Job 22:13
in Job 22Yet you say: ‘What does God know? Does He judge through thick darkness?
BSB
The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾
ASV
And thou sayest, What doth God know? Can he judge through the thick darkness?
KJV
And thou sayest, How doth God know? can he judge through the dark cloud?
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This verse in Job 22
Commentary
8 notes on this verseA commentator
Albert Barnes1798–1870
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
And thou sayest, How doth God know? - That is, it “follows” from what you have said; or the opinion which you have advanced is “the same” as if you had affirmed this. How common it is to charge a man with holding what we “infer,” from something which he has advanced, he must hold, and then to proceed to argue “as if” he actually held that. The philosophy of this is plain.
This site's exposition
Is not God as high as the heavens
on Job 22:12-14
Eliphaz next puts in Job's mouth a God too remote to see: "What does God know". Job has said nothing of the kind, and at 21:22 he affirmed the opposite. The same pattern of a charge without ground runs through the whole speech.
This site's exposition
What does God know
Barnes notes that Eliphaz charges Job with an opinion inferred from his words, arguing as if Job actually held it. Henry reads the suspicion as a God too high in heaven to see the earth. Job had said the wicked prosper.
The record, by era
The Church Fathers1 voice
Eliphaz pronounces a serious accusation of impiety and madness against Job. "In fact," he says, "you committed iniquities, as if [God] did not realize they were [committed] in the land of the Lord, but as if he judged in darkness. That is, as if, in …
The Medieval Church2 voices
He draws the conclusion of this thought, "And you say: What, indeed, does God know?" about those lower things? Still, men of this sort do not totally take knowledge of things away from God, but they say that he knows them universally, for example, by …
Dost thou bethink thee that God is in the height of heaven, and high above the height of the stars? And thou sayest, How doth God know? and, He judgeth as in the dark. Thick clouds are a covering to Him, that He seeth not our matters; and He walketh in the circuit of heaven. There are very many so dull that they cannot dread aught, saving what they see in a bodily form. Whence it is brought to pass that they do not fear God, in that they cannot see Him.
The Puritans and the Awakening2 voices
12 ), and care not what they do if they can but persuade themselves that God does not know. Eliphaz suspected that Job had such a notion of God as this, that, because he is in the height of heaven, (1.) It is therefore impossible for him to see and hear what is done at so great a distance as this earth, especially since there is a dark cloud (
quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-citation-number
And thou sayest, how doth God know?....
How the passage was read
What the Jewish commentators add
On the verses either side of this one
Is not God in the height of heaven and will not lower Himself to see.
1 more on this passage, in their own words ▾
Thick clouds are a concealment before Him, and He cannot see.
This section is reception history: how the passage was read and kept in the Jewish tradition. Where a reading parts from an essential of the Christian faith, the section says so at that point.
Texts and citation data: Sefaria; each excerpt follows its version’s licence. 5 further sources are cited on this chapter that carry no English text this site may quote or only restate the verse.
The words behind it
7 Hebrew wordsEvery Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.
| Hebrew | Sound | Meaning | Word study | In the Bible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| וְֽ֭אָמַרְתָּ | veamarta | and you say | H559 → | 5305 times |
| מַה־ | mah- | what? | H4100 → | 752 times |
| יָּ֣דַֽע | yada' | does he know | H3045 → | 945 times |
| אֵ֑ל | ʾel | God | H410 → | 241 times |
| הַבְעַ֖ד | havad | ¿ through | H1157 → | 105 times |
| עֲרָפֶ֣ל | ʾarafel | thick darkness | H6205 → | |
| יִשְׁפּֽוֹט׃ | yishpot | will he judge | H8199 → | 202 times |
וְֽ֭אָמַרְתָּand you say
veamartaH559 →5305 times
מַה־what?
mah-H4100 →752 times
יָּ֣דַֽעdoes he know
yada'H3045 →945 times
אֵ֑לGod
ʾelH410 →241 times
הַבְעַ֖ד¿ through
havadH1157 →105 times
עֲרָפֶ֣לthick darkness
ʾarafelH6205 →
יִשְׁפּֽוֹט׃will he judge
yishpotH8199 →202 times
A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.
The walk
8 stopsEach card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.
Through
Isaiah 29:15Woe to those who dig deep to hide their plans from the LORD. In darkness they do their works and say, “Who sees us, and who will know?”
it leads to
- Ezekiel 8:12
“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are…
Reached by 4 separate paths from here.
- Isaiah 47:10
You were secure in your wickedness; you said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge led you astray; you told yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’
- Isaiah 30:1
“Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.
- Psalms 94:7–9
They say, “The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.”
- Luke 12:1–3
In the meantime, a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling one another. Jesus began to speak first to His disciples: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is…
- Ezekiel 8:12
Through
Ezekiel 8:12“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are…
it leads to
- Isaiah 29:15
Woe to those who dig deep to hide their plans from the LORD. In darkness they do their works and say, “Who sees us, and who will know?”
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Psalms 10:11
He says to himself, “God has forgotten; He hides His face and never sees.”
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Isaiah 29:15
Through
Psalms 73:11The wicked say, “How can God know? Does the Most High have knowledge?”
it leads to
- Hosea 7:2
But they fail to consider in their hearts that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds are all around them; they are before My face.
- Hosea 7:2
About Job
This page draws on 9 works. Open the list of works
This page draws on Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVI; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible; Olympiodorus of Alexandria, COMMENTARY ON JOB 22:13-14 and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Job.