---
title: Job 1:6
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/job-1-6/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/job-1-6.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Job 1:6
testament: OT
section: Poetry
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Job 1:6

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): "Now it came to be the day when the sons of the [true] God entered to take their station before Jehovah, and even Satan proceeded to enter right among them."
- NWT (2013 revision): "Now the day came when the sons of the true God entered to take their station before Jehovah, and Satan also entered among them."

## JW Usage

JWs read Job 1:6 as a window into the heavenly court — angelic sons presenting themselves before Jehovah, with Satan among them. The Watchtower treats the scene as historical and uses it to anchor teaching about Satan's role as accuser and Jehovah's sovereignty over the spiritual realm. The bracketed insertion of "true" before "God" in the older NWT and its retention in the 2013 revision is treated as clarifying which God is in view.

## Protestant Usage

Job 1:6 places Satan in the heavenly court alongside the "sons of God" (Hebrew bənê hāʾĕlōhîm). What is striking is the locomotion picture: Satan "comes" or "enters" — he is in motion, in one place at one time, presenting himself before Jehovah's throne in the company of other angelic beings. He is not described as omnipresent, ubiquitous, or unbounded. Pair this verse with Job 1:7 (his itinerary — "from roving about on the earth"), Zechariah 3:1 (he stands at Joshua's right hand), and Revelation 20:1-3 (he is bound and cast into the abyss). All spatial, all locatable. On the doorstep, this verse helps restore Satan to creaturely scale: he is one creature, in one place at a time, accountable to Jehovah's sovereign permission. The JW framing of Satan as functionally everywhere is not the picture Job 1 supplies.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders bənê hāʾĕlōhîm as "the sons of the true God," inserting "true" where the Hebrew has only "the sons of [the] God." This is a representative example of the NWT's wider habit of adding "true" to ʾĕlōhîm to disambiguate from possible angelic or human applications. The insertion is interpretive rather than translational; standard English translations read "the sons of God" (ESV, KJV, NASB) without the addition. The doctrinal effect here is mild but characteristic of the NWT's interpretive pattern.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Satan Is Not Omnipresent — Locomotion, Not Ubiquity](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/satan-functional-omnipresence.md) — Job 1:7 — Going to and fro on the earth [Holy Spirit]
- [Angels Do Not Share the Divine Nature](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/angels-not-divine-nature.md) — Hebrews 1:5-14 — the seven-fold contrast between the Son and angels [Deity of Christ]