Job 6:9
in Job 6that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
BSB
The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾
ASV
Even that it would please God to crush me; That he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!
KJV
Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!
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This verse in Job 6
Commentary
11 notes on this verseOh that I might have my request, and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! Even that He That hath begun would destroy me. Let him let loose His hand, and cut me off! Let this be my comfort; that He should afflict me with sorrow, and not spare. But perchance he entreats such things through stubbornness, perchance, in that he wishes to be entirely annihilated, he charges the injustice of the smiter. Far be the thought!
This site's exposition
If only my request were granted
on Job 6:8-10
Job's wish turns toward death, "that God would be willing to crush me". The friends will treat the request as scandalous, though the book never rebukes it. His comfort is "that I have not denied the words of the Holy One," his claim that the wish comes from honest suffering.
This site's exposition
that God would be willing to crush me
Crush is dakka, to break in pieces, as Barnes explains. Clarke hears an archer in the hand of God cut loose, the arrows of the Almighty in verse 4. Job asks God to be willing to crush him and cut him off, and Henry calls that request a fault.
The record, by era
The Church Fathers1 voice
He who asks to be wounded does not pray out of exhaustion that his prayer might be granted but in order to fulfill his task. This task was to fulfill the right deeds or to make visible to the friends for their benefit the reason …
The Medieval Church3 voices
He expresses the content of the prayer saying, "May he who began this," i.e. to afflict me, "destroy me," in death. He continues, "May he free his hand and cut me down." The hand of God expresses the divine power by which God has afflicted …
That He That hath begun would bruise me!
"He would let loose his hand and finish me!" That is, may he put an end to my life by his intervention. Again Job speaks, "I would be finished again with violence and no mercy." In a word, "I desire that God inflict death on …
The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice
It was his sin so passionately to desire the hastening of his own death, and offering up that desire to God made it no better; nay, what looked ill in his wish looked worse in his prayer, for we ought not to ask any thing of God but what we can ask in faith, and we cannot ask any thing in faith but what is agreeable to the will of God.
3 more voices on this verse
The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice
Even that it would please God to destroy me,....
The Nineteenth Century2 voices
A commentator
Albert Barnes1798–1870
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
Even that it would please God to destroy me - To put me to death, and to release me from my sorrows; compare Job 3:20-21. The word rendered “destroy” here (דכא dâkâ') means properly to break in pieces, to crush, to trample under foot, to make small by bruising. Here the sense is, that Job wished that God would crush him, so as to take his life. The Septuagint renders it “wound” - τρωσάτω trōsatō.
Let loose his hand - A metaphor taken from an archer drawing his arrow to the head, and then loosing his hold, that the arrow may fly to the mark. See on Job 6:4 (note).
How the passage was read
What the Jewish commentators add
On the verses either side of this one
Then should I yet have comfort And this shall yet be to me for comfort.
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. 6 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
6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| וְיֹאֵ֣ל | veyoel | and may he be willing | H2974 → | |
| אֱ֭לוֹהַּ | ʾeloah | God | H433 → | 57 times |
| וִֽידַכְּאֵ֑נִי | vidakeeni | and may he crush me | H1792 → | 18 times |
| יַתֵּ֥ר | yater | may he loosen | H5425 → | |
| יָ֝ד֗וֹ | yado | hand his | H3027 → | 1618 times |
| וִֽיבַצְּעֵֽנִי׃ | vivatzeeni | and may he cut off me | H1214 → |
וְיֹאֵ֣לand may he be willing
veyoelH2974 →
אֱ֭לוֹהַּGod
ʾeloahH433 →57 times
וִֽידַכְּאֵ֑נִיand may he crush me
vidakeeniH1792 →18 times
יַתֵּ֥רmay he loosen
yaterH5425 →
יָ֝ד֗וֹhand his
yadoH3027 →1618 times
וִֽיבַצְּעֵֽנִי׃and may he cut off me
vivatzeeniH1214 →
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
1 Kings 19:4while he himself traveled on a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life,…
it leads to
- Jonah 4:3
And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Numbers 11:15
If this is how You are going to treat me, please kill me right now—if I have found favor in Your eyes—and let me not see my own wretchedness.”
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Jonah 4:8
As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint and wished to die, saying, “It is better for me…
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Jonah 4:3
Through
Jonah 4:3And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
it leads to
- Jeremiah 20:14–18
Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me never be blessed.
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- 1 Kings 19:4
while he himself traveled on a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life,…
- Ecclesiastes 7:1
A good name is better than fine perfume, and one’s day of death is better than his day of birth.
- Jeremiah 20:14–18
Through
Jonah 4:8As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint and wished to die, saying, “It is better for me…
it leads to
- Psalms 121:6
The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
- Ezekiel 19:12
But it was uprooted in fury, cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up its fruit. Its strong branches were stripped off and they withered; the fire consumed them.
- Psalms 121:6
Where this verse is studied
On this page
Studies1
About Job
This page draws on 10 works. Open the list of works
This page draws on Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Book of Job; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Didymus the Blind, COMMENTARY ON JOB 6:8-9; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book VII; Ishodad of Merv, COMMENTARY ON JOB 6:9; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Job.