Bible Strands
Job 7:9
As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come back up.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks of his impending death to his interlocutors, positioning the statement between his fading visibility and permanent departure from his home.
The words — עָנָן ('A.non) = a cloud and יַעֲלֶה (ya.'a.Leh) = he will come up frame the verse’s contrast between atmospheric disappearance and irreversible descent.
The thread — The motif of irreversible departure and vanished presence runs through 2 Samuel 14:14, Job 10:21, and Job 30:15.
Why it lands — It requires the reader to accept death as a fixed limit where observation ends, earthly ties dissolve, and return is impossible.
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
As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.
Cross-references
- 2 Samuel 14:14 For we will surely die and be like water poured out on the ground, which cannot be recovered. Yet God does not take away a life, but He devises ways that the banished one may not be cast out from Him.
- Job 10:21 before I go—never to return—to a land of darkness and gloom,
- Job 30:15 Terrors are turned loose against me; they drive away my dignity as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.
- 2 Samuel 12:23 But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
- Job 14:10 But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last, and where is he?
- Job 16:22 For when only a few years are past I will go the way of no return.
- Psalms 39:13 Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may again be cheered before I depart and am no more.”
- Job 11:8 They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than Sheol—what can you know?
- Job 37:11 He loads the clouds with moisture; He scatters His lightning through them.
- Isaiah 38:11 I said, “I will never again see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living; I will no longer look on mankind with those who dwell in this world.