Bible Strands
Job 6:21
For now you are of no help; you see terror, and you are afraid.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks to his three friends during his prolonged suffering, right after noting their disappointment in 6:20 and before demanding proof of any bribe in 6:22. He addresses them at the moment their promised support collapses under the weight of his crisis.
The words — עַתָּה ('A.tah) translates as "now," marking the abrupt shift from past expectation to present reality. חֲתַת (cha.Tat) means "a terror," describing the exact sight that paralyzes his companions.
The thread — The collapse of human support appears in Psalms 38:11, 2 Timothy 4:16, and Jeremiah 17:5. Each passage records the failure of friends or flesh when divine testing or judgment arrives.
Why it lands — The text states that human sympathy provides no rescue when terror is visible. It requires the reader to abandon reliance on companions and confront God directly without mediation.
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
For now ye are nothing; ye see my casting down, and are afraid.
Cross-references
- Psalms 38:11 My beloved and friends shun my disease, and my kinsmen stand at a distance.
- 2 Timothy 4:16 At my first defense, no one stood with me, but everyone deserted me. May it not be charged against them.
- Jeremiah 17:5 This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes mere flesh his strength and turns his heart from the LORD.
- Job 2:11 Now when Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, each of them came from his home, and they met together to go and sympathize with Job and comfort him.
- Job 6:15 But my brothers are as faithless as wadis, as seasonal streams that overflow,
- Job 13:4 You, however, smear with lies; you are all worthless physicians.
- Psalms 62:9 Lowborn men are but a vapor; the exalted are but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.
- Proverbs 19:7 All the brothers of a poor man hate him—how much more do his friends avoid him! He may pursue them with pleading, but they are nowhere to be found.
- Isaiah 2:22 Put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?
- Jeremiah 51:9 “We tried to heal Babylon, but she could not be healed. Abandon her! Let each of us go to his own land, for her judgment extends to the sky and reaches to the clouds.”