job's life, placed between the restoration of his family (42:15) and his death (42:17).
The words — וַ/יִּרְאֶ֗ה (va/i.yar), "and he saw," is the same verb Joseph uses of his great-grandsons in Genesis 50:23; here it marks not a single glance but a span of witnessed generations.
The thread — Genesis 50:23 gives Joseph a third generation; Psalms 128:6 promises "children's children"; Job 42:16 extends the witnessed line to a fourth, the longest such span in Scripture.
Why it lands — The verse refuses to let the book end on suffering or on a tidy moral; it simply states that life continued, and asks the reader to hold both the loss and this without collapsing one into the other.
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
After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.
Cross-references
- Proverbs 17:6 Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of a son is his father.
- Genesis 50:23 He saw Ephraim’s sons to the third generation, and indeed the sons of Machir son of Manasseh were brought up on Joseph’s knees.
- Psalms 128:6 that you may see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!
- Genesis 25:7 Abraham lived a total of 175 years.
- Genesis 47:28 And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years, and the length of his life was 147 years.
- Genesis 50:26 So Joseph died at the age of 110. And they embalmed his body and placed it in a coffin in Egypt.
- Joshua 24:29 Some time later, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of 110.
- Genesis 11:32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.
- Genesis 35:28 And Isaac lived 180 years.
- Psalms 90:10 The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty if we are strong—yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.