Bible Strands
Job 9:23
When the scourge brings sudden death, He mocks the despair of the innocent.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks in a monologue addressing God’s absolute sovereignty, positioned directly after declaring that divine judgment strikes both the blameless and the wicked (Job 9:22) and before observing that the earth is handed to the wicked (Job 9:24).
The words — שׁוֹט (Shot, a scourge) and יִלְעָג (yil'Ag, he mocks) anchor the verse’s description of unprovoked violent death followed by divine indifference.
The thread — The motif of unexplained suffering and divine silence recurs in Job 24:12, while the underlying appeal for human discernment of justice parallels the petitions in 2 Samuel 14:15 and 2 Samuel 14:17.
Why it lands — The text requires the reader to face the reality of innocent suffering without moral explanation or divine comfort, stripping away assumptions that righteousness guarantees protection.
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
If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
Cross-references
- Job 24:12 From the city, men groan, and the souls of the wounded cry out, yet God charges no one with wrongdoing.
- 2 Samuel 14:15 Now therefore, I have come to present this matter to my lord the king because the people have made me afraid. Your servant thought, ‘I will speak to the king. Perhaps he will grant the request of his maidservant.
- 2 Samuel 14:17 And now your servant says, ‘May the word of my lord the king bring me rest, for my lord the king is able to discern good and evil, just like the angel of God. May the LORD your God be with you.’”
- Job 1:13 One day, while Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,
- Job 2:7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
- Job 4:7 Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?
- Job 8:20 Behold, God does not reject the blameless, nor will He strengthen the hand of evildoers.
- Psalms 44:22 Yet for Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
- Ezekiel 14:19 Or if I send a plague into that land and pour out My wrath upon it through bloodshed, cutting off from it both man and beast,
- Ezekiel 21:13 Surely testing will come! And what if even the scepter, which the sword despises, does not continue?’ declares the Lord GOD.