Bible Strands
Job 5:6
For distress does not spring from the dust, and trouble does not sprout from the ground.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Eliphaz addresses Job in the first cycle of their dialogues, immediately after describing how the hungry consume a man's harvest in Job 5:5.
The words — The verse centers on אָוֶן ('A.ven), meaning hardship or trouble, and pairs it with יֵצֵא (ye.Tze') and יִצְמַח (yitz.Mach), meaning "comes forth" and "springs up," to deny that distress emerges naturally from the earth.
The thread — This denial of earthly origin for trouble runs parallel to Job 34:29 on divine sovereignty, while Isaiah 45:7 contrasts the mechanism by affirming the Lord creates both prosperity and calamity.
Why it lands — It forces the reader to abandon the assumption that suffering is a random byproduct of the soil, clearing the ground for the immediate conclusion in Job 5:7 that trouble is an inherent condition of human existence.
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
Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;
Cross-references
- Isaiah 45:7 I form the light and create the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity. I, the LORD, do all these things.
- 1 Samuel 6:9 but keep watching it. If it goes up the road to its homeland, toward Beth-shemesh, it is the LORD who has brought on us this great disaster. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not His hand that punished us and that it happened by chance.”
- Job 34:29 But when He remains silent, who can condemn Him? When He hides His face, who can see Him? Yet He watches over both man and nation,
- Psalms 90:7 For we are consumed by Your anger and terrified by Your wrath.
- Deuteronomy 32:27 if I had not dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest their adversaries misunderstand and say: ‘Our own hand has prevailed; it was not the LORD who did all this.’”
- Lamentations 3:38 Do not both adversity and good come from the mouth of the Most High?
- Hosea 10:4 They speak mere words; with false oaths they make covenants. So judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of a field.
- Amos 3:6 If a ram’s horn sounds in a city, do the people not tremble? If calamity comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?
- Hebrews 12:15 See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up to cause trouble and defile many.