Lectionary Calendar
Wednesday, May 14th, 2025
the Fourth Week after Easter
Attention!
Take your personal ministry to the Next Level by helping StudyLight build churches and supporting pastors in Uganda.
Click here to join the effort!

Read the Bible

The NET Bible®

Job 6:16

They are dark because of ice; snow is piled up over them.

Bible Study Resources

Concordances:

- Nave's Topical Bible - Afflictions and Adversities;   Ice;   Snow;   Thompson Chain Reference - Ice;   Snow;  

Dictionaries:

- American Tract Society Bible Dictionary - Crystal;   River;   Charles Buck Theological Dictionary - Contrite;   Greatness of God;   Sanctification;   Easton Bible Dictionary - Colour;   Frost;   Ice;   Fausset Bible Dictionary - Palestine;   Holman Bible Dictionary - Black;   Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible - Job;   Morrish Bible Dictionary - Ice;   Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary - Commerce;   Crystal;  

Encyclopedias:

- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - Color;   Ice;   Job, Book of;   Snow;   The Jewish Encyclopedia - Color;  

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
and become darkened because of ice,and the snow melts into them.
Hebrew Names Version
Which are black by reason of the ice, in which the snow hides itself:
King James Version
Which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid:
English Standard Version
which are dark with ice, and where the snow hides itself.
New Century Version
They are made dark by melting ice and rise with melting snow.
Amplified Bible
Which are dull and dirty because of ice, And into which the snow melts and hides itself;
New American Standard Bible
Which are darkened because of ice, And into which the snow melts.
World English Bible
Which are black by reason of the ice, in which the snow hides itself:
Geneva Bible (1587)
Which are blackish with yee, and wherein the snowe is hid.
Legacy Standard Bible
Which grow dark because of iceAnd upon which the snow hides itself.
Berean Standard Bible
darkened because of the ice and the inflow of melting snow,
Contemporary English Version
as streams that swell with melting snow,
Complete Jewish Bible
they may turn dark with ice and be hidden by piled-up snow;
Darby Translation
Which are turbid by reason of the ice, in which the snow hideth itself:
Easy-to-Read Version
In the winter, it is choked with ice and melting snow.
George Lamsa Translation
Those who were afraid of ice, much snow has fallen upon them.
Good News Translation
The streams are choked with snow and ice,
Lexham English Bible
which are growing dark because of ice upon them, it will pile up snow.
Literal Translation
those darkened from ice, in which the snow hides itself.
Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
But they that feare the horefrost, the snowe shal fall vpon them.
American Standard Version
Which are black by reason of the ice, And wherein the snow hideth itself:
Bible in Basic English
Which are dark because of the ice, and the snow falling into them;
Bishop's Bible (1568)
Whiche are blackish be reason of the ice, and wherin the snowe is hyd.
JPS Old Testament (1917)
Which are black by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow hideth itself;
King James Version (1611)
Which are blackish by reason of the yce, and wherein the snow is hid:
Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
They who used to reverence me, now have come against me like snow or congealed ice.
English Revised Version
Which are black by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow hideth itself:
Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Snow schal come on hem, that dreden frost.
Update Bible Version
Which are black by reason of the ice, [And] wherein the snow hides itself:
Webster's Bible Translation
Which are blackish by reason of the ice, [and] in which the snow is hid:
New King James Version
Which are dark because of the ice, And into which the snow vanishes.
New Living Translation
when it is swollen with ice and melting snow.
New Life Bible
They are dark because of ice and snow turning into water.
New Revised Standard
that run dark with ice, turbid with melting snow.
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Which darken by reason of the cold, over them, is a covering made by the snow:
Douay-Rheims Bible
They that fear the hoary frost, the snow shall fall upon them.
Revised Standard Version
which are dark with ice, and where the snow hides itself.
Young's Literal Translation
That are black because of ice, By them doth snow hide itself.
New American Standard Bible (1995)
Which are turbid because of ice And into which the snow melts.

Contextual Overview

14 "To the one in despair, kindness should come from his friend even if he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. 15 My brothers have been as treacherous as a seasonal stream, and as the riverbeds of the intermittent streams that flow away. 16 They are dark because of ice; snow is piled up over them. 17 When they are scorched, they dry up, when it is hot, they vanish from their place. 18 Caravans turn aside from their routes; they go into the wasteland and perish. 19 The caravans of Tema looked intently for these streams; the traveling merchants of Sheba hoped for them. 20 They were distressed, because each one had been so confident; they arrived there, but were disappointed. 21 For now you have become like these streams that are no help; you see a terror, and are afraid.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Reciprocal: Job 38:22 - General Job 38:29 - General Psalms 147:18 - General

Cross-References

Genesis 7:16
Those that entered were male and female, just as God commanded him. Then the Lord shut him in.
Genesis 8:6
At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark
2 Samuel 6:16
As the ark of the Lord entered the City of David, Saul's daughter Michal looked out the window. When she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord , she despised him.
2 Kings 9:30
Jehu approached Jezreel. When Jezebel heard the news, she put on some eye liner, fixed up her hair, and leaned out the window.
Ezekiel 41:16
as well as the thresholds, narrow windows and galleries all around on three sides facing the threshold were paneled with wood all around, from the ground up to the windows (now the windows were covered),
Ezekiel 42:3
Opposite the 35 feet that belonged to the inner court, and opposite the pavement which belonged to the outer court, gallery faced gallery in the three stories.
Luke 13:25
Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, then you will stand outside and start to knock on the door and beg him, ‘Lord, let us in!' But he will answer you, ‘I don't know where you come from.'

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Which are blackish by reason of the ice,.... When frozen over, they look of a blackish colour, and is what is called a black frost; and these either describe Job and his domestics, as some h think whom Eliphaz and his two friends compared to the above streams water passed away from, or passed by and neglected, and showed no friendship to; who were in black, mournful and rueful circumstances, through the severe hand of God upon them. The word is rendered, "those which mourn", Job 5:11; or rather the friends of Job compared to foul and troubled waters frozen over which cannot be so well discerned, or which were black through being frozen, and which describes the inward frame of their minds the foulness of their spirits the blackness of their hearts, though they outwardly appeared otherwise, as follows:

[and] wherein the snow is hid; or "on whom the snow" falling, and lying on heaps, "hides" i, or covers; so Job's friends, according to this account, were, though black within as a black frost yet white without as snow; they appeared, in their looks and words at first as candid, kind, and generous, but proved the reverse.

h So Michaelis. i עלימו יתעלם שלג "super quibus accumulatur nix", Beza, "tegit se, q. d. multa nive teguntur", Drusius; "the frost is hidden by the snow", so Sephorno; or rather "the black and frozen waters".

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Which are blackish - Or, rather, which are turbid. The word used here (קדרים qoderı̂ym) means to be turbid, foul, or muddy, spoken of a torrent, and then to be of a dusky color, to be dark-colored, as e. g. the skin scorched by the sun, Job 30:28; or to be dark - as when the sun is obscured; Joel 2:10; Joel 3:15. Jerome renders it, Qui timent pruinam - “which fear the frost, when the snow comes upon them.” The Septuagint renders it, “they who had venerated me now rushed upon me like snow or hoar frost, which melting at the approach of heat, it was not known whence it was.” The expression in the Hebrew means that they were rendered dark and turbid by the accumulated torrents caused by the dissolving snow and ice.

By reason of the ice - When it melts and swells the streams.

And wherein the snow is hid - That is, says Noyes, melts and flows into them. It refers to the melting of the snow in the spring, when the streams are swelled as a consequence of it. Snow, by melting in the spring and summer, would swell the streams, which at other times were dry. Lucretius mentions the melting of the snows on the mountains of Ethiopia, as one of the causes of the overflowing of the Nile:

Forsitan Aethiopum pentrue de montibus altis

Crescat, ubi in campos albas descendere ningues

Tahificiss subigit radiis sol, omnia lustrans.

vi. 734.

Or, from the Ethiop-mountains, the bright sun,

Now full matured, with deep-dissolving ray,

May melt the agglomerate snows, and down the plains

Drive them, augmenting hence the incipient stream.

Good

A similar description occurs in Homer, Iliad xi. 492:

Ὡς δ ̓ ὁπόε πλήφων ποταμός πεδίνδε κάτεισι

Χειμάῤῥους κατ ̓ ὄρεσφιν, κ. τ. λ.

Hōs d' hopote plēthōn potamos pedionde kateisi

Cheimarrous kat' oresfin, etc.

And in Ovid also, Fast. ii. 219:

Ecce, velut torrens andis pluvialibus auctus,

Ant hive, quae, Zephyro victa, repente fluit,

Per sara, perque vias, tertur; nec, ut ante solebat,

Riparum clausas margine finit aquas.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Job 6:16. Blackish by reason of the ice — He represents the waters as being sometimes suddenly frozen, their foam being turned into the semblance of snow or hoar-frost: when the heat comes, they are speedily liquefied; and the evaporation is so strong from the heat, and the absorption so powerful from the sand, that they soon disappear.


 
adsfree-icon
Ads FreeProfile