Text: Psalms 144:3
OT Text Referred to: Job 7:17
Subject: Human insignificance (B)
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): None
Significance: Psalm 144:3 asks "O LORD, what is man that You care for him (מָה־אָדָם וַתֵּדָעֵהוּ, mah-adam vateda'ehu), the son of man that You think of him?" Job 7:17 poses a strikingly similar question with an inverted tone: "What is man that You make so much of him (מָה־אֱנוֹשׁ כִּי תְגַדְּלֶנּוּ, mah-enosh ki tegaddlennu), that You set Your heart on him?" Both use the "What is man?" (מָה־אָדָם/מָה־אֱנוֹשׁ) formula, but the psalmist speaks in wonder at divine condescension, while Job speaks in anguish at divine scrutiny. Job wishes God would leave him alone; the psalmist marvels that God attends to him at all. The same vocabulary serves opposite emotional registers, revealing two authentic but contrasting postures before divine attention.
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Text: Job 7:17
OT Text Referred to: Psalm 144:3
Subject: What is man that God regards him?
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Contrast
Significance: Job 7:17 and Psalm 144:3 both employ the question מָה־אֱנוֹשׁ (mah-enosh, "What is man?"), but their emotional registers diverge sharply. The psalmist asks in grateful wonder at God's condescension—the LORD who trains his hands for war and subdues peoples (144:1-2) still regards frail humanity, whose days are "like a passing shadow" (144:4). Job, by contrast, poses the same question in bitter protest: if man is so insignificant, why does God set His heart upon him with relentless scrutiny, attending to him "every morning" and testing him "every moment" (7:18)? Where David marvels that God notices man at all, Job wishes God would look away and leave him alone (7:19). The shared formula highlights how the same theological truth—God's attentiveness to humanity—can be experienced as grace in one context and as unbearable pressure in another.