Bible Strands
Job 6:17
but ceasing in the dry season and vanishing from their channels in the heat.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks to his three friends during his prolonged physical suffering and social isolation. He introduces the stream imagery to describe how their promised comfort has proven as unreliable as seasonal waterways.
The words — נִדְעֲכ֥וּ (nid.'a.Khu) means they are dried up, and בְּ֝/חֻמּ֗/וֹ (be./chu.M/o) denotes in its heat. These terms describe water channels that cease flowing when summer temperatures rise.
The thread — This drought pattern appears in Job 24:19, where heat consumes melting snow, and in 1 Kings 17:1, where Elijah announces a drought to Ahab. Both passages use the failure of seasonal water sources to illustrate environmental reality and divine action.
Why it lands — The verse states that waterways vanish in the heat, leaving the traveler without relief. It demands the reader recognize that Job's friends' words, like summer streams, offer no sustenance when need is greatest.
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
What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.
Cross-references
- 1 Kings 17:1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”
- Job 24:19 As drought and heat consume the melting snow, so Sheol steals those who have sinned.