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Read the Bible

Contemporary English Version

Job 3:24

Moaning and groaning are my food and drink,

Bible Study Resources

Concordances:

- Nave's Topical Bible - Afflictions and Adversities;   Despondency;   Thompson Chain Reference - Sighing;   Torrey's Topical Textbook - Murmuring;  

Dictionaries:

- Charles Buck Theological Dictionary - Greatness of God;   Heart;   Independency of God;   Holman Bible Dictionary - Job, the Book of;   Poetry;  

Encyclopedias:

- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - Boil (1);   Waters;   The Jewish Encyclopedia - Strophic Forms in the Old Testament;  

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
I sigh when food is put before me,and my groans pour out like water.
Hebrew Names Version
For my sighing comes before I eat, My groanings are poured out like water.
King James Version
For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
English Standard Version
For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water.
New Century Version
I make sad sounds as I eat; my groans pour out like water.
New English Translation
For my sighing comes in place of my food, and my groanings flow forth like water.
Amplified Bible
"For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, And my cries [of despair] are poured out like water.
New American Standard Bible
"For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, And my cries pour out like water.
World English Bible
For my sighing comes before I eat, My groanings are poured out like water.
Geneva Bible (1587)
For my sighing commeth before I eate, and my roarings are powred out like the water.
Legacy Standard Bible
For my groaning comes at the sight of my food,And my roaring pours out like water.
Berean Standard Bible
I sigh when food is put before me, and my groans pour out like water.
Complete Jewish Bible
for the thing I feared has overwhelmed me, what I dreaded has happened to me.
Darby Translation
For my sighing cometh before my bread, and my groanings are poured out like the waters.
Easy-to-Read Version
When it is time to eat, all I can do is sigh with sadness, not joy. My groans pour out like water.
George Lamsa Translation
For my sighing comes before I eat, and my moanings are poured out like water.
Good News Translation
Instead of eating, I mourn, and I can never stop groaning.
Lexham English Bible
For my sighing comes before my bread, and my groanings gush forth like water
Literal Translation
For my sighing comes before my food; and my groanings are poured out like the waters.
Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
This is the cause, that I syghe before I eate, and my roaringes fall out like a water floude.
American Standard Version
For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water.
Bible in Basic English
In place of my food I have grief, and cries of sorrow come from me like water.
Bishop's Bible (1568)
For my sighes come before I eate, and my roringes are powred out like the water:
JPS Old Testament (1917)
For my sighing cometh instead of my food, and my roarings are poured out like water.
King James Version (1611)
For my sighing commeth before I eate, and my roarings are powred out like the waters.
Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
For my groaning comes before my food, and I weep being beset with terror.
English Revised Version
For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like water.
Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Bifore that Y ete, Y siyhe; and as of watir flowynge, so is my roryng.
Update Bible Version
For my sighing comes before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water.
Webster's Bible Translation
For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
New King James Version
For my sighing comes before I eat, [fn] And my groanings pour out like water.
New Living Translation
I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water.
New Life Bible
For I cry inside myself in front of my food. My cries pour out like water.
New Revised Standard
For my sighing comes like my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water.
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
For, in the face of my food, my sighing, cometh in, and, poured out like the water, are my groans:
Douay-Rheims Bible
Before I eat I sigh: and as overflowing waters, so is my roaring:
Revised Standard Version
For my sighing comes as my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water.
Young's Literal Translation
For before my food, my sighing cometh, And poured out as waters [are] my roarings.
THE MESSAGE
"Instead of bread I get groans for my supper, then leave the table and vomit my anguish. The worst of my fears has come true, what I've dreaded most has happened. My repose is shattered, my peace destroyed. No rest for me, ever—death has invaded life."
New American Standard Bible (1995)
"For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, And my cries pour out like water.

Contextual Overview

20 Why does God let me live when life is miserable and so bitter? 21 I keep longing for death more than I would seek a valuable treasure. 22 Nothing could make me happier than to be in the grave. 23 Why do I go on living when God has me surrounded, and I can't see the road? 24 Moaning and groaning are my food and drink, 25 and my worst fears have all come true. 26 I have no peace or rest— only troubles and worries.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

my sighing: Job 7:19, Psalms 80:5, Psalms 102:9

I eat: Heb. my meat

my roarings: Psalms 22:1, Psalms 22:2, Psalms 32:3, Psalms 38:8, Isaiah 59:11, Lamentations 3:8

Reciprocal: Job 7:20 - I am Psalms 31:10 - my life Lamentations 2:19 - pour Ezekiel 12:18 - General

Cross-References

Genesis 3:2
The woman answered, "God said we could eat fruit from any tree in the garden,
Genesis 3:8
Late in the afternoon a breeze began to blow, and the man and woman heard the Lord God walking in the garden. They were frightened and hid behind some trees.
Genesis 3:9
The Lord called out to the man and asked, "Where are you?"
Genesis 3:16
Then the Lord said to the woman, "You will suffer terribly when you give birth. But you will still desire your husband, and he will rule over you."
Genesis 3:17
The Lord said to the man, "You listened to your wife and ate fruit from that tree. And so, the ground will be under a curse because of what you did. As long as you live, you will have to struggle to grow enough food.
Genesis 3:18
Your food will be plants, but the ground will produce thorns and thistles.
Genesis 3:22
The Lord said, "These people now know the difference between right and wrong, just as we do. But they must not be allowed to eat fruit from the tree that lets them live forever."
Exodus 25:2
Tell everyone in Israel who wants to give gifts that they must bring them to you.
Numbers 22:23
When Balaam's donkey saw the angel standing there with a sword, it walked off the road and into an open field. Balaam had to beat the donkey to get it back on the road.
Joshua 5:13
One day, Joshua was near Jericho when he saw a man standing some distance in front of him. The man was holding a sword, so Joshua walked up to him and asked, "Are you on our side or on our enemies' side?"

Gill's Notes on the Bible

For my sighing cometh before I eat,.... Or, "before my bread", or "food" g; before he sat down to eat, or had tasted of his food, there were nothing but sighing and sobbing, so that he had no appetite for his food, and could take no delight in it; and, while he was eating, his tears mingled with it, so that these were his meat and his drink continually, and he was fed with the bread and water of affliction; and therefore what were light and life to such a person, who could not have the pleasure of one comfortable meal?

and my roarings are poured out like the waters; he not only wept privately and in secret, and cried more publicly both to God and in the presence of men, but such was the force and weight of his affliction, that he even roared out, and that like a lion; and his afflictions, which were the cause of these roarings, are compared to waters and the pouring of them out; for the noise these waterspouts made, and for the great abundance of them, and for their quick and frequent returns, and long continuance, one wave and billow rolling upon another.

g לפני לחמי "ante cibum meum", Junius Tremellius, Piscator "ante panem meum", Cocceius, Schmidt, Michaelis.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For my sighing cometh before I eat - Margin, “My meat.” Dr. Good renders this,” Behold! my sighing takes the place of my daily food, and refers to Psalms 42:3, as an illustration:

My tears are my meat day and night.

So substantially Schultens renders it, and explains it as meaning, “My sighing comes in the manner of my food,” “Suspirium ad modum panis veniens” - and supposes it to mean that his sighs and groans were like his daily food; or were constant and unceasing. Dr. Noyes explains it as meaning, “My sighing comes on when I begin to eat, and prevents my taking my daily nourishment;” and appeals to a similar expression in Juvenal. Sat. xiii. 211:

Perpetua anxietas, nec mensae tempore cessat.

Rosenmuller gives substantially the same explanation, and remarks, also, that some suppose that the mouth, hands, and tongue of Job were so affected with disease, that the effort to eat increased his sufferings, and brought on a renewal of his sorrows. The same view is given by Origen; and this is probably the correct sense.

And my roarings - My deep and heavy groans.

Are poured out like the waters - That is,

(1) “in number” - they were like rolling billows, or like the heaving deep.

(2) Perhaps also in “sound” like them. His groans were like the troubled ocean, that can be heard afar. Perhaps, also,

(3.) he means to say that his groans were attended with “a flood of tears,” or that his tears were like the waves of the sea.

There is some hyperbole in the figure, in whichever way it is understood; but we are to remember that his feelings were deeply excited, and that the Orientals were in the habit of expressing themselves in a mode, which to us, of more phlegmatic temperament, may seem extravagant in the extreme. We have, however, a similar expression when we say of one that “he burst into a “flood of tears.””

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Job 3:24. For my sighing cometh — Some think that this refers to the ulcerated state of Job's body, mouth, hands, c. He longed for food, but was not able to lift it to his mouth with his hands, nor masticate it when brought thither. This is the sense in which Origen has taken the words. But perhaps it is most natural to suppose that he means his sighing took away all appetite, and served him in place of meat. There is the same thought in Psalms 42:3: My tears have been my meat day and night which place is not an imitation of Job, but more likely Job an imitation of it, or, rather, both an imitation of nature.

My roarings are poured out — My lamentations are like the noise of the murmuring stream, or the dashings of the overswollen torrent.


 
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