Questions God asks

The short answer

Under this page's rules, the 66-book Bible contains 401 questions attributed to God in the Berean Standard Bible. Of these, 393 are spoken by God and 8 by the angel of the LORD. The eight remain labeled separately because Jewish and Christian interpreters do not all understand this figure in the same way. They are included here only where the narrative presents the angel speaking with God's authority. The first question is “Where are you?”, called to the man hiding in the garden (Genesis 3:9). The last, in Bible order, is “Will a man rob God?” (Malachi 3:8).

Many function rhetorically rather than simply requesting information. “Where are you?” is asked of someone who is hiding, and “Where is your brother Abel?” of someone who has killed him. More than half of the questions, 53.1%, can be answered yes or no, and many point the listener toward an answer already implied by the passage.

Asked of someone in particular

159 of the questions are put to a named person, a named group, or a place addressed as a person. After Job, Israel as a people is asked the most, 12, then the prophet Ezekiel and Moses, 11 questions each. Several of the questions come in pairs across a story: God asks Elijah “What are you doing here, Elijah?” twice, before and after the wind, the earthquake and the fire, and asks Satan “Where have you come from?” twice in the opening of Job. One is asked of no one: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” is God deliberating aloud.

Some questions were delivered by a messenger. God sends Nathan to ask David “Are you the one to build for Me a house to dwell in?” and Elijah to ask Ahab “Have you not murdered a man and seized his land?” 42 of the 401 questions come to their hearers through a prophet in this way, and the lists name the messenger.

To Job, from the whirlwind

After thirty-five chapters in which Job and his friends argue about why he suffers, God answers Job out of a whirlwind, and the answer is almost entirely questions: 69 of them in Job 38 to 41. They do not explain his suffering. They ask about the earth, the sea, the sky and the animals: who laid the earth's foundations, who shut in the sea, whether Job can bind the stars or hunt prey for the lioness. The first twelve:

• Who is this who obscures My counsel by words without knowledge? Job 38:2
• Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Job 38:4
• Who fixed its measurements? Job 38:5
• Or who stretched a measuring line across it? Job 38:5
• On what were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone, while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:6–7
• Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its blanket, when I fixed its boundaries and set in place its bars and doors, and I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no farther; here your proud waves must stop’? Job 38:8–11
• In your days, have you commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place, that it might spread to the ends of the earth and shake the wicked out of it? Job 38:12–13
• Have you journeyed to the vents of the sea or walked in the trenches of the deep? Job 38:16
• Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Job 38:17
• Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death? Job 38:17
• Have you surveyed the extent of the earth? Job 38:18
• Where is the way to the home of light? Job 38:19

Through the prophets

280 of the questions, more than two thirds, are in the prophets. Jeremiah alone has 110, more than any other book, followed by Job with 73, Ezekiel with 62 and Isaiah with 59. In the prophets the questions are usually rhetorical and addressed to a whole people: they plead, accuse and argue. Some of the best known:

• Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Isaiah 49:15
• Is anything too difficult for Me? Jeremiah 32:27
• How could I give you up, O Ephraim? Hosea 11:8
• Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Ezekiel 18:23
• For why should you die, O house of Israel? Ezekiel 33:11 through Ezekiel
• Son of man, can these bones come to life? Ezekiel 37:3
• My people, what have I done to you? Micah 6:3 through Micah
• Do I not fill the heavens and the earth? Jeremiah 23:24
• To whom will you liken Me, or who is My equal? Isaiah 40:25
• What fault did your fathers find in Me that they strayed so far from Me? Jeremiah 2:5
• When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for these seventy years, was it really for Me that you fasted? Zechariah 7:5 through Zechariah
• Will a man rob God? Malachi 3:8

How the questions begin

A question's first word says a lot about what it is doing. Yes-or-no questions, such as “Is anything too difficult for Me?”, are the largest group. Among the rest, “who” questions lead, many of them in the whirlwind speech (“Who laid its cornerstone?”) and in Isaiah's challenges to idols (“To whom will you liken Me?”). “How long” appears 10 times, beginning with God's words to Moses in the wilderness: “How long will you refuse to keep My commandments and instructions?”

Every question

All 401, in the order of the books, with who each was asked of where the text names them. Choose a book or search the words to narrow the list.

What is not counted

• Questions people ask God. Abraham's bargaining over Sodom, David's “Should I go up?” and Isaiah's “How long, O Lord?” are in the same scenes but are put to God, not by him. They are gathered on Questions people ask God.
• Questions God quotes. In the prophets God often repeats what people say, as in Malachi: “But you ask, ‘How have we despised Your name?’” Those are the people's questions.
• Uncertain speakers. 111 questions stand in passages where it is unclear whether God or the prophet is speaking, such as Amos 3:3 to 8 and Jeremiah 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” They are listed below but not counted.
• The questions of Jesus. Jesus asks many questions in the Gospels. They have a page of their own, and are not counted with these. The voice from heaven in the New Testament asks none.
• Other angels. The eight questions spoken by the angel of the LORD remain labeled separately and are included only where the narrative presents the angel speaking with God's authority. Other angels, including the angel who talks with Zechariah and the angels of Revelation, are not counted.

Does the translation change the count?

The questions on this page are counted in the Berean Standard Bible. The Hebrew of the Old Testament has no question marks, and a question often has no word that marks it, so where God asks and where he states is partly a translator’s reading. The same verses were read in five more translations in the public domain: the King James Version, the World English Bible, Young’s Literal Translation, the Bible in Basic English and, in Spanish, the Reina-Valera 1909.

Of the 305 verses where God asks a question in the Berean Standard Bible, the other five translations put a question mark in between 87.5% and 96.4% of those they number the same way: the fewest in Young’s Literal Translation, the most in the World English Bible. In the 3,545 verses where only God speaks, the six translations carry between 6.4 and 8.4 question marks in every 100 verses, and the BSB 7.6. The King James Version, the World English Bible and Young’s Literal Translation have more than the BSB. By that measure, a count made in another of these translations would come out within about 16% of this page's, higher or lower.

The share of verses with a question mark can only fall: these are the verses where the Berean Standard Bible has a question, so a verse where another translation asks and this one does not is not among them. The question marks in them can rise, where a translation divides one question into two. The verses where only God speaks are chosen from Faith Comes By Hearing’s speaker data, not from any translation, so that measure can move either way, and it is the fairer guide. Even where another translation counts about as many questions, they are not all the same ones.

How this was made

Corrections are welcome through the contact page, especially where a question was left out or counted that should not have been.

Questions people ask