Bible verses about confusion

“We don’t know what to do”

The first passage in the list is a prayer said in public by Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, with this great company on its way. It ends with an admission: We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you. The Hebrew is as plain as the English, lo neda mah na’aseh, we do not know what we should do (interlinear). Alexander MacLaren noticed the hinge in the middle of the sentence: “That is a mighty ‘But,’ which buckles into one sentence two such antitheses as confront us here.” Ellicott reads it as a king deciding not to make a plan at all: “We neither know nor deliberate upon a suitable plan of resistance, for our whole thought is centred upon Thee” (commentaries on 2 Chronicles 20:12).

The answer that comes back is not a plan either:

You will not need to fight this battle. Set yourselves, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Don’t be afraid, nor be dismayed. Go out against them tomorrow, for the LORD is with you.’”2 Chronicles 20:17 · World English Bible

Stand still, and go out tomorrow. And when they do go out, the king puts singers in front of the army:

When he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and give praise in holy array as they go out before the army, and say, “Give thanks to the LORD, for his loving kindness endures forever.”2 Chronicles 20:21 · World English Bible

That is the refrain Psalm 136 repeats twenty-six times, which our page on gratitude counts. The people who did not know what to do went out singing it.

Proverbs 20:24 says the same thing about a whole life: A man’s steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way? The two men are two different Hebrew words. The first is geber, which the Pulpit Commentary says “implies ‘a mighty man’”, and the second is adam, “a human creature” (interlinear). Barnes puts the proverb in one line: “The order of a man’s life is a mystery even to himself” (commentaries on Proverbs 20:24). The proverb is not complaining about that. It is describing it.

At a loss, but not utterly

The New Testament has a word for this state, aporeo (639), and Thayer’s lexicon takes it apart: to be a-poros, without a poros, “a transit, ford, way”, and so “not to know which way to turn”. No way through. The King James never renders it confused. In the four places its Greek text has it, it is twice doubt, once stand in doubt and once perplexed (concordance). One of the doubts is at the Last Supper, just after Jesus has said that one of the twelve will betray him:

The disciples looked at one another, perplexed about whom he spoke.John 13:22 · World English Bible

The King James has doubting of whom he spake, the modern rendering perplexed: the same Greek, and you can see the choice in the toggles. These disciples were not doubting God. They could not work out which of them he meant. None of the words on our page about doubt is this one.

Paul uses it about himself in the best-known line on the subject, perplexed, yet not to despair, and in Greek the line is a pun: aporoumenoi, at a loss, all’ ouk exaporoumenoi, but not utterly at a loss (interlinear). The Cambridge Bible says the play “has no exact equivalent in English. The nearest approach to it would be ‘at our wits’ end, but not out of our wits.’” The rest of the verse and the one after it, four pairs in all, are on our page about feeling overwhelmed.

Then the part that is easy to miss. The stronger word, exaporeo (1820), occurs only twice in the New Testament, both in this letter, and the first time Paul uses it of himself without the not:

For we don’t desire to have you uninformed, brothers, concerning our affliction which happened to us in Asia: that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, so much that we despaired even of life.2 Corinthians 1:8 · World English Bible

That is exaporeo: we despaired even of life, utterly at a loss, about living. Three chapters later he writes that he is not. The commentators do not call that a contradiction. Meyer says the earlier verse describes “a single case”; the Pulpit Commentary says that in that trial “he was indeed for a time ‘utterly at a loss,’ reduced to utter despair” (commentaries on 2 Corinthians 4:8). The man who wrote not in despair had been there, and he said so first.

A voice behind you

Isaiah 30:21 is the verse people go looking for when they are confused, and it is worth reading slowly, because the voice is not in front. Your ears will hear a voice behind you, in Hebrew me’achareykha, from behind you (interlinear), and it speaks when you turn to the right hand, and when you turn to the left. It does not hand you the route in advance. It speaks when you turn.

Who is behind you is the commentators’ question, and they give several answers by name. Barnes offers teachers following their pupils or shepherds following their flocks, and records that Jewish interpreters understood the voice as the bath kol, “the daughter of the voice”. Matthew Poole adds travellers who have lost the road and are called back “by some other passenger or person who is behind them”. The Cambridge Bible takes it as God, “walking like a Father behind His children”. The Pulpit Commentary quotes a reading that puts the teacher out in front, and objects: “in that case, the flock would hear the word before them” (commentaries on Isaiah 30:21). Every one of them keeps the voice behind.

If it is darker than that, with no light at all, Isaiah 50:10 is addressed to exactly that person, He who walks in darkness and has no light, and it is on our page about Proverbs 3:5-6.

“You will understand later”

At the foot-washing Peter objects, and Jesus answers, You don’t know what I am doing now, but you will understand later. The two verbs are different words. Know is oida and understand is ginosko (interlinear). The Cambridge Bible calls the first “a different and more general word” and paraphrases the sentence “what I am doing, thou knowest not just now, but thou shalt recognise presently.”

“Presently”, because the later was not far off. The Greek for later is meta tauta, “after these things”, and the Cambridge Bible warns that the King James’s hereafter “conveys a wrong impression, as if it referred to the remote future.” Ellicott, Bengel and the Cambridge Bible all point to what follows, where Jesus sits down again and asks, with the second verb:

So when he had washed their feet, put his outer garment back on, and sat down again, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?John 13:12 · World English Bible

The understanding came the same evening (commentaries on John 13:7). Benson takes the line wider, as “a declaration which we may apply on many occasions”, and readers always have. Both are fair. But the first later in it was a matter of minutes.

Paul’s version is the long-range one. The King James’s through a glass, darkly is en ainigmati, in a riddle, an enigma (interlinear), and this is the word’s only appearance in the New Testament. Barnes gives the marginal reading, “In a riddle”, and Ellicott would translate “through a mirror in a dark saying” (commentaries on 1 Corinthians 13:12). Thayer’s lexicon says Paul “has in mind Numbers 12:8” (ainigma, 135), where the Greek translation of the Old Testament has the same word, in the plural, for how God does not speak to Moses:

With him, I will speak mouth to mouth, even plainly, and not in riddles; and he shall see the LORD’s form. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?”Numbers 12:8 · World English Bible

The modern rendering says not in riddles and the King James not in dark speeches (the Greek is ou di’ ainigmaton in the Septuagint). So darkly means the way God did not speak to Moses, and face to face is the way he did. The verse also ends with a half that people tend to skip: even as I was also fully known. The knowing is unfinished on one side only.

“Not the author of confusion”

1 Corinthians 14:33 is the verse most often quoted to someone who is confused, sometimes kindly and sometimes as though feeling confused were itself a sign that something is spiritually wrong. Two things about it are worth knowing. First, the King James prints the author in italics, the way it marks words its translators supplied (King James text). The Greek says only that God is not of akatastasia, disorder, but of peace (interlinear). Ellicott: “Better, For God is the God, not of confusion, but of peace.”

Second, the chapter is about a church meeting. Just before the verse, Paul has set out how the prophets are to speak:

But if a revelation is made to another sitting by, let the first keep silent. For you all can prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be exhorted.1 Corinthians 14:30-31 · World English Bible

One at a time. Gill explains the verse as God not moving his prophets to speak “so as to break in one upon another”, and Barnes gives the marginal reading for confusion: “Tumult” (commentaries on 1 Corinthians 14:33). It is a verse about a room where everyone was talking at once. It is not about the inside of someone who cannot work out what to do, and it cannot be stretched to say that being confused is a sign of anything.

The noun, akatastasia (181), occurs five times in the New Testament, and the King James renders it commotions once, tumults twice and confusion twice. The second confusion is James 3:16, in the list, and James names the cause: where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion. In James it is a community’s confusion, and what causes it is rivalry, not a shortage of information. The noun comes from an adjective, akatastatos (182), and James uses that too, in the line about the double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:8, on our page about doubt).

A crowd that didn’t know why it was there

The most honest description of confusion in the Bible may be Acts 19:32, during a riot in the theatre at Ephesus: Some therefore cried one thing, and some another, for the assembly was in confusion. Most of them didn’t know why they had come together. Barnes: “This is an admirable description of a mob, assembled for what purpose they knew not” (commentaries on Acts 19:32). Ellicott notices the word for assembly. It is ekklesia, the word that came to mean church, and it is also the word under assemblies in 1 Corinthians 14:33 above (interlinear). The modern rendering says assembly in both. Two confused assemblies, one a city and one a church.

Luke’s verb for confused is syncheo (4797), which Thayer glosses “to pour together, commingle”. The Expositor’s Greek Testament notes that it is found only in Acts, five times, and at its first use it points back to Genesis 11 (commentaries on Acts 2:6). That first use is Pentecost: the multitude came together and were bewildered, because everyone heard them speaking in his own language. The King James has confounded. Both scenes use the same two verbs, came together and confused (interlinear).

Babel, and flour mixed with oil

The reason the Expositor’s points to Genesis is the Septuagint, the old Greek translation of the Old Testament. It uses Luke’s verb at Babel: Genesis 11:7’s confound is syncheomen, and in 11:9 it translates the name of the city itself, as Synchysis, confusion (Septuagint text). Synchysis is the noun Luke uses at Ephesus, three verses before the crowd that did not know why it had come:

The whole city was filled with confusion, and they rushed with one accord into the theatre, having seized Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul’s companions in travel.Acts 19:29 · World English Bible

In Hebrew the verb at Babel is balal (1101), and its everyday meaning is a surprise. It occurs more than forty times. The King James renders it confound only twice, both at Babel, and mingled thirty-seven times, nearly always fine flour mingled with oil for an offering (concordance). Brown-Driver-Briggs lists the senses as “mingle, mix, confuse, confound”. One of those offerings is the thank offering of Leviticus 7:12, which is in our post on whether Thanksgiving is in the Bible. So the confusion at Babel is a mixing, in the word for working oil into flour.

The name itself is explained in the verse as a play on that word, and the commentators part company over it. The Cambridge Bible says that “To the Hebrew the sound of the name Babel suggested ‘confusion,’” that the explanation “rests on a resemblance of sound”, and that Babel is “very probably an Assyrian name meaning the ‘Gate of God,’ Bab-ilu.” Ellicott also gives “the gate of God”. The Pulpit Commentary prefers “the derivation given by the sacred writer”, and calls the gate-of-God reading unsupported by evidence (commentaries on Genesis 11:9). We leave that where they do.

One thing does not depend on it. At Babel the confusion comes from people no longer understanding each other. At Pentecost the crowd is confused for the opposite reason: because everyone heard them speaking in his own language. Luke never mentions Babel. The verb is what connects the two.

When the King James says “confusion” and means shame

If you searched for confusion verses in the King James, you will have found a lot of Psalms, and most of them are not about being confused. The King James Old Testament says confusion 23 times, and by our count from the concordance 18 of them translate a Hebrew word for shame or disgrace: boshet (1322) seven times, kelimmah (3639) six times, and four related words once or twice each (translation counts). Psalm 71:1, in the list, is one of them. Its let me never be put to confusion is bosh (954), to be ashamed (interlinear), and the modern rendering has Never let me be disappointed. Psalm 44:15 shows the pair side by side:

All day long my dishonour is before me, and shame covers my face,Psalms 44:15 · World English Bible

The King James’s My confusion is the modern my dishonour, kelimmah, and Daniel’s confusion of faces (9:7) is boshet ha-panim, shame of face (interlinear). So a prayer like Psalm 71:1 is not asking for a clear head. It is asking not to be shamed. Our page on disappointment counts the same word from the other side, where the modern rendering’s disappointed is bosh in 52 verses out of 53.

Three of the other five are tohu (8414), the word the King James renders without form in Genesis 1:2. Isaiah 24:10’s city of confusion, which the modern rendering calls The confused city, is in Hebrew a city of tohu.

What this page is not

• It is not the page for doubt. If the confusion is about whether to believe at all, doubt is the page, and it has James 1:5’s promise of wisdom to anyone who asks. If it is a decision, and the question is whether to trust your own judgment, Proverbs 3:5-6 has its own page.
• It is not the page for worry. Not knowing what to do often comes with anxiety, and when everything arrives at once, with feeling overwhelmed.
• It is not medical advice. Confusion can also be a symptom. MedlinePlus, from the US National Library of Medicine, says to “Call 911 or the local emergency number if confusion has come on suddenly”, after a head injury, or if it is “the first time someone becomes confused for no reason” (MedlinePlus on confusion). If that is the kind of confused you mean, call first and read later.