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Read the Bible

New Living Translation

Job 3:24

I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water.

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.
Contemporary English Version
Moaning and groaning are my food and drink,
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 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 "Oh, why give light to those in misery, and life to those who are bitter? 21 They long for death, and it won't come. They search for death more eagerly than for hidden treasure. 22 They're filled with joy when they finally die, and rejoice when they find the grave. 23 Why is life given to those with no future, those God has surrounded with difficulties? 24 I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. 25 What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true. 26 I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest; only trouble comes."

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
"Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden," the woman replied.
Genesis 3:8
When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.
Genesis 3:9
Then the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"
Genesis 3:16
Then he said to the woman, "I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you."
Genesis 3:17
And to the man he said, "Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
Genesis 3:18
It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.
Genesis 3:22
Then the Lord God said, "Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!"
Exodus 25:2
"Tell the people of Israel to bring me their sacred offerings. Accept the contributions from all whose hearts are moved to offer them.
Numbers 22:23
Balaam's donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand. The donkey bolted off the road into a field, but Balaam beat it and turned it back onto the road.
Joshua 5:13
When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and demanded, "Are you friend or foe?"

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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