Bible Strands
Job 5:7
Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Eliphaz addresses Job during a discourse on the origins of human suffering, directly following his claim that distress does not arise from the earth.
The words — עָמָל ('amal) = trouble, and רֶשֶף (re.shef) = sparks or flame.
The thread — The pattern of innate human suffering recurs in Job 14:1, Genesis 3:17, and Ecclesiastes 5:15.
Why it lands — The text states that human birth inherently includes suffering, just as sparks inevitably rise. It requires the reader to accept the inescapable reality of human misery while rejecting naturalistic explanations for its origin.
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
Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
Cross-references
- Job 14:1 “Man, who is born of woman, is short of days and full of trouble.
- Genesis 3:17 And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
- Ecclesiastes 5:15 As a man came from his mother’s womb, so he will depart again, naked as he arrived. He takes nothing for his labor to carry in his hands.
- Psalms 90:8 You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
- 1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.
- Ecclesiastes 1:8 All things are wearisome, more than one can describe; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear content with hearing.
- Ecclesiastes 2:22 For what does a man get for all the toil and striving with which he labors under the sun?