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Job 13:15 vs. “Though You Slay Me”

Shane & Shane · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

PassageJob 13:15 chapter ↗
Translation shownKJV (public domain) · fixed (the finding depends on this wording)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumBring Your Nothing · 2013
Words addressed toGod, person unspecified
Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • It never says it is quoting, anywhere in the lyric: the borrowing is announced by the title's echo, and the writers have pointed to Job 13:15 openly in interviews rather than presenting the words as the verse
  • What the chorus vows is something scripture itself commends: blessing the name when God takes away is Job 1:21, and the narrator adds that in this Job did not sin
  • Saying that God slays and takes is not the song overreaching. It is the book of Job's own frame, and Deuteronomy 32:39 says it in God's voice
  • The bridge keeps anguish inside the vow, praying that the cup pass while calling God enough, so the resolve never pretends to be painless
  • The spoken sections tie the song to a text, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, and stay inside what that text says about affliction and glory

⚠ Cautions

  • The verse's second half is not sung. Job trusts and then defends his ways to God's face, and the book lets both stand. A singer who knows only the chorus gets a Job who worships and never argues
  • The hopeful reading is genuinely disputed. The written Hebrew consonants say "I have no hope," the read tradition says "in him will I hope," and translations split. Check your own Bible's footnote at Job 13:15 before assuming either side is a mistake
  • Like Job 1:21, the line belongs in a sufferer's own mouth. Handed to a grieving person rather than sung by one, a vow this severe becomes a demand

Verse Proof

Job 13:15

The text in KJV (public domain)

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”

Eleven chapters after the worship of Job 1:21, the book has moved from the ash heap to an argument. Job is answering his three friends in the long speech of chapters 12 to 14, and he is done arguing with them: "Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God" (13:3, KJV). Verse 15 sits inside that courtroom resolve. The verse before it weighs the risk of speaking, taking his flesh in his teeth and his life in his hand, and the verse after it expects the hearing to go well: "He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him" (13:16, KJV). The famous line is not a closing word of surrender. It is a litigant's opening statement: even if it kills me, I am taking my case to God himself.

What the song says, described not quoted

The version checked here is the acoustic video Shane & Shane recorded for Desiring God, with spoken sections by John Piper cut between the sung ones. The opening verse is a return to the God who has torn, with the affliction framed as done in love so that the singer might know God in suffering, an echo of Hosea 6:1 more than of Job. The chorus turns the title line into a direct address: whatever God's hand does, slaying, taking, ruining, the singer vows to praise, to bless the name, to worship, and to sing to the One who is all he needs. A later verse says heart and flesh may fail and earth give way, but the singer's eyes will see the Lord lifted high and the Lamb that was slain, and every tear will prove worth it. A bridge prays in Gethsemane's shape, asking that the cup pass while holding that God is enough. Piper's spoken sections, from a 2013 message on 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, say that for the believer affliction is momentary, light against an eternal weight of glory, and never meaningless.

Three things moved between the verse and the chorus. First, the person. Job speaks about God, "though he slay me." The song speaks to God. That turns a resolve stated in an argument into a vow made in worship, which is a different room. Second, the response. Job's line continues into trust and then, in the verse's second half, into self-defence: "but I will maintain mine own ways before him." The commentators read that as Job insisting on his integrity to God's face, and the following verses bear them out. The song replaces trust-plus-argument with praise, blessing and worship. The vow to bless the name when God takes away is real Job, but it is Job 1:21, the ash heap, not Job 13, the courtroom. The chorus fuses the two moments. Third, the reading. The title phrase follows the King James, and behind the King James sits a genuine fork in the Hebrew. The written consonants of Job 13:15 say "not," which yields "I have no hope." The tradition of reading the verse aloud takes the same sound as "in him," which yields "in him will I hope." English Bibles split accordingly. The song sings the hopeful side of the fork.

· Not a quote: The song never says it is quoting. Its chorus reworks the first half of Job 13:15 in its King James and hopeful reading into a second-person vow of worship. The chorus does not carry the verse's second half where Job resolves to defend his ways before God. It blends in the blessing of Job 1:21.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The Hebrew of Job's most famous vow is written one way and read another. The song sings the reading the King James chose.

Why it matters

A listener who loves this song and opens the wrong Bible will meet the opposite sentence. The World English Bible prints "Behold, he will kill me. I have no hope." The Revised Standard Version reads the same way. The King James, ESV, NIV, NASB, CSB and Berean Standard Bible all print hope. Nobody in that list is being careless. The Hebrew itself is written one way and was read aloud another, a split older than every English translation, and most modern Bibles carry the other reading in a footnote.

That matters for singing, because when a beloved line rests on a disputed reading, the dispute is part of what you are singing. It is worth knowing that the voice on this very recording has said so in public. Asked in 2022 why he had barely preached on Job 13:15 in fifty years, John Piper walked through the two variants, said he had never reached certainty about which the author intended, and voted for the traditional reading while choosing to ground the truth it states in texts that cannot be pulled out from under him.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is a vow made in advance, the same work "Blessed Be Your Name" does, and the tag is God for the same reason: in every clause of the chorus God is the actor, slaying, taking, ruining, giving, and the singer is the responder, and the resolution line is about God's sufficiency rather than the singer's strength. Looped, it rehearses a sentence for the worst day while the days are still ordinary.

It also plants the hopeful reading, and that is worth saying plainly: the book itself backs hope. The next verse expects salvation, and Job 19 expects to see God in his flesh. But let the vow send you to the chapter it came from, where the man who says it spends his next breath demanding a hearing. Job's trust argues. A faith allowed to bring its case to God is what the chorus is standing on, and the chapter will teach you that part even though the song does not sing it.

Helpful comparison

The fork in the Hebrew is one letter with one sound. Written with aleph the word means "not"; written with waw it means "to him"; both are pronounced the same. The scribes who fixed the text preserved "not" on the page and "to him" in the margin as the reading to be said aloud, so the dispute is not between manuscripts but inside the transmitted text itself. The classic commentators, Barnes, Gill, Keil and Delitzsch and the Pulpit Commentary among them, mostly side with hope, noting that verse 16 expects salvation. Translations divide anyway: KJV, NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB and BSB print hope, while the RSV and the World English Bible print none, and most of the hopeful versions footnote the alternative.

This page is pinned to the King James because the finding depends on the wording. If it were not pinned, the site's own translation toggle would demonstrate the fork by itself: the Berean Standard Bible hopes in Him, and the World English Bible has no hope, both from the same Hebrew verse.

Sources

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

✓ VERIFIED “Mark 10” Streetlights Mark 10:23-27 Play it freely. This is Mark 10 itself, read word for word in a named translation. The line about all things being possible arrives as the answer to a question about being saved.

✓ The whole chapter, in order, so verse 27 arrives after the rich man’s scene and after the disciples ask who can be saved, instead of standing on its own

⚠ “Word-for-word” here describes the reading, not the translation theory. Streetlights uses it for what is read. Tyndale uses the same phrase for a different thing

 ✓ VERIFIED “Citizens Of Heaven (Philippians 3:20-21)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) Philippians 3:20-21 Sing it. It is Philippians 3:20-21 whole and in order, in the ESV, and the publisher's free chord chart names that version on the same page as the words.

✓ Both verses whole and in order. The only words that repeat are words the passage already gave, so nothing new gets memorized as scripture

⚠ The YouTube upload names the reference but not the version. The ESV credit sits on the chord chart, the album page and the song list, so a viewer has to go looking

 ✓ VERIFIED “Breathed Out By God (2 Timothy 3:16-17)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) 2 Timothy 3:16-17 Sing it. It is 2 Timothy 3:16-17 whole, in the ESV, and the chord chart names not just the version but the edition, so anyone can check the words against the exact text.

✓ Both verses whole and in order, in the ESV's wording, with every repeated line drawn from the passage itself

✓ no cautions: this is the standard

More songs like this

NOT A QUOTE “Blessed Be Your Name” Matt Redman Job 1:20-21 Sing it, and know whose sentence you are singing. These are Job's words on the ground after losing his children, not a general promise, and that is exactly what makes them worth singing in the dark.

✓ Keeps Job's line in Job's mouth: a worshipper speaking in loss, not a promise God makes about outcomes

⚠ The most famous line is a bereaved man's confession. Said to a grieving person rather than by one, it becomes a rebuke

 NOT A QUOTE “El Shaddai” Amy Grant Exodus 6:2-3 Sing it. Nothing in it is offered as a quotation. Learn what the Hebrew names mean before you sing them, and know that one sung phrase is an altered form of Psalm 18:1.

✓ The Hebrew titles are real Old Testament names for God, used as address and praise. God Almighty stands in Genesis 17:1 and Exodus 6:3. God Most High stands in Genesis 14

⚠ One sung Hebrew phrase is an adapted spelling. An Old Testament professor shows it does not match the Hebrew of Psalm 18:1, which is the verse behind it

 NOT A QUOTE “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” Keith & Kristyn Getty Haggai 2:7 Sing it. It quotes no verse and never says it is scripture. Just know that its best-known title for Christ follows the King James at Haggai 2:7, and that most modern Bibles render that verse about treasures, not a person.

✓ One sustained prayer from the first word to the last, addressed to Christ by name and asking for release, rest, His kingdom and His rule; Hawn counts six imperatives across the two stanzas

⚠ The title the hymn gives Christ follows the King James at Haggai 2:7. Move the translation toggle above to WEB or BSB and no person appears in the verse

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