Then Job answered,
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Then Job answered and said,
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Job 19:1 Then Job answered and said,
Job 19:1 Then Job answered and said,
Ver. 1. Then Job answered and said] He replied as followeth to Bildad’s bitter and taunting invective. His miseries he here setteth forth graphically and tragically, granting to Bildad that he was dealt with no otherwise than if he were that wicked man described in the foregoing chapter, and yet denying himself to be any such one, by his lively hope of a joyful resurrection, such as would make a plentiful amends for all, Job 19:26-28. For though Mercer make question of it yet I am out of doubt, saith Beza, that this is the true meaning of this place. And surely the whole Scripture doth not yield us a more notable or a more clear and manifest testimony, to confirm unto us the resurrection of our bodies, than this. This confession of his faith, saith Lavater, is the chief thing in this chapter, and therefore challengeth our best attention.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Job's friends had passed a very severe censure upon…
Job's friends had passed a very severe censure upon him as a wicked man because he was so grievously afflicted; now here he tells them how ill he took it to be so censured. Bildad had twice begun with a How long (Job 8:2, Job 18:2), and therefore Job, being now to answer him particularly, begins with a How long too, Job 19:2. What is not liked is commonly thought long; but Job had more reason to think those long who assaulted him than they had to think him long who only vindicated himself. Better cause may be shown for defending ourselves, if we have right on our side, than for offending our brethren, though we have right on our side. Now observe here,
I. How he describes their unkindness to him and what account he gives of it. 1. They vexed his soul, and that is more grievous than the vexation of the bones, Psa 6:2, Psa 6:3. They were his friends; they came to comfort him, pretended to counsel him for the best; but with a great deal of gravity, and affectation of wisdom and piety, they set themselves to rob him of the only comfort he had now left him in a good God, a good conscience, and a good name; and this vexed him to his heart. 2. They broke him in pieces with words, and those were surely hard and very cruel words that would break a man to pieces: they grieved him, and so broke him; and therefore there will be a reckoning hereafter for all the hard speeches spoken against Christ and his people, Jde 1:15. 3. They reproached him, (Job 19:3), gave him a bad character and laid to his charge things that he knew not. To an ingenuous mind reproach is a cutting thing. 4. They made themselves strange to him, were shy of him now that he was in his troubles, and seemed as if they did not know him (Job 2:12), were not free with him as they used to be when he was in his prosperity. Those are governed by the spirit of the world, and not by any principles of true honour or love, who make themselves strange to their friends, or God's friends, when they are in trouble. A friend loves at all times. 5. They not only estranged themselves from him, but magnified themselves against him (Job 19:5), not only looked shy of him, but looked big upon him, and insulted over him, magnifying themselves to depress him. It is a mean thing, it is a base thing, thus to trample upon those that are down. 6. They pleaded against him his reproach, that is, they made use of his affliction as an argument against him to prove him a wicked man. They should have pleaded for him his integrity, and helped him to take the comfort of that under his affliction, and so have pleaded that against his reproach (as St. Paul, Co2 1:12); but, instead of that, they pleaded his reproach against his integrity, which was not only unkind, but very unjust; for where shall we find an honest man if reproach may be admitted for a plea against him?
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II. How he aggravates their unkindness. 1. They had thus abused him often (Job 19:3): These ten times you have reproached me, that is, very often, as Gen 31:7; Num 14:22. Five times they had spoken, and every speech was a double reproach. He spoke as if he had kept a particular account of their reproaches, and could tell just how many they were. It is but a peevish and unfriendly thing to do so, and looks like a design of retaliation and revenge. We better befriend our own peace by forgetting injuries and unkindnesses than by remembering them and scoring them up. 2. They continued still to abuse him, and seemed resolved to persist in it: "How long will you do it?" Job 19:2, Job 19:5. "I see you will magnify yourselves against me, notwithstanding all I have said in my own justification." Those that speak too much seldom think they have said enough; and, when the mouth is opened in passion, the ear is shut to reason. 3. They were not ashamed of what they did, Job 19:3. They had reason to be ashamed of their hard-heartedness, so ill becoming men, of their uncharitableness, so ill becoming good men, and of their deceitfulness, so ill becoming friends: but were they ashamed? No, though they were told of it again and again, yet they could not blush.
III. How he answers their harsh censures, by showing them that what they condemned was capable of excuse, which they ought to have considered. 1. The errors of his judgment were excusable (Job 19:4): "Be it indeed that I have erred, that I am in the wrong through ignorance or mistake," which may well be supposed concerning men, concerning good men. Humanum est errare - Error cleaves to humanity; and we must be willing to suppose it concerning ourselves. It is folly to think ourselves infallible. "But be it so," said Job, "my error remaineth with myself," that is, "I speak according to the best of my judgment, with all sincerity, and not from a spirit of contradiction." Or, "If I be in an error, I keep it to myself, and do not impose it upon others as you do. I only prove myself and my own work by it. I meddle not with other people, either to teach them or to judge them." Men's errors are the more excusable if they keep them to themselves, and do not disturb others with them. Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself. Some give this sense of these words: "If I be in an error, it is I that must smart for it; and therefore you need not concern yourselves: nay, it is I that do smart, and smart severely, for it; and therefore you need not add to my misery by your reproaches." 2. The breakings out of his passion, though not justifiable, yet were excusable, considering the vastness of his grief and the extremity of his misery. "If you will go on to cavil at every complaining word I speak, will make the worst of it and improve it against me, yet take the cause of the complaint along with you, and weigh that, before you pass a judgment upon the complaint, and turn it to my reproach: Know then that God has overthrown me," Job 19:6. Three things he would have them consider: - (1.) That his trouble was very great. He was overthrown, and could not help himself, enclosed as in a net, and could not get out. (2.) That God was the author of it, and that, in it, he fought against him: "It was his hand that overthrew me; it is in his net that I am enclosed; and therefore you need not appear against me thus. I have enough to do to grapple with God's displeasure; let me not have yours also. Let God's controversy with me be ended before you begin yours." It is barbarous to persecute him whom God hath smitten and to talk to the grief of one whom he hath wounded, Psa 69:26. (3.) That he could not obtain any hope of the redress of his grievances, Job 19:7. He complained of his pain, but got no ease - begged to know the cause of his affliction, but could not discover it - appealed to God's tribunal for the clearing of his innocency, but could not obtain a hearing, much less a judgment, upon his appeal: I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. God, for a time, may seem to turn away his ear from his people, to be angry at their prayers and overlook their appeals to him, and they must be excused if, in that case, they complain bitterly. Woe unto us if God be against us!
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Then Job answered and said. Having heard Bildad out,…
Then Job answered and said. Having heard Bildad out, without giving him any interruption; and when he had finished his oration, he rose up in his own defence, and put in his answer as follows.
Then Job answered and said. Having heard Bildad out, without giving him any interruption; and when he had finished his oration, he rose up in his own defence, and put in his answer as follows.
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Job 19:2
job 19:2
job 19:2
job 19:2How long will ye vex my soul,.... Which of all vexation is the worst; not only his bones were vexed, but his soul also, as David's was, Psa 6:2. His body was vexed with boils from head to feet; but now his soul was vexed by his friends, and which denotes extreme vexation, a man's being vexed to his very heart: there are many things vexations to men, especially to good men; they are not only vexed with pains of the body, as others, and with loss of worldly substance; but even all things here below, and the highest enjoyment of them, as wealth, wisdom, honours, and pleasures, are all vanity and vexation of spirit, as they were to Solomon; but more especially truly good men are vexed with the corruptions of their hearts, which are as pricks in their eyes and thorns in their sides, and with the temptations of Satan, which are also thorns in the flesh and fiery darts, and with the conversation of wicked men, as was the soul of righteous Lot, and with the bad principles and practices of professors of religion; and sometimes, as Job was, they are vexed by their own friends, who should be their comforters, but prove miserable ones, as his did, and even vexations, and continued so to the wearing him out almost; and so some render the words, "how long will ye weary my soul" (c)? with repeating their insinuations that he was a wicked and hypocritical man, and therefore was afflicted of God in the manner he was; and which, knowing his own innocency, extremely vexed him:
and break me in pieces with words? not his body, but his spirit; which was broken, not by the word of God, which is like an hammer that breaks the rocky heart in pieces; for such a breaking is in mercy, and not an affliction to be complained of; and such as are thus broken are healed again, and bound up by the same hand that breaks; who has great, regard to broken spirits and contrite hearts; looks to them, and dwells with them, in order to revive and comfort them: but by the words of men; Job was smitten with the tongues of men; as Jeremiah was, and was beaten and bruised by them, as anything is beaten and bruised by a pestle in a mortar, as the word (d) signifies, and is sometimes rendered, Isa 53:5; these must be not soft but hard words, not gentle reproofs, which being given and taken in love, will not break the head, but calumnies and reproaches falsely cast, and with great severity, and frequently, which break the heart. See Psa 69:20.
(c) "defatigabitis", Schmidt, Michaelis. (d) "obtundetis", Vatablus, Piscator, Schmidt; so Michaelis, Schultens.
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John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Job complains of the wicked usage of his friends,…
Job complains of the wicked usage of his friends, ver. 1-7. Of the shyness and strangeness of his relations and intimates, ver. 8-19. Pleads for pity, ver. 20-22. Testifies his firm belief of the resurrection, ver. 23-27. Cautions his friends against persisting in their hard censures, ver. 28, 29.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Job complains of the cruelty of his friends, 1-5.
CHAPTER XIX
Job complains of the cruelty of his friends, 1-5.
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Pathetically laments his sufferings, 6-12.
Complains of his being forsaken by all his domestics, friends,
relatives, and even his wife, 13-19.
Details his sufferings in an affecting manner, calls upon his
friends to pity him, and earnestly wishes that his speeches
may be recorded, 20-24.
Expresses his hope in a future resurrection, 25-27.
And warns his persecutors to desist, lest they fall under
God's judgments, 28, 29.
NOTES ON CHAP. XIX
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Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Job 19:1. Then Job answered and said — “Tired…
Job 19:1. Then Job answered and said — “Tired with the little regard paid by the three friends to his defence, and finding them still insisting on their general maxims, Job desires them calmly to consider his case; to reflect that his failings, whatever they were, had not been at all prejudicial to them; but if, on the strength of their general principle, they thought themselves warranted from his sufferings to infer his guilt, he desires them to take notice that this was God’s particular infliction, Job 19:2-7; that he insisted on his innocence, and desired nothing but to bring his cause to an issue, which was, as yet, denied him, Job 19:8-20; that God’s inflictions were indeed very grievous; and, to excite their compassion, he makes here a very moving description of them; but tells them that should be a reason why they should pity him, and not add to the load by their unkind suspicions and cruel treatment, Job 19:21-22; that he was so far from retracting his plea, that he was desirous it should remain for ever on record, Job 19:23-24. — Heath. For he was assured a day was coming in which all his afflictions would be fully recompensed, and in which they would wish that they had treated him in a more friendly manner; though he questioned whether that would suffice to avert God’s judgments from them.” — Dodd.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain B.—Job: His misery is well-deserving of sympathy; it will,…
B.—Job: His misery is well-deserving of sympathy; it will, however, all the more certainly end in his conspicuous vindication by God, although not perchance till the life beyond
Job_19:1-29
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(Introduction: Reproachful censure of the friends for maliciously suspecting his innocence:)
Job_19:1-5
1 Then Job answered, and said:
2 How long will ye vex my soul,
and break me in pieces with words?
3 These ten times have ye reproached me;
ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.
4 And be it indeed that I have erred,
mine error remaineth with myself.
5 If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me,
and plead against me my reproach:
1. Sorrowful complaint because of the suffering inflicted on him by God and men:
Job_19:6-20
6 Know now that God hath overthrown me,
and hath compassed me with His net.
7 Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard;
I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
8 He hath fenced up my way, that I cannot pass,
and He hath set darkness in my paths.
9 He hath stripped me of my glory,
and taken the crown from my head.
10 He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone;
and mine hope hath he removed like a tree.
11 He hath also kindled His wrath against me,
and He counteth me unto Him as one of His enemies.
12 His troops come together,
and raise up their way against me,
and encamp round about my tabernacle.
13 He hath put my brethren far from me,
and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.
14 My kinsfolk have failed,
and my familiar friends have forgotten me.
15 They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger;
I am alien in their sight.
16 I called my servant, and he gave me no answer;
I entreated him with my mouth.
17 My breath is strange to my wife,
though I entreated for the children’s sake of mine own body.
18 Yea, young children despised me;
I arose, and they spake against me.
19 All my inward friends abhorred me;
and they whom I loved are turned against me.
20 My bone cleaveth to my skin and my flesh,
and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
2. A lofty flight to a blessed hope in God, his future Redeemer and Avenger
Job_19:21-27
21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends!
for the hand of God hath touched me.
22 Why do ye persecute me as God,
and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23 O that my words were now written!
O that they were printed in a book!
24 —that they were graven with an iron pen
and lead in the rock for ever!
25 For I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26 and though after my skin worms destroy this body,
yet in my flash shall I see God;
27 whom I shall see for myself,
and mine eyes shall behold, and not another,
though my reins be consumed within me.
3. Earnest warning to the friends against the further continuance of their attacks:
Job_19:28-29
28 But ye should say, Why persecute we him,
seeing the root of the matter is found in me?
29 Be ye afraid of the sword;
for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword,
that ye may know there is a judgment.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Deeply grieved by the warnings and threatenings of Bildad’s discourse, which in these respects was but an echo of that of Eliphaz, Job, on the one side, advances his complaint even to the point of imploring pity from his opponents in view of his inexpressible misery; on the other hand, for the very reason that he, being innocent, finds himself deprived, of all human help and sympathy, he lifts himself up to a more courageous confidence in God’s assistance than he has ever yet exhibited. He expresses the well-defined hope of a vindication awaiting him—if not on this side of the grave, then at least beyond it—through the personal intervention of God, appearing to him in visible form. That anguished complaint concerning his unspeakably severe suffering (Job_19:6-20) is preceded by a sharp word, addressed by way of introduction to the friends, as having maliciously suspected his innocence (Job_19:2-5). That inspired declaration of his hope in the divine vindication which was to take place in the Hereafter (Job_19:21-27) is in like manner followed by a short but forcible and impressive warning to the friends in view of their sinning against him (Job_19:28-29). The whole discourse, accordingly, which is characterized by vivid emotion and decided contrarieties of feeling, contains four principal parts, which embrace five strophes of unequal length. The three longest of these strophes, each being of 7–8 verses, fall into the second and third parts, of which the former contains two strophes, the latter one. The short introductory and concluding strophes are identical with the first and fourth parts.
2. Introduction: Reproachful censure of the friends for their malicious suspicion of his innocence (Job_19:2-5).
Job_19:2. The discourse begins—like that of Bildad, with a Quousque tandem (עַד־אָנָה), which, however, is incomparably more emphatic and significant than that of his accuser, because it has more to justify it How long will ye vex my soul and crush me with words?—תֹּגְיוּן is fut. energicum of הוֹגָה, with the third radical retained (Gesen. § 75 [§ 74], Rem. 16). In regard to the form תְּדַכְּאוּנַנִי (with suffix appended to the וּן of the fut. energ. and with the union-vowel a), see Gesen. § 60 [§ 59], Rem. 3 [Green, § 105 c].
Job_19:3 gives the reason for the עַד־אָנָה. Now already ten times is it that ye reproach me, viz., by assailing my innocence—זֶה here in the sense of “already, now already,” comp. Ewald, § 183 a [Gesen. § 122, 2, Rem.; Lex. 3. It may, however, be equally well regarded as a pronoun, in its usual demonstrative sense, in the singular with עֶשֶׂר, with perhaps an interjectional force—“Lo! these ten times do ye reproach me.” So Renan: Voilà, la dixième fois que vous m’ insultez. Comp. Gen_27:36.—E.] “Ten times” stands naturally for a round number, or ideal perfection; Gen_31:7; Lev_26:26; Num_14:22, etc. [“Ten, from being the number of the fingers on the human hand, is the number of human possibility, and from its position at the end of the row of numbers (in the decimal system), is the number of that which is perfected; as not only the Sanskrit dacan is traceable to the radical notion ‘to seize, embrace,’ but also the Semitic עשר is traceable to the radical notion, ‘to bind, gather together’ (cogn. קשׁר). They have already exhausted what is possible in reproaches—they have done their utmost.” Del.]. Comp. my Theologia Naturalis, p. 713 seq.; also Leyrer’s Art. “Zahlen bei den Hebräern” in Herzog’sReal-Encyclop. XVIII. p. 378 seq.). Are not ashamed to stun me.—The syntax of לֹא־תֵבשׁוּ תַּהְכְרוּ (“ye stun [me] without shame, shamelessly”), as in Job_6:28; Job_10:16. Comp. Gesen. § 142 [§ 139], 3 b [Green, § 269].—תַּהְכְרוּ is a shortened Imperf. Hiph. for תַּהְכִירוּ (Gesen. § 53 [§ 52], Rem. 4, 5 [see also Green, § 94 c]), of a verb הכר, which does not appear elsewhere, which, according to the Arabic, signifies “to stun,” obstupefacere. The rendering “to maltreat, to abuse grossly,” which rests on the authority of the ancient versions (LXX.: ἐπίκεισθέ μοι, Vulg. opprimentes), and which is adopted by Ewald, Hirzel, Dillmann, etc., gives essentially the same sense. [The rendering of E. V.: “ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me” seems to have been suggested by the use of נכר in the sense of “not to know.” The Hiph. form of the verb, however, is not found in that sense, which is, moreover, less suitable to the context than the renderings given above.—E.]
Job_19:4. And verily even if I have erred (comp. Job_6:24) [אַף־אָמְנָם, double intensive, “yea, verily, comp. Job_34:12], my error remains (then) with me, i. e., it is then known only to me (אִתִּי, “with me=in my consciousness,” comp. Job_12:3; Job_14:5), and so does not fall under your jurisdiction, does not call for your carping, unfriendly criticism; for such a wrong, being known to myself alone (and for that reason being of the lighter sort), I have to answer only to God. [“I shall have to expiate it, without your having on this account any right to take upon yourselves the office of God, and to treat me uncharitably; or what still better corresponds with אִתִּי תָּלִין: my transgression remains with me, without being communicated to another, i. e., without having any influence over you or others to lead you astray, or involve you in participation of the guilt.” Del.]. So in substance—and correctly—Hirzel, Schlottmann, Hahn, Delitzsch, Dillmann [Renan, Carey, Rod-well], while Ewald and Olshausen, failing to perceive the relation of the first member as a hypothetical antecedent to the second member as its consequent and opposite, translate: “I have erred, I am fully conscious of my error.” [If this be understood as a confession by Job of moral guilt, it is premature and out of place. According to Ewald, it is a confession of intellectual error (to wit, that he had vainly put his confidence in the justice of God), uttered with the view of softening the hostility of the friends, by the indirect admission, on the one hand, that their charges had some justification in the non-appearance of God; by the reminder, on the other hand, that his complaint was against God rather than them. But such a thought would be too obscurely expressed, and would imply too sudden a change from the tone of bitter reproach which pervades this opening strophe.—E.]
Job_19:5. Will ye really boast yourselves against me, and prove against me my reproach?—אִם is to be taken, with Schultens, Ewald, Hirzel, Dillmann [Renan: “By what right do you dare to speak insolently to me, and do you pretend to convince me of disgrace?”], as an interrogative particle (=an), and the whole verse as a question, with the chief emphasis resting on the verbs תַּגְּדִּילוּ (“will you [magnify] boast yourselves,” exhibit yourselves against me as great rhetoricians and advocates, by your elaborate accusations?) and תּוֹכִיחוּ (“will you judicially prove, demonstrate” my disgrace [עָלַי against me]? comp. Job_13:3; Job_13:15, and often). This is the only construction which properly completes Job_19:4. There is no such completing of the sense obtained, if we take אִם as a conditional particle—“if,” whether we take the whole of the fifth verse as a hypothetical protasis, and Job_19:6 as apodosis (so Clericus, Olshausen, Delitzsch) [E. V., Lee, Carey, Rodwell, Merx], or regard Job_19:5 a as protasis, and b as apodosis (so Umbreit, Stickel, Schlottmann [Noyes, Wemyss, Conant], etc. [Schlottmann exhibits the connection as follows: “In Job_19:4 Job says—‘Granted that I have erred, you need give yourselves no concern about the matter.’ In Job_19:5 he adds—‘If, nevertheless, you will concern yourselves about it, and in pride look down on me, it is at least incumbent on you not to assume without further proof that I have brought disgrace on myself by such an error, but to prove it against me with good arguments.’ The repetition of אָמְנָם seems to correlate Job_19:4-5, so that if, as all agree, the first and second members of Job_19:4 are related to each other as protasis and apodosis, the same would seem to be true of Job_19:5.—E.]
First Division: First Strophe. Job_19:6-12. Lamentation over his sufferings as proceeding from God.
Job_19:6. Know then (אֵפוֹ as in Job_9:24) [“elsewhere in questions, here strengthening the exclamation”—Schlott.] that Eloah has wrested me, i. e., has treated me unjustly, done me wrong, עִוְּתָנִי. for עִוֵּת מִשְׁפָּטִי, comp. Job_8:3; Job_34:12; Lam_3:36. And compassed me round about with His net—like a hunter who has entirely robbed a wild beast of its liberty by the meshes of the net which envelop him around, so that he can find no way of escape.—The expression describes the unforeseen and inexorable character of the dispensations which had burst on Job as the object of the Divine persecution; comp. Bildad’s description, Job_18:8 seq. [“Bildad had said that the wicked would be taken in his own snares. Job says that God had ensnared him.” Elzas.]
Job_19:7. Lo! I cry—“Violence!” (הָמָם as an interjectional exclamation, found also Hab_1:2; comp. Jer_20:8) and am not heard (Pro_21:13); I call out for help, and there is no justice—i. e., no justice shown in an impartial examination and decision of my cause.—שִׁוַּע, lit. “to cry aloud for help, to send forth a cry for deliverance” (comp. Psa_30:3 [Psa_30:2]; Psa_72:12; Psa_88:14 [Psa_88:18]), from שָׁוַע, or שׁוּעַ יָשַׁע =, “to be wide, to be in a prosperous situation.”
Job_19:8. He has hedged up my way, that I cannot pass, and He has set darkness on my paths.—Comp. Job_3:23; Job_13:27; also, as regards גָּדַד, “to fence up, to hedge up,” Lam_3:7; Lam_3:9; Hos_2:8 [6].
Job_19:9. He has stripped me of mine honor;i. e., of my righteousness in the eyes of men; comp. Job_29:14. The “crown of my head” in the parallel second member signifies the same thing; comp. Lam_5:16. The same collocation of a “raiment of honor,” and a “crown of the head,” occurs also in Isa_61:10; Isa_62:3; and suggested by these passages we find it often in evangelical church hymns [e. g., in the following from Watts:
“Then let my soul march boldly on,
Press forward to the heavenly gate,
There peace mid joy eternal reign,
And glittering robes for conquerors wait.
There shall I wear a starry crown,
And triumph in Almighty grace,
While all the armies of the skies
Join in my glorious Leader’s praise”].[1]
Job_19:10. He breaks me down on every side: like a building doomed to destruction, for such is the representation here given of Job’s outward man together with his state of prosperity; comp. Job_16:14; [so that I pass away], and uproots, like a tree, my hope: i. e., he takes entirely away from me the prospect of a restoration of my prosperity, leaves it no foundation or bottom, like a plant which is uprooted, and which for that reason inevitably withers (comp. Job_14:19; Job_17:15). As to הִסִּיעַ, lit. “to tear out, to pluck up wholly out of the ground,” comp. Job_4:21, where the object spoken of is the tent-stake.
Job_19:11. [He makes His anger burn against me, and He regards me as His foes], comp. Job_13:24. The Imperfects alternating with Imperfects consecutive are, as above in Job_19:10, and in what follows, used for the present, because present and continuous sufferings are described; comp. Job_16:13-14. [The plural in בְּצָרָיו, either for the class, of which Job is one; or, as Delitzsch suggests, “perhaps the expression is intentionally intensified here, in contrast with Job_13:24; he, the one, is accounted by God as the host of His foes; He treats him as if all hostility to God were concentrated in him”].
Job_19:12. Together all His troops advance.—גְּדוּדִים, armies, synonymous with צָבָא, Job_10:17, and denoting here, as there, the band of calamities, sufferings, and pains, which rush upon him.—And cast up their way against me.—יָסֹלּוּ, lit. “to heap up” their way, which is at the same time a rampart for carrying on the attack, a mound for offensive operations (סֹלְלָה, comp. 2Sa_20:15; 2Ki_19:32; Eze_4:2) against Job, who is here represented as a besieged fortress. In regard to this figure comp. above Job_16:14; also in regard to the technics of siege operations among the ancient orientals, see Keil’s Bibl. Archäol. § 159.
First Division: Second Strophe: Job_19:13-20. Lamentation over his sufferings as proceeding from man.
Job_19:13. My brethren He drives far away from me: to wit God, to whom here, precisely as in Job_17:6, even the injustice proceeding from men is ascribed. For this reason the reading הִרְחִיק is perfectly in place, and it is unnecessary after the ἀπέστησαν of the LXX. to change it to הִרְחִיקוּ. To the term “brethren” (which as in Psa_69:9 [Psa_69:8], is to be understood literally, not in the wider sense of relatives), who are described as turning away from him, corresponds in Job_19:14 a the term קְרֹבִים, “kinsmen” (Psa_38:12 [11]). In like manner we find as parallel to the יֹדְעִים, i. e., “knowers, confidants,” in Job_19:13 b, the מְיֻדָּעִים, i. e., those familiarly known, intimate friends, in Job_19:14 b (comp. in regard to it Psa_31:12 [Psa_31:11]; Psa_88:9 [Psa_88:8]. As synonyms in the wider sense there appear in the sequel גָּרֵי־בֵית, “house-associates, or so-journers” in Job_19:15 (Vulg., inquilini domus meæ) and finally מְתֵי־סוֹד (Job_19:19), those who belong to the circle of closest intimacy, bosom-friends, (comp. Job_29:4; Psa_55:15 [14]), so that the notion of friendship is here presented in six different phases and gradations, comp. on Job_18:8-10.—As for the rest אַךְ זָרוּ Job_19:13 b is lit., “are become only [or, nothing but] strange to me,” i. e., entirely and altogether strange; and חָֽדְלוּ, Job_19:14 a, means “they cease,” i. e., to be friends, they leave off, fail (comp. Job_14:7), withdraw from me.
Job_19:15. My house associates [= “they that dwell in mine house,” E. V.], and my maids (this doubled expression denoting all the domestics, including hired servants and the like; comp. above) are become strange to me[properly, “count me for a stranger,” E. V.]. The verb תַּחְשְׁבוּנִי is governed as to gender by the subject next preceding: comp. Gesen. § 60; Ewald, § 339 c [Green, § 276, 1].
Job_19:16. I call to my servant, and he answers not.—Whether this disobedient servant is to be viewed as the overseer, or house-steward, like Eliezer in the house of Abraham, Genesis 24. (Del.), is in view of the simplicity of the language at least doubtful.—With my mouth must I entreat him.—For the Imperf. in the sense of must, comp. Job_15:30; Job_17:2. בְּמוֹ פִי (comp. Psa_89:2 [Psa_89:1]; Psa_109:30), expresses here not, as in Job_16:5, a contrast with that which proceeds out of the heart, but with a mere wink, or any dumb intimation of what might be desired of him.
Job_19:17. My breath is offensive to my wife.—זרה, from זוּר, to be strange, to be estranged, expresses simply by virtue of this signification the idea of “being repugnant, repulsive,” so that we need not derive it from a particular verb זיר, “to be loathsome;” and רוּחִי assuredly signifies here the breath (stinking according to b), having the same meaning as נֶפֶשׁ in the partly parallel passage Job_7:15; hence not “my discontent” (Hirzel) [“my spirit, as agitated, querulous” Gesen.; “depression,” Fürst]; nor “my sexual impulse” Arnh.; nor “my spirit” (Starke, [Carey] and ancient commentators); nor “my person” (Pesh., Umbreit, Hah) [Renan].—Jerome already correctly: halitum meum exhorruit uxor mea, and in the same sense most of the moderns [so E. V.], and my ill savor to the sons of my body.—וְהַנּוֹתִי, can neither signify: “my prayers, my entreaties” (Gesen., with a reference to his Gram., § 91, 3—against which however compare Ewald, § 259) [Noyes, Lee, Words., Elzas]; nor “my caresses (Arnh.) [Bernard, Rodw., Green, Chrestom., and Gram. § 139, 2—Kal Inf. of חנן (with fem. termination ־וֹת) to be gracious]; nor “my lamentations, my groanings” (Hirzel, Vaih.) [Fürst]; nor yet finally—“and I pray to the sons of my body” (LXX., Vulg., Luth., etc. [E. V., with different construction of the לְ—“though I entreated for the children’s sake of my own body”]; for all these constructions are alike opposed to the language and to the context. The word is rather (with Schär., Rosen. Ew., Hahn, Schlott., Del., Dillm.), to be derived from the root חון, “to stink,” which does no appear elsewhere indeed in Heb., but which is quite common in Arab, and Syr., and is to be construed either as first pers. sing. Perf. Kal (“and I smell offensively to the sons of my body”), or, which is better suited to the parallelism, as Infinitive substantive, זָרָה in a being still the predicate. This stench suggests in particular the fetid matter which issues from the festering and partially rotting limbs of the victim of elephantiasis. Comp. on Job_2:7; Job_7:14.—That by “the sons of my body” (בְּנֵי בִטְנִי) we are not of necessity to understand the legitimate sons of Job, and hence that there is no contradiction between this passage and the prologue, has already been shown in the Introd., § 8, 3. We need not therefore follow the critics who are there refuted in deciding that the prologue is not genuine; nor assume (with Eichhorn and Olsh.) that the poet has here for once forgotten himself, and lost sight of his scheme as set forth in Job_1:18-19. We are rather to suppose (with Ewald, 1st Ed., Hirz., Heiligst., Hahn, Dillmann, etc.), that the reference is to grandchildren, the offspring left behind by the unfortunate sons—in favor of which may be cited the similar use of בָּנִים in a wider sense in Gen_29:5; Gen_31:28, etc.: or else (with the LXX., Symmachus, J. D. Michaelis, Schär., Rosenm., Dathe, Ewald, 2d Ed.) to his children by concubines (υἱους παλλακίδων μου, LXX.) a supposition however with which Job_31:1 seems scarcely to agree, however true it may be that in the patriarchal age, to which our poet assigns Job, rigid monogamistic views did not prevail. The explanation of Stuhlm., Gesen., Umbr., Schlott., Del., [Noyes, Conant, Elzas, Merx] is also linguistically possible, that בִּטְנִי stands for בֶּטֶן אִמִּי (after Job_3:10), so that בני בטני would mean accordingly Job’s natural brothers. This theory however is inconsistent with the circumstance that Job has already made mention above, Job_19:13, of his brothers; and that immediately following the mention of his wife, the mention of his descendants would be more suitable than that of his brothers. [To which add this from Bernard, that above, in Job_3:10, no ambiguity whatever could arise from the employment of בטני in the sense of “mother’s womb,” whereas “here, by using it in this sense, Job would have run such risk of having his meaning misunderstood, as בִּטְנִי might fairly be considered synonymous with חֲלָצַי, my loins, or מֵעַי, my bowels, that we find it quite impossible to believe that if he had really wished to speak here of his brethren, he would have applied to them such a very ambiguous epithet.” It has also been suggested as a relief of the difficulty that children had been born to Job in the interval between the first series of calamities, and the infliction of the disease, but such a conjecture is too precarious. Others regard the expression as general. So Wordsworth: “He is speaking of the greatest wretchedness in general terms”].
Job_19:18. Even youngsters act contemptuously towards me.—עֲוִילִים, plur. of עָוִיל, puer (root עוּל, comp. Job_21:11) are little children, such namely as are rude and impudent mockers, like those children of Bethel, 2Ki_2:23 seq, which may be expressed by the word “youngsters” [Germ. “Buben”: Bernard—“wicked-little-children”], here as also above in Job_16:11.—It will also guard in particular against the mistake of supposing that Job’s grandchildren are intended by these עוילים, (Hahn).—If I rise up (conditional clause, as in Job_11:17 [not as E. V., “I arose”]), they speak about me, make me the butt of jeering talk (דִּבֶּר בְּ, as in Psa_50:20; Num_12:1; Num_21:5).
Job_19:19. My bosom friends abhor me:—(comp. above on Job_19:13 seq.), and those whom I loved(זֶה relative, as in Job_15:17) have turned against me.—This verse points particularly at Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, the once trusted friends, who are now become his violent opponents.
Job_19:20. My bone cleaves to my skin and my flesh (comp. Job_10:11), i. e., through my skin and my extremely emaciated flesh may be seen my bones, which seem to cleave, as it were, to that poor and loathsome integument. Comp. Lam_4:8; Psa_102:6 [5], and I am escaped only with the skin of my teeth:—i. e., thus far only my gums (the flesh of my teeth, here called the skin of my teeth, because of their skinlike thinness and leanness of muscle) have been spared by this fearful disease,—so that I am able at least to speak, without having my mouth full of internal boils and sores (as is wont to be the case in the extreme stages of elephantiasis). This is the only satisfactory explanation, to which most moderns give in their adherence (Rosenm., Umbreit, Ewald, Hirzel, Vaih., Heil., Schlottm., Dillm.). This explanation of “the skin of the teeth” as the “gums,” is undoubtedly the most obvious, simple, and natural. [Yet simpler, perhaps, is the view of Umbreit, Wordsworth, Noyes, Renan, Elzas, that it is a proverbial expression, describing a state in which one is stripped to the very minimum of possession, or emaciated to the last point. Wordsworth: “A proverbial paradox. I am reduced to a mere shadow, I am escaped with nothing, or next to nothing, so that my escape is hardly an escape. I am escaped with the skin of what has no skin, the skin of bone; comp. the Latin proverbs, Lana caprina (Horat., 1 Ep. xviii. 15), and Totum nil (Juvenal 3, 209).” To which may be added the humorous English proverb: “As fat as a hen in the forehead.”—E.]. Other explanations are in part against the language, in part too artificial: such as a. That of Jerome, and many Catholic commentators, that by the skin of the teeth we are to understand the lips. b. That of Delitzsch, which explains it to mean particularly the periosteum (in distinction from the gums—as if such a distinction could have been known to the ancient Hebrews! [and “as though the poet had written for doctors!” Dillm.]).—c. That of Stickel and Hahn, who translate: “I am escaped with the nakedness of my teeth,” [i. e., with naked teeth].—d. That of Le Clerc, who understands it of the gums as alone remaining, when the teeth have fallen out.
5. Second Division: Job_19:21-27. A lofty flight to a blessed hope in God, his future Redeemer and Avenger, introduced by a pathetic appeal to the friends, that they would be mercifully disposed towards him, as one who had been so deeply humiliated, and so heavily smitten by the hand of God.
Job_19:21. [“Job here takes up a strain we have not heard previously. His natural strength becomes more and more feeble, and his tone weaker and weaker. It is a feeling of sadness that prevails in the preceding description of suffering, and now even stamps the address to the friends with a tone of importunate entreaty which shall if possible, affect their hearts. They are indeed his friends, as the emphatic אַתֶּם רֵעָי affirms; impelled towards him by sympathy, they are come, and at least stand by him while all other men flee from him.” Del. Pity me, pity me (pathetically repeated) O ye my friends!] For the hand of Eloah hath touched me.—An allusion to the nature of his frightful disease, being a species of leprosy, i. e., of a נֶגַע (2Ki_15:5), a plaga Dei “wherefore the suffering Messiah also bears the significant name חִוָּרָא דְּבֵי רַבִּי, ‘the leprous one from the school of Rabbi,’ in the Talmud, after [Isa_53:4; Isa_53:8.”]. One who is already treated with enough severity through the infliction of such a plague from God, ought not to be smitten also by men through the exercise of a merciless disposition, unfriendly words, etc.
Job_19:22. Why do ye persecute me as God, “by which he means not merely that they add their persecution to God’s, but that they take upon themselves God’s work, that they usurp to themselves a judicial divine authority; they act towards him as if they were superhuman, and therefore inhumanly.” Del. And are not satiated with my flesh?i. e., continually devour my flesh, figuratively speaking, by false accusations, slanders, suspicions of my innocence, etc., gnaw me incessantly with the tooth of slander [comp. Engl. “backbiting”]. Comp. the equivalent figurative expression “slander” (διαβάλλειν) in the Aram. of the book of Daniel (Job_3:8; Job_6:25) [“to eat the pieces of any one”], in the Syriac, where the devil is called ochel-karso = διάβολος, and in Arab. where “to eat the flesh, or a piece of any one” is equivalent to “slandering, backbiting.”
Job_19:23 seq. As though despairing of the possibility of influencing the friends to withdraw from their attacks on his innocence, he now turns with ardent longing for the final vindication of the same to God, first of all uttering the wish that his own asseverations of the same might be preserved to the latest generations. [Ewald imagines a pause after Job_19:22. Job waits to see what response the friends would make to his pitiful appeal. They are silent, show no signs of relenting. Job sees that he has nothing to hope for either from men, or the God of the present. But in his extremity he obtains a glimpse of the far-distant future, after his death, which fills him with a new and wonderful courage]. Oh that my words were but written (מִי־יִתֶּן here followed by וconsec. before the voluntative [future], on account of the intervening אֵפוֹ, comp. Deu_5:26), that they were but inscribed (יֻחָקוּ, pausal form for יֻחֲקוּ [see Ewald, § 193, c, and Gesen., § 67 (§ 66) Rem. 8], Hoph. of חקק) in a book!—בַּסֵּפֶר, with the Art., as this expression is always written—comp. Exo_17:14; 1Sa_10:25, etc.—although no particular book is meant, but only in general a skin of an animal prepared for writing [ספר], a writing-roll). These words of his, which he thus desires to see transmitted for remembrance by after generations, are, as it is most natural to suppose, not those contained in Job_19:25 seq.. (Hahn, Schlottm.) [Scott, Good, Bernard, Words., Rodwell, Barnes], but the sufferer’s former protestations of innocence, the assurances which from Job 6. on he has continually put forth, that he suffers innocently. [In favor of this view, and against the other, Delitzsch argues: (1) It is improbable that the inscription would begin with ו.—(2) It is more likely that Job would wish to see inscribed that which was the expression of his habitual consciousness, than that which was but an occasional and transient flash of light through the darkness].
Job_19:24. That with an iron pen [or style] and with lead—i. e., in letters engraved by means of an iron style, or chisel, and then filled in with lead, in order to make them more imperishable—they might be graven in the rock forever! Instead of לָעַד the LXX. read here, as also in Isa_30:8 : לְעֵד, “for a witness, as testimony,” (εἰς μαρτύριον), an emendation however which is unnecessary, for the rendering “forever” gives here a meaning that is quite suitable. The monumental inscription is indeed preferred to that on parchment just because of its greater durability, which is the reason why Job wishes for it here. In regard to the use of both methods of writing already in the Pre-Mosaic age, see Introd., § 2, No. 4, p.. [For accounts of such inscriptions see Robinson’sBibl. Researches in Palestine, I., 169, 188 seq., 552; Wilson’sLands of the Bible, I., 184 seq.; Princeton Review, 1870, page 533 seq. “This wish was not in truth too high on Job’s part; for we now know sufficiently well that of old in those lands it was sought to perpetuate by means of inscriptions in stones and rocks not only short legal precepts, but also longer documents, memorable historical events, public requests, prayers, etc. Such costly works it is true could in general be completed only by kings and princes; Job was however a man of power in his age, who might well express such a wish.” Ewald].
Job_19:25. Not because he despairs of the possibility of realizing this last wish (Dillm.), but because he knows for a certainty that God will not allow his testimony to his innocence to pass down to posterity without His absolute confirmations of it, and hence because he regards that wish for the eternal perpetuation of his testimony as by no means a vain one, he continues:—And I know my Redeemer lives, etc. The ו in ואני ידעתי is thus not used in an adversative sense (Luther, Ewald, Vaih., Dillm. [Conant, Noyes, Lee], etc., but simply continuative, or, if one prefers it, ascensive, introducing the end to which the realization of the preceding wish is to lead. [“The progressive rendering seems to be preferable (to the adversative), because the human vindication after death, which is the object of the wish expressed in Job_19:23 seq. is still not essentially different from the Divine vindication hoped for in Job_19:25, which must not be regarded as an antithesis, but rather as a perfecting of the other, designed for posterity. Job_19:25 is, however, certainly a higher hope, to which the wish in Job_19:23 seq. forms the stepping stone.” Del.] The causal rendering (LXX., Vulgate, Stickel [E. V., Good, Carey, Renan],) is less probable, although not altogether meaningless, as Dillmann affirms. [The rendering: “yea, verily,” adopted by Schlottm., Words., Elzas, Merx, etc., is probably designed to express the ascensive meaning referred to above.] Forasmuch as כִי is wanting after ידעתי (as in Job_30:23; Ps. 9:21), we should translate simply in the oratio directa: “My Redeemer lives.” גֹּאֵל, which according to Job_3:5 means literally “reclaimer, redeemer,” acquires a meaning that is entirely too special, when it is taken by Umbreit and some others [Renan, Rodwell, Elzas] to be = גֹאֵל הַדָּם, “the blood-avenger” (Num_35:12; Num_35:19), for the previous discourse was not of Job in the character of one murdered in his innocence, and Job_16:18 is too remote. After the analogy of Pro_23:11; Lam_3:58; Psa_119:154, we are to think in general of the restitution of the honor and right of one who has been oppressed, and are accordingly to take גֹּאֵל in the sense of a defender, an avenger of honor—a meaning indeed which approaches that of a “blood-avenger” in so far as the expected deliverance [or vindication] is conceived of as taking place only after the sufferer’s death. For the Goel is חַי, is absolutely living (חַי, “he lives,” incomparably stronger than יֵשׁ, for instance would have been) [הַי reminding us of “that name of God, חי עולם, Dan_12:7, after which the Jewish oath per Anchialum in Martial is to be explained,” Del., and indicating here the contrast between Him, the Living One, and Job, the dying one, Dillm.], while the object of His redemptive activity is עָפָר, “dust,” and as b shows, at the time when He arises, has long been dust.—And as the Last will He arise upon the dust.—אַחֲרוֹן cannot possibly with Böttcher and others [so E. V., Lee, Conant, Renan, Elzas] be construed in the adverbial sense “hereafter, in the latter time [or day].” It is clearly a substantive, used either in apposition to גֹּאֲלִי, the subj. of the first member, or as the independent subj. of the second member, identical in meaning with this גּ׳. The word signifies neither “Next-man” [Next-of-kin, Ger. Nachmann] in the sense of Avenger (vindex: Ewald, Hirzel), nor the “Follower” [Germ. Hintermann, “backer”], “second” (Hahn), but according to Isa_44:6; Isa_48:12, simply the Last, he who survives all, an expression which is used here not with eschatological universality, but with particular reference to Job, who is no longer living (Job_17:11 seq.). [Delitzsch, however, and in a way which seems more suitable to the sublimity and scope o the passage: “as the Last One, whose word shall avail in the ages of eternity, when the strife of human voices shall have long been silent.”] Of this Last One, or this One who is hereafter to come, Job says: “He will stand up, He will arise” (יָקוּם), viz. for his protection and his deliverance (קוּם, the customary term for the favorable intervention of a judge to help one: Psa_12:6 [5]; Isa_2:19; Isa_2:21; Isa_33:10, or also of a witness). He is thus to appear עַל־עָפָר, “upon the dust;” i. e., according to Job_17:16; Job_20:11; Job_21:26, indisputably—on the dust to which I shall soon return (Gen_3:19; Ecc_3:20), or in which I shall soon be made to lie down, on the dust of my decayed body, or of my grave. This is the only meaning of the expression which suits the context (so Rosenm., Ewald, Vaih., Welte, Del., Dillmann [Conant, Elzas, Merx], etc.). Any other explanation does more or less violence to the language, whether with Umbreit we translate in a way altogether too classic, “in the arena;” or with Hahn, altogether too freely: “above the earth,” i. e. in heaven! or with Jerome, Luther, and most of the ancients, altogether too dogmatically, and withal against the usage of the language, we find expressed an “awakening out of the earth;” or finally with Hirzel and others, we understand it in a way altogether too rationalistic of an “appearing of God on the earth,” in the sense of Job 38., rejecting any reference to the continuance of life hereafter [this last rendering, however, being adopted by not a few of the commentators who refer the passage to the final resurrection: so e. g. Scott, Lee]. In opposition to all these views, Dillmann says truly: “[Had Job intended here simply to express the hope of an appearance of God for the purpose of deciding the controversy in favor of Job, על־עפר would have been unnecessary (comp. e. g.Psa_12:6), and instead of יקום he would have said יֵרֵד rather, for it is not said elsewhere that God arises on the dust when He appears; besides that God does not appear in Job 38. on the earth, but He speaks His final decision out of the storm. Rather do] the words express the expectation of a גאל who lives, even when Job lives no longer, who comes after him, and who for the open vindication of his right arises on the dust in which he is laid, or stands above his grave.” (Analogies from Arabic usage compel us thus to understand the phrase of the grave, or the dust of the grave; see Delitzsch.) “The words thus lead us without doubt into the circle of thought indicated in Job_16:18 (although at the same time beyond the same). He does not yet say whom he intends by this גאל, because the main thought here is the certainty that such an one lives; not until Job_19:26, after he has explained himself further, does he surprise the friends and himself by saying that the object of his hope is Eloah Himself.”
Job_19:26. And after my skin, which is broken in pieces, even this.—אחר is not a conjunction belonging to נקפו, “after that” (Targ., de Dieu, Gesenius [Schlott., Con., Word., Rod.], etc.), but as its position immediately before עוֹרִי shows, a preposition [a prepos. when used as a conjunc. being always followed immediately by the verb; see Job_42:7; Lev_14:43. Rendered as a prepos. the meaning of the phrase “after my skin” will be “after the loss of it.” Comp. Job_21:21, אחריו, “after him,” to wit, after his death]. נִקְּפוּ, however (which is not to be taken [with Hofmann, Schriftbeweis II., 2, 503] as a Chaldaizing variation of נִקְּפוּת = an envelope, Germ. Umspannung), is an appositional relative clause, referring to עוֹרִי. It is found in the third plur. perf. Piel of נקף, “to break off” (in Piel used particularly of the hewing down of trees, Isa_10:34. Hence the third plur. here being used impersonally (comp. Job_4:19; Job_7:3; Job_18:18), “after my skin, which is broken off,” i. e. cut off piecemeal, mutilated, broken in pieces [E. V. unnecessarily supplies “worms” as subject]. The reference is to the skin together with the tender parts of the flesh [בַּדִּים] adhering to it, which gradually rot away, so that the meaning is similar to that of Job_18:13. The זֹאת added at the end of this member of the verse cannot possibly be interpreted as equivalent to זֹאת תִּהְיֶה, “this shall be” (Targ.; Gesen.) [for in that case זֹאת should have stood at the head of the clause]. We must either, with Arnheim, Stickel, Hahn, Delitzsch [Lee, Rodwell, and preferred by Green], explain it to mean “so, in this manner,” connecting it in this sense adverbially with נִקְּפוּ “thus torn to pieces,” Del.), or else explain it deictically, as pointing to the skin, or, since עוֹר is strictly masc., as pointing to the body as here represented by that term, the totality of Job’s members and organs. [The distinction which the E. V. makes between the “skin” and the “body,” the destruction of the latter being “after” that of the former seems not sufficiently warranted. Such a distinction must have been more clearly indicated. The construction is indeed a peculiar one, and yet exceedingly pathetic in its broken irregularity. “And after my skin—when it is all fallen off by decay—this tattered thing which you now see!”—E.] In respect to the various renderings of the ancients, especially those of the Targ., of Jerome, of Luther, etc., see below [Doctrinal and Ethical] the history of the exposition of the passage.—And free from my flesh, shall I behold Eloah.—If מִבְּשָׂרִי be explained “out of my flesh” [or, as in this sense it is rendered by many, “in my flesh,” either referring it to his resurrection-body, E. V., Good, Lee, etc.; or] with a reference to the restored body of the sufferer (Eichh. 5. Cölln, Knapp, Hofmann) [Noyes, Wemyss, Elz., Rod., who render by “in”], it would form an inappropriate antithesis to עוֹרִי in a, which would be all the more strange, seeing that only a little before, in Job_19:20, they had been used as in substance synonymous. Neither can the expression signify exactly “from behind, or within my flesh” (against Volck); this meaning would require בְּעַד, or מִבַּעַד (after Son_4:1; Son_4:3; Son_6:7). Hence מִן is to be rendered privatively, “away from, without, free from” (comp. Job_11:15; Job_21:9). In that case, however, the reference is not to the last point of time in Job’s earthly life, when he would be relieved of all his flesh, i. e., would be completely reduced to a skeleton (Chrysost., Umbr., Hirz., Stickel, Heiligst., Hahn, Renan, etc.), but to his condition after departing from this earth, a condition which if not absolutely incorporeal, is at least one of freedom from the body. It refers to the time when, freed from his suffering, miserable, decayed σάρξ, he shall behold God as a glorified spirit (Ewald, Vaihinger, Schlottm., Arnheim, Delitzsch, Dillmann [Con., Green]). This latter interpretation is favored decidedly by the Imperf. אֶחֱזֶה, which is not to be rendered in the present (as by Mercier, Hahn, H. Schultz [Bibl. Theol. des A. T., Vol. II., 1870], etc.) : “I behold God even now in the spirit;” for then the circumstantial particulars, אַחַר עוֹרִי and מִבְּשָׂרִי, would appear meaningless, and almost unintelligible, but which is certainly to be construed in the future, expressing the hope in a joyful beholding of God hereafter, (comp. the similar meaning of אחזה in Psa_17:15, also of יֶחֱזוּ in Psa_11:7), that is to say, as the following verse shows yet more clearly, in such a beholding of God in a glorified state after death (Mat_5:8; 1Jn_3:2, etc ). The expression of such a hope here “does not, after Job_14:13-15; Job_16:18-21, come unexpectedly; and it is entirely in accordance with the inner progress of the drama, that the thought of a redemption from Hades, expressed in the former passage, and the demand expressed in the latter passage for the rescue of the honor of his blood, which is even now guaranteed him by his witness in heaven, are here united together into the confident assurance that his blood and his dust will not be declared by God the Redeemer as innocent, without his being in some way conscious of it, though freed from this his decaying body.” (Delitzsch).
Job_19:27 describes, in triumphant anticipation of the thing hoped for, how Job will then behold God. Whom I shall behold for myself, to wit, for my salvation; the לִי, “for me” (emphatic Dat. commodi, as in Psa_56:10; Psa_118:6) being decidedly emphasized, as also אֲנִי, “I,” by the use of which Job makes prominent the thought that he, who was so grievously persecuted, and delivered over to certain death, was destined some day to enjoy a blessed beholding of God. And whom mine eyes shall see, and not a stranger.—רָאוּ after the Fut. אֶחֱזֶה is the Perf. of certainty, or of futurity (præt. propheticum s. confidentiæ), and וְלֹאגזָר, can only be nominative, synonymous with וְלֹא אַהֵר (et non alius, Vulg.; so also LXX., Targ. [E. V.], and most), not accusative, as held by Gesenius in Thes., Vaih., Umbreit, Stickel, Hahn, v. Hofm. [Noyes, Wemyss, Carey, Elzas, Green], who take the rendering which they assume, et non alium, in the sense of et non adversarium, “and not as an enemy”—which is decidedly at variance with the universal use of זָר, which never signifies “an enemy” [never at least except indirectly, and in a national connection, a hostile alien: it can scarcely be regarded as the word which Job would most naturally use in describing God’s personal relations to himself,—E.], and also at variance with the clause וְעֵינַי רָאוּ, which ought not to stand without an object, if וְלֹארֹזָר were an appositional accusative. It is undoubtedly to be taken as a nominative [in cor-relation to אֲנִי and עֵינַי, “I—my eyes”] “and not a stranger, not another” (with which comp. Pro_27:2), containing an allusion to Job’s three opponents, who could not share in this future joyful beholding of God the Vindicator, at least not in the same blessed experience of it as himself. Moreover the very fact that Job here so obviously glances aside at his opponents, with their hostile disposition, precludes the supposition of Hirzel and others, who put the time of the beholding here prophesied in this life, and regard Job_38:1 seq. as the fulfillment of the prophecy; for comp. Job_42:7 seq. [Zöckler’s argument seems to be that the vindication recorded at the close of the book could not be the vindication here anticipated by Job for the reason that in the former case God did really appear to the friends, as well as to Job, whereas they were to be excluded (so also Delitzsch) from the appearance to which Job looked forward. But it is unnatural to suppose that the Theophany and the Vindication in which Job here exults, would be limited either to himself or to his sympathizing adherents. The very object of it presupposes the presence, as witnesses, of those who had wronged him. When Job accordingly says: “I shall see Him—my eyes shall behold Him—and not a stranger”—he is not so much intimating that they would be excluded, as denying that he himself would be excluded. The vindication was not to be in his own absence, and before a stranger, who would feel no interest in the matter, but—in some strange, unaccountable way—he would be there, participating in the awful glory and the blessed triumph of the scene. This view of the meaning also gives the most satisfactory explanation of זָר, not an “enemy,” as shown above, which would be inappropriate, nor “another,” which would be too general, but a “stranger,” who would have no interest in the result. The jubilant tone of Job’s mind is strikingly exhibited in the repetition of the pronoun: “I—for me—my eyes,” the climax being reached in וְּלֹא־זָר.—E.]—Finally, the fact that Job here hopefully promises this future beholding of God not only to himself as the personal subject, but in particular to his eyes, may certainly with perfectly good right be appealed to in proof that the condition in which he hopes to enjoy it, viz. disembodied, freed from the earthly בשר, is to be understood not as one of abstract incorporeality, or absolute spirituality—for this is a representation which is decidedly opposed to the concrete pneumatico-realistic mode of thought found in the Old Testament Scriptures, which does not even represent God as abstractly incorporeal.—My reins pine (therefore) in my bosom:viz. with longing for such a view. כָּלוּ, lit. “they are consumed, waste away, languish; elsewhere used of the soul pining away with longing (Psa_84:3 [Psa_84:2]; Psa_119:81), or of the eyes (Psa_69:4 [Psa_69:3]; Psa_119:123; comp. above Job_11:20; Job_17:5), here of that inner organ which is regarded as the seat of the tenderest, inmost and deepest affections, being used also in this sense in Psa_16:7; Psa_7:10 [Psa_7:9] (Del., Biblical Psychology, p. 268 [Clark, p. 317]). Comp. also the Arabic phrase culaja tadhûbu, “my reins melt.” Essentially the same meaning is given to the phrase in the various renderings which on other accounts are objectionable, e. g. the Syriac: “my reins waste away completely by reason of my lot;” that of Hahn: “if my reins perish in my bosom.” [E. V. and Good: “though my reins be consumed within me;” Lee and Conant: “when my reins are (or shall have been) consumed within me;” either of which renderings is far less expressive as limiting the description to Job’s physical sufferings, now, or in death, and failing to bring out the pathetic emotion with which the passage expresses Job’s ardent longing for the day of his vindication—a meaning which is not only far more in accordance with the general usage of the words (see reff. above), but also most touchingly appropriate here. As Dillmann also remarks: “These words indicate that what Job has said just before expresses something altogether extraordinary.”—E.]
6. Third Division: Conclusion: Earnestly warning the friends against the further continuance of their attacks: Job_19:28-29. [It is worthy of note how lofty the tone which Job, inspired by the vision of his future vindication, here assumes towards the friends. No longer a suppliant for pity (Job_19:21), or trembling before their threats of the Divine vengeance, he now threatens them with that vengeance in case they persevere in their unjust treatment of him.—E.]
Job_19:28. If ye think [lit. say] How will we pursue him!—כִּי is neither causal (Stick.) [Rodwell], nor affirmative, “truly” (Umbreit, Hirzel, Vaih.), [nor adversative “but” (E. V.), which requires an untenable rendering of the clauses which follow; nor temporal—“then” (Wemyss, Renan, Elzas, who refer it to Job’s restoration in this life; Good and Lee, who refer it to the resurrection), for this is inconsistent with the future נִרְדּף]; but, as the analogy of Job_21:28 teaches, a conditional particle “if” [“when” Ewald; “since,” Noyes], so that Job_19:28 is the protasis of which Job_19:29 is the apodosis. מַה in that case is neither an interrogative “how?” (Böttcher) [Carey], nor “why?” (Umbreit, Hirzel [E. V., Rodmann, Elz.], etc.), but exclamatory: “how! how much!” comp. Job_26:2-3; Son_7:2.—In regard to the construction of רדף with לְ, found only here, comp. that with אֶל in Jdg_7:25. With this exclamation of the friends there is connected in b the expression of an opinion, or a thought on their part in the oratio obliqua:and (if you think): the root of the matter is found in me, i. e. the cause of my suffering lies only in me, viz. in my sin. As regards this connection of an oratio obliqua with an oratio recta, especially with exclamatory clauses, comp. Job_22:17; Job_35:3; Ewald, § 338. According to the reading of the ancient versions (LXX., Targ., Vulg.), and of some MSS., which have בּוֹ instead of בִּי, this interchange of the direct and conditional form of expression is removed, assuredly against the original construction. [According to another view, followed by the translators of the E. V., “the root of the matter” is to be taken in a good sense of Job’s piety (Barnes), or the “justice of his cause” (Renan). The expression has indeed become in English a proverbial one for religious sincerity, and we who have become accustomed to it in this sense may find a little difficulty in releasing our minds from the power of that association. It will be found difficult, however, to harmonize such a thought with the connection. In the E. V., for example, no one can help feeling that the connection between Job_19:28 and the preceding passage has an unsatisfactory abruptness and lameness about it, and even this connection, such as it is, rests on a forced rendering of כִּי which is properly adversative only after an expressed or implied negative. And in general it may be said, that whether we regard Job_19:28 b as a declaration of Job’s sincerity by himself or by his friends, it will be found next to impossible to put it into proper and natural relations to Job_19:28 a on the one hand, and to Job_19:29 on the other. The most intelligible, tenable and forcible construction is that given above by Zöckler (and adopted by Ewald, Dillmann, Schlottmann, Delitzsch, Conant, Green), which regards Job_19:28-29 as a lofty warning to the friends, inspired by the triumphant anticipation of Job_19:25-27, bidding them—if they continued to persecute him, and to charge him with harboring within himself the root of the calamities which had befallen him—to beware of the sword!—E.]
Job_19:29. Apodosis: Be ye afraid (לָכֶם “for yourselves,” as in Hos_10:5) before the sword, i. e. the avenging sword of God; comp. חֶרֶב in Job_15:22; Job_27:14; Deu_32:41; Zec_13:7, etc. [“a sword, without the art. in order to combine the idea of what is boundless, endless and terrific with the indefinite,” Del.]. This sufficiently distinct threat of Divine punishment is confirmed by that which follows: for wrath (befalls) the transgressions of the sword, that ye may know that (there is) a judgment.—חֵמָה, “glow of wrath, rage,” can scarcely be regarded as the subject, with the meaning: “for wrath (against friends) is one of the crimes of the sword” (Schultens, Stickel, Schlottmann), [Conant, Noyes, who with less than his usual accuracy renders by “malice”]. Apart from the difficulty that עֲוֹנוֹת can by no means, without modification be = the partitive מֵעֲוֹנוֹת, the meaning is not at all suited to the true position of Job as regards the friends, who might rather reproach him with anger, than he them. Rather is חֵמָה a noun in the predicate, the meaning being: “wrath are the sword’s crimes,” i.e. they carry wrath as a reward in themselves, they cause wrath; they are infallibly overtaken by it (Rosenm., Hahn, Delitzsch, Dillmann, etc.). [“Crimes of the sword are not such as are committed with the sword—for such are not treated of here, and, with Arnh. and Hahn, to understand חרב of the sword of ‘hostilely mocking words’ is arbitrary and artificial—but such as have incurred the sword. Job thinks of slanders and blasphemy.” Delitzsch]. This explanation is better than that of Hirzel, Ewald [Rodwell], etc.:“for wrath, i.e. something to be dreaded, are the punishments of the sword,” for עֲוִֹנוֹת can scarcely be taken in the sense of punishments, chastisements; even in Psa_31:11; Psa_38:5; Lam_4:6, עֲווֹן signifies not so much punishment, as rather evil-doing, sin together with its mischievous consequences. The above interpretation is not, it is true, altogether satisfactory; nevertheless, if we should attempt to amend the passage, it would be better to introduce a לְ before עֲוֹנוֹת, than either to change חֵמָה to הֵמָּה (Gesenius: “for such, i. e. such transgressions as yours, are crimes of the sword) or to introduce the constr. state חֲמַת before עֲוֹנוֹת, which is the construction given by the Pesh. and Vulg., the latter of which reads: quoniam ultor iniquitatum gladius est. A difficulty is also presented in the word שַׁדִּין (K’thibh) or שַׁדּוּן (K’ri) at the end of the last member, occasioned by the fact that אֲשֶׁר = שֶׁ does not elsewhere occur in the Book of Job, as also by the fact that the rendering of the LXX.—ποῦ ἔστιν αὐτῶν ἡ ὕλη (or according to the Cod. Alex, ὅτι οὐδαμοῦ αὐτῶν ἡ ἰσχύς ἐστιν) probably points to another text in the original. The above rendering, however: “that ye may know that there is a judgment,” is in general accord with the context, and corresponds well to the meaning of these closing verses. It is not necessary with Heiligst., Dillmann, Ewald (2d Ed.), to read שַׁדַּי: “that ye may know the Almighty;” nor (which is moreover linguistically inadmissible) to regard שַׁדִּין as a variation of שַׁדַּי (Eichhorn, Hahn, Ewald, 1st Ed.), which would yield the same meaning, [“דִּין has everywhere else the signification judicium, e. g. by Elihu, Job_36:17; and also often in the Book of Proverbs, e. g. Job_20:8 (comp. in the Arabizing supplement, Job_31:8). “The final judgment is in Aramaic דִּינָא רַבָּא; the last day in Heb. and Arabic, יֹום הַדִּין, jaum ed-din. To give to שׁדין, “that (there is) a judgment,” this dogmatically definite meaning, is indeed, from its connection with the historical recognition of the plan of redemption, inadmissible; but there is nothing against understanding the conclusion of Job’s speech according to the conclusion of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which belongs to the same age of literature.” Delitzsch.]
[“Thus does this lofty tragical discourse combine in itself the deepest humiliation and depression with the highest Divine elevation, the most utter despair with the most animated overflowing hope and the most blissful certainty. Not only does it occupy the lofty centre of the human controversy and of the whole action, but it also causes the first real and decisive revolution in Job’s favor, because in it Job’s two ruling thoughts and tendencies, the unbelief springing from superstition, and the higher genuine faith just forming itself come into such sharp and happy contact that the latter rushes forth out of its insignificance with irresistible might, and although the discord is not as yet harmonized, from this time on it maintains itself, gradually prevails more and more, until at last it remains supreme and alone.” Ewald.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The history of the interpretation of Job_19:25-27, the passage of greatest theological importance in this chapter, exhibits three principal views of the meaning. Of these the two oldest rest on the texts of the ancient versions, and particularly of the LXX. and Vulg., which are more or less erroneous, and yield results which are one-sided and partially perverted. It is only the latest of these which, resting on the original text, avoids these one-sided results, and sets forth the poet’s thought with unprejudiced objectivity.
a. A rigidly orthodox, or if the phrase be preferred, an ultra-orthodox (ultra-eschatological) view, which can be traced back into the earliest periods of the church, assumes that the passage predicts a resuscitation of the body by Christ on the last day. This assumption rests on the rendering of Job_19:25 b, and Job_19:26 a by the LXX., partly indeed also on the Targum, but more especially on the rendering of the passage in the Vulgate—a rendering which flows out of the older version, and which pushes still further its misinterpretation. The LXX. presents a version of the words which for the most part indeed is opposed, rather than otherwise, to the eschatological view, which limits Job’s expectations to the present earthly life, which in fact almost wholly precludes the reference to the future. But the Words beginning with יקום, Job_19:25 b, (instead of which it read יָקִים), and ending with זאת, Job_19:26 a, which it combines together so as to form one sentence, it renders thus: ἀναστήσει δέ μου τὸ σῶμα τὸ ἀναντλοῡν μοι ταῦτα (Cod. Alex.: ἀναστῆσαι μου τὸ δέρμα μου τὸ ἀναντλοῦν ταῦτα). According to this rendering a future resuscitation after death of the sorely afflicted body of Job is as distinctly as possible expressed. The Targumist expresses essentially the same meaning: “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and hereafter my redemption will arise (i. e. be made, actual, become a reality) over the dust, and after that my skin is again made whole (or—according to another reading—“is swollen up”) this will happen, and out of my flesh shall I behold God. On the basis of these interpretations, which were rooted in the hopes of a resurrection cherished by the Jews after the exile, and especially on the basis of the former [that of the LXX.], Clemens Romanus (1 Cor. 26), Origen (Comm. in Mat_22:23 seq.), Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. XVIII.), Ephraem, Epiphanius (Orat. Ancorat), and other fathers before Jerome, found in the passages a proof of the church doctrine of the ἀνάστασις τῆς σαρκός. Still more definitely and completely did the passage acquire the character of a Scriptural proof of this doctrine from Jerome, as the author of the authorized Latin translation, which was adopted by the Western Church during the Middle Ages, as well as by the Catholic Church of recent times. While the predecessor of his work, the Itala, had somewhat indefinitely expressed a meaning approximating that of the LXX. (“super terram resurget cutis mea,” etc.), the Vulgate set aside the last remnant of a possibility that the passage should be understood of a restitution or a restoration of Job in this life. This it did by introducing into the text of Job_19:25-26 three inaccuracies of the most glaring sort. For יָקוּם (or יָקִים) it substituted without more ado אָקוּם, surrecturus sum; אַחֲרוֹן it rendered, in novissimo die! and rendering נִקְּפוּ as Niphal of קיף = נקף, “to surround, to circle,” it gave to it no less arbitrarily the meaning of circumdabor, so that the whole passage is made to read thus: Job_19:25 : “scio enim, quod redemptor meus vivit et in novissimo die de terra surrecturus sum; Job_19:26 : et rursum circumdabor pelle mea et in came mea videbo Deum meum; Job_19:27 : quem visurus sum ego ipse et, oculi mei conspecturi sunt et non alius; reposita est hæc spes mea in sinu meo.”—This interpretation, which was emphatically approved and recommended by Augustine (De Civ. Dei XXII., 29), held its ground through the Middle Ages among all Christian expositors, and all the more necessarily that a revision of the same after the Hebrew could not be undertaken by any one of them. Neither does Luther’s translation—“But I know that my Redeemer liveth, and He will hereafter raise [or quicken] me out of the earth, and I shall thereupon be surrounded with this my shin, and shall see God in my flesh”—break through the spell of this doctrinally prejudiced interpretation; and just as little as Luther do the distinguished Reformed translators of the Bible, e. g., Leo Juda, Joh. Piscator, the authors of the English Version, etc., exhibit any substantial departure from the meaning or phraseology of the Vulgate. Thus the rendering under consideration succeeded in acquiring the most important influence even in the evangelical theological tradition. It came to be cited in Church symbols (e. g., Form. Conc. Epit., p. 375 R.) [Westminster Conf. of Faith XXXII. 2], catechisms and doctrinal manuals as a cardinal proof-text for the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and occasionally even for the divinity of Christ (on account of the אֱלוֹהַ of Job_19:26). It became a leading theme of sacred poets (e. g., of Louisa Henrietta v. Brandenburg, who wrote “Jesus, meine Zuversicht” [Jesus, my Trust], of P. Gerhard, the author of “Ich weiss dass mein Erlöser lebt” [of Charles Wesley: “I know that my Redeemer lives”]), and in general it has received the most manifold application alike in the domain of speculative theology, and in that of practical and ascetic piety. Even such thorough exegetes as Cocceius, Seb. Schmidt, Starke, while in subordinate details occasionally departing from the traditional ecclesiastical version, advocate strenuously the direct christological and eschatological reference of the passage (comp. also Jablonsky, De Redemptore stante super pulverem, Francof. ad V. Job 1772: Gude and Rambach: De Jobo Christi incarnationis vate, Halæ 1730, etc.). A number even of able Orientalists, and independent Hebrew scholars since the last century, such as Schultens, J. H. and J. D. Michaelis, Velthusen, Rosenmüller. Rosengarten, the English writers Mason, Good, Hales, J. Pye Smith [Scott, Lee, Carey, Wordsworth],2 and quite recently the Catholic Welte, think that notwithstanding the various amendments which following the original text they make to the version of the Vulg., or in a measure to that of Luther, the passage must still be held to teach, at least in general, the Church doctrine of the resurrection, in that they favor the inadmissible rendering of וְלֹא־זָר as = neque ego alius (“and truly I not as another, I as unchanged”), or understand “the appearing of the Redeemer on the dust” as having for its object the quickening of the dead, and hence as referring to the Second Advent of Christ, or find denoted in מִבְּשָׂרִי the glorified flesh of the resurrection body, or adopt other explanations of a like character (against which see above in the Exegetical and Critical Remarks).
b. A one-sided anti-eschatological view which limits the object of Job’s hope and longing wholly to this life, which may also be called the skeptical or hypercritical rationalistic view has for its precursors in the Ancient Church Chrysostom, John of Damascus, and other fathers of the Oriental Church. By an allegorizing interpretation of the language of the LXX. ἀναστήσει δέ μου τὸ σῶμα τὸ ἀναντλοῦν μοι ταῦτα, these writers refine away the eschatological meaning which undoubtedly belongs to the passage as pointing to the hereafter, and refer it to the removal of his disease which Job hoped for, and the rehabilitation of his disfigured body; and they saw that the phraseology of the Septuagint in the remaining verses of the passage favored this interpretation. Most of the Jewish Exegetes during the Middle Ages adhered to their view so far as the principle was concerned, the principle, to wit, of excluding from the passage any messianic and eschatological application while in respect to many of the details they hit upon novel expedients, which were in part of a most wonderful and arbitrary character. The more freely inclined theologians of the Reformed Churches also, such as Mercier, Grotius, Le Clerc, substantially adopted this view. After the time of Eichhorn (Allg. Biblioth der Bibl. Literatur I. 3, 1787) it acquired even a temporary ascendency over the opposite opinions, and that not only with commentators of rationalistic tendencies, such as Justi, v. Cölln, Knobel, Hirzel, Stickel, etc., but even with supra-naturalists, such as Dathe, Döderlein, Baumgarten-Crusius, Knapp, Augusti, Umbreit, and even with Hahn, strictly orthodox as he is elsewhere (De spe immortalitatis sub V. T. gradatim exculta, 1845, and his Comm. on the passage), with v. Hofmann (concerning whose peculiar rendering of נִקְּפוּ see above on Job_19:26), with the English theologians Wemyss, Stuart, Barnes [Warburton, Divine Legation, Book VI., Sec. 2; Patrick, Kennicott, Noyes, Rodwell; to whom may be added Elzas and Bernard], and others. Almost all the advocates of this view agree in holding that in Job_19:25 seq. Job, having just before expressed the wish that he might see his protestation of innocence perpetuated, utters his conviction that such a perpetuation for posterity would not be necessary, that he himself would yet live to see the restoration of his honor and of his health, and that even though he should waste away to a most pitiful skeleton, he would be made to rejoice by the appearance of God to benefit him and none others.
c. An intermediate view, or one exhibiting a moderate eschatology, which resting on the most exact philological and impartial treatment of the original text, avoids the one-sided conclusions of the two older interpretations, has been advanced and defended by Ewald (Die Dichter des Alten Bundes, 1st Ed., Vol. III., 1836), and substantially adopted by Vaihinger, Schlottman, v. Gerlach, Hupfeld (Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1850, No. 35 seq.), Oehler (Grundzüge der alt-testamentlîchen Weisheit, 1854), König (Die Unsterblichkeitsidee im B. Job, 1855, Hoelemann (Sächs. Kirchen—und Schulbl. 1853, No. 48 seq.), Del. (Art. Job in Herzog’s Real-Encycl., and in his Commentary), Dillmann, Davidson (Introduction II. 224 seq.) [Conant, Canon Cook in Smith’s Bib. Dict. Art. “Job;” MacClintock & Strong’s Cyclop. Art. “Job”], and even by the Jewish expositors Arnheim and Löwenthal. According to the unanimous opinion of these investigators, Job here expresses the hope, not indeed of a bodily resuscitation from death, but nevertheless of a future beholding of God in a spiritual glorified state. It is not the hope of a resurrection; it is, however, the hope of immortality, to which he is here lifted up, and that too with great clearness and the most vivid definiteness, above the ordinary popular conception of the ancient Israelites, as it has been previously declared even by himself.
2. We have, in our Exegetical Remarks above, expressed our concurrence in this modified eschatological or futuristic exposition of the passage, because, on the one side, the unmodified doctrinal orthodox rendering presents too many linguistic errors and arbitrary constructions to have any scientific value whatever attached to it, and because on the other side the view which excludes every reference to the hereafter can be established only by allegorically or rationalistically refining away the obvious phraseology of the passage. The latter interpretation, which Hirzel in particular has attempted to support with great argumentative acuteness, cannot be successfully maintained.
a. The connection with Job_19:23-24 cannot be urged in its favor, for Job by no means contradicts the wish here expressed that the protestation of his innocence might be preserved for posterity, when in Job_19:25 seq. lie declares the assurance of his triumphant justification by God hereafter; rather in proclaiming this assurance he but takes a new step upward in the inspired conviction that God will at last interpose as the Avenger of his innocence.
b. Job’s former hopelessness, as he contemplates the mournful lot of him who goes down into Sheol, cannot be used as an argument in favor of that view; for Job’s former discourses are by no means wanting in preparatory intimations of a clear and well-defined hope in future retribution and a blessed immortality: see especially Job 14:18–15, and Job_16:18-21.
c. Nor finally can the fact that neither by Job’s friends, nor in the historical issue of the colloquy in the Epilogue is there any direct reference made to this expression of Job’s hope of immortality, be urged against our interpretation; for “it is a general characteristic of all the discourses of the friends, that they—spellbound as they are within the circle of their external, legal views—scarcely enter at all in detail upon the contents of Job’s discourses; and in Job 38 seq. God does not undertake the task of a critic, who passes judgment, one by one, on all the propositions of the contending parties. That the poet, however, should have framed for the drama a different issue from that which it has, is not to be desired, for the theme of the poem is not the question touching the immortality of man’s spirit, but the question: how is the suffering of the righteous to be harmonized with the Divine justice” (Dillmann)? Such a change of the issue, moreover, would be undesirable for the reason that the very contrast between the deliverance and exaltation which Job here hopes for as something which lies after death, and the favor which God visits upon him even in this life, a favor infinitely surpassing all that he hopes and waits for, prays for or understands—this is one of the most striking beauties of the poem, constitutes indeed the real focus of its splendor and its crowning close (comp. 5. Gerlach in the Homiletical Remarks on Job_19:25 seq.). Such a sudden unexpected blazing up of the bright light of the hope of immortality, without frequent references to it afterwards, and without other preparations or antecedent steps leading to it than a wish (in Job_14:13 seq.), and a demand of similar meaning (Job_16:18 seq.)—corresponds perfectly to the style of our poet, who, having assigned his hero to the patriarchal age, does not ascribe to him his own settled certainty of faith, representing him as possessing such a certainty in the same clear, complete measure as himself; he aims rather to represent him as striving after such a possession. To this it may be added that Hirzel’s view, which places the object of the sufferer’s hope altogether in this life is contradicted by the fact that Job in what he has already said has repeatedly described his end as near, his strength as completely broken, his disease as wholly incurable, his hope of an earthly restoration of his prosperity as having altogether disappeared (Job_6:8-14; Job_7:6; Job_13:13-15; Job_14:17-22; Job_17:11-16). With such extreme hopelessness, how would it be possible to reconcile the expression in Job_19:25 seq. of the very opposite, as is assumed to be the case by the interpretation which refers that passage to this life? And why again hereafter, in Job_30:23, does the gloomy outlook of a near and certain death find renewed expression in a way which cuts off all possibility of cherishing any hopes in regard to this life (see on the passage)? Wherefore such an unseemly wavering between the solemnly emphasized certainty of the hope in an appearance of Eloah, and the not less emphatic expression of the certainty that he has no hope in such an appearance? What would the artistic plan of the poem in general gain by allowing the hero in the middle of it to predict the final issue, but afterwards to assume, even as he had already done before, that the exact opposite of this is the only possible issue?
3. Seeing then that every consideration favors most decidedly the view which interprets the passage in accordance with a moderate eschatology, the question still remains: whether that beholding of God after this earthly life, which Job here anticipates as taking place concurrently with the vindication of his honor and his redemption, is conceived of by him as something that is to be realized in the sphere of abstract spirituality, or whether his conception of it is more concrete, realistic, in analogy with the relations of this earthly life? In other words, the question is: whether his idea of immortality is abstractly spiritualistic, or one which up to a certain point approximates the New Testament doctrine of a resurrection? We have already declared above (on Job_19:27 b) in favor of the latter opinion; because (1) The mention of the eyes with which he expects to see God admits only of that pneumatico-realistic meaning, under the influence of which the Old Testament speaks even of eyes, ears, and other bodily organs as belonging to God, and in general furnishes solid supports to the proposition of Oetinger touching corporeity as the “end of the ways of God.” To this it may be added that (2) the absolute incorporealness of Job’s condition after death is in no wise expressed by the phrase מִבְּשָׂרִי, notwithstanding the privative meaning which in any case belongs to מִן, that this expression merely indicates the object of Job’s hope to be a release from his present miserable body of flesh, and that accordingly what Job here anticipates is (gradually accomplished to be sure, but) not specifically different from that which the Apostle calls τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν (Rom_8:23; comp. Rom_7:25), or what on another occasion he expresses in more negative form by the proposition: ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἶμα βασιλείαν Θεοῦ κληρονομῆσαι οὐ δύνανται οὐδὲ ἡ φθορὰ τὴν ἀφθαρσίαν κληρονομεῖ (1Co_15:50).—Still further (3) the concluding verse of Job 14. shows that Job conceives even of man’s condition in Sheol as by no means one of abstract incorporeality, but rather invests this gloomy and mournful stage of his existence after death with two factors of being (בשׂר and נפשׁ), conceiving of them as existing in conjunction, and as standing in some kind of a relation to each other (see above on the passage). Finally (4): The perfected realistic hopes of a resurrection, found in the later Old Testament literature from the time of Ezekiel and Daniel on, would be absolutely inconceivable, they would be found drifting in the air without attachment or support, they would be without all historical precedent, if in the passage before us the hope of immortality be understood in the light of an abstract spirituality. What Job says here is certainly nothing more than a germ of the more complete resurrection creed of a later time, but it must indubitably be regarded as such a germ, as such a seminal anticipation of that which the Israel of a later period believed and expected in respect to the future state. Its relation to the perfected eschatology of those prophets of the exile, as well as to the post-exilic literature of the Apocrypha (for example the II. Book of Maccabees) is like that “of the protevangelium to the perfected soteriology of revelation; it presents only the first lines of the picture, which is worked up in detail later on, but also an outline, sketched in such a way that all the knowledge of later times may be added to it” (Delitzsch)—as from of old the Church has been doing, and still is doing, in her epitaphs, hymns, liturgies, and musical compositions, and this too with some degree of right, although largely in violation of the law of exegetical sobriety.
[The following additional considerations, suggested by the passage, and the context, may be urged in favor of the view here advocated. (1) Job, as the context shows, is, while uttering this sublime prediction, painfully conscious of what he is suffering in the body. Note the whole passage, Job_19:13-20, where the estrangement of his most intimate friends and kindred is associated with the loathsome condition into which his disease has brought him. Note again how in the heart of the prophecy itself (Job_19:26), he is still unable to repress the utterance of this same painful consciousness of his bodily condition. If now he anticipates here a Divine Intervention which is to vindicate him, is it not natural that he should include in that vindication, albeit vaguely and remotely, some compensation for the physical wrong he was suffering? If God would appear to recompense the indignity to his good name, would He not appear at the same time to recompense the indignity from which his body had so grievously suffered? In a word, would not the same experience which here blossoms so gloriously into the prophetic assurance of a justification of his spiritual integrity, bear at least the bud of a resurrection-hope for the body, although the latter would be, ex necessitate rei, less perfectly developed than the former? Surely the Day of Restitution, which he knows is to come, will bring with it some compensation for this grievous bodily ill, the dark shadow of which flits across even this bright vision of faith! This presumption is still further heightened when we note that he himself, with his own eyes, is to witness that restitution.
(2). The phrase עַל־עָפָר is not without significance. It certainly means something more specific than “on the earth.” The Goel is to stand “on dust” (or “on the dust”—article poetically omitted), the place where lies the dust of the body gathered to the dust of the earth. This is the only exegesis of עפר that is either etymologically admissible, or suited to the context. The Vindication is thus brought into local connection with the grave. And this can mean only one thing. It shows at least that Job could not conceive of this future restitution as taking place away and apart from his dust. His body, his physical self, was in some way—he has no conception how—to be interested in it.
(3). The expression מִבְּשָׂרִי is no objection to this view, even with the privative sense which our Commy. (and correctly I think) attaches to מִן. It does not mean,—it is doubtful, as Zöckler remarks, whether for a Hebrew it could mean,—an abstract unqualified spirituality. At all events the connection shows that here, as often elsewhere in Job (comp. Job_7:15; Job_14:22; Job_34:21, etc.), בשׂר is used specifically of the body as the seat of suffering and corruption, the τὸ φθαρτὸν τοῦτο of Paul. Twice indeed in this immediate connection it is used in this sense, to wit, in Job_19:19, and Job_19:22 (figuratively, however). Observe particularly that in Job_19:19, as in Job_19:26 the “flesh” is associated with the “skin” in describing his emaciated condition. When therefore he describes his physical condition at the time of his ultimate restitution first by the clause “after my skin, which shall have been destroyed—even this!” and then by the clause, “and without my flesh,” what he means evidently is, when skin and flesh are both no more, when the destruction, the decay, begun by disease, and to be continued in the grave, has finished its course; then would he behold God.—“After my skin”—and “without my flesh” are thus parallelistic equivalents, of which still another equivalent is found in “dust,” the last result of bodily decay.—These elements of the passage thus fix the place and the time of the coming restitution; the place—the grave, the time—the remote future, when his body should be dust.
It seems clear therefore that the passage cannot be regarded on the one hand as a distinct formal enunciation of a literal resurrection, for the last view which he gives us of his body is as that which is no more, as dust. Just as little on the other hand is it a mere vindication of his memory, a declaration of the integrity of his cause, an abstract spiritual beholding of God, for he is conscious of physical suffering—he anticipates a complete restitution—one therefore which will bring some reparation of the wrong which he has suffered in the body, the grave where his dust lies is to be the scene of his vindication, and he, the אֲנִי now speaking, the personal I contrasted with “a stranger,” as complete realistic a personality, therefore, as any זָר then living,—he is to be there, seeing with his own eyes, and exulting in the sight. This necessarily implies a rehabilitation of the man, as well as of his cause, a rehabilitation after death, as the terms and internal scope of the passage prove, as well as the external plan and scope of the book; and if not a resurrection, it at least carries us a long way forward in the direction of that truth. It is, as Delitzsch says above, an outline of that doctrine which needs but a few touches to complete the representation. Indeed it may be said that if the passage had contained one additional thought, more definitely linking the dust of Job’s body with that future אני, that vaguely foreshadowed organism with the eyes of which he was to see God, the enunciation of a resurrection would be almost complete. But that thought is wanting. It is not in the Book of Job. That which is given, however, points to the resurrection; and the pæan of the Old Testament saint, this old “song of the night,” breathing forth faith’s yearning towards the “glorious appearing” of Him who is “The Last” as He is “The First,” of which, though the singer understands it not, he is yet triumphantly assured, may be chanted by the Christian believer with no less confidence, and with a truer and more precious realization of what it means.
(4) The interpretation which refers the vindication of Job to this life is sufficiently refuted above. The argument, urged by Zöckler as by others, that such an anticipation of a vindication before death is inconsistent with Job’s frequent declarations that he had no hope, and that he was near his grave, is perhaps fairly enough answered by Noyes: “As if a person, who is represented as agitated by the most violent and opposite emotions, could be expected to be consistent in his sentiments and language. What can be more natural than that Job, in a state of extreme depression, arising from the thought of his wrongs, the severity of his afflictions, and the natural tendency of his disease, should express himself in the language of despair, and yet that he should be animated soon after by conscious innocence and the thought of God’s justice, goodness and power, to break forth into the language of hope and confidence?” Job’s utterances are in fact marked by striking inconsistencies, as he is swayed by this feeling or by that. The following considerations are, however, decisive against this view.
a. It furnishes a far less adequate explanation of the remarkable elevation and ardor of feeling which Job here exhibits than the other view, which refers it to the hereafter.
b. However well it may harmonize with some of the expressions used, there are others with which it is altogether irreconcilable. This is especially true of עַל־עָפָר יָקוּם and the preposition in מִבְּשָׂרִי. It may also be said that אַחַר—which is best explained as a preposition before עוֹרִי—implies a state wherein the skin has ceased to be, in like manner as מִן before בְּשָׂרִי. Both these prepositions carry us forward to an indefinitely remote period after death, and are thus inconsistent with the idea of a physical restoration before death. It is especially inconceivable that the poet should have used על־עפר to describe the place where the God should appear, if the appearance was to be before death, when it is remembered how invariably elsewhere, when mentioned in connection with Job, it is associated with the grave. Comp. Job_7:21; Job_8:19; Job_10:9; Job_17:16; Job_20:11; Job_21:26; Job_34:15.3
c. It would be, as Zöckler well argues, a serious artistic fault, were Job at this point to be introduced predicting the actual historical solution of the drama in language so definite, and this while the evolution of the drama is still going on, and the logical entanglement is at its height. According to the eschatological theory, the passage before us is a momentary gleam of brightness from the Life Beyond, which lights up with preternatural beauty the lurid centre of the dark drama before us, which, however it may modify the development which follows, leaves it essentially unchanged, moving on towards its historic consummation, according to the plan which our poet has so grandly conceived and so steadfastly pursued thus far. The light which here breaks through the clouds is from a source much further than the setting of Job’s earthly day. It is a light even which sends forward its reflection to the final earthly consummation, and which rests on the latter as an ineffable halo, giving to the radiant eve of the patriarch’s life a sacred beauty such as without this passage could not have belonged to it. If, on the other hand, it were an anticipation of Job’s earthly restoration, it would be a sudden, violent, inexplicable thrusting of the solution into the heart of the conflict, leaving the conflict nevertheless to struggle on as before, and the solution itself to be swallowed up and forgotten, until it reappears at the close, having lost, however, through this premature suggestion of it, the majesty which attends its unexpected coming. It is true that the poet, with that rare irony which he knows so well how to use, introduces the friends as from time to time unconsciously prophesying Job’s restoration. But those incidental and indirect anticipations have a very different signification from what this solemn, lofty, direct, and confident utterance from the hero himself would have, if it were referred to the issue of the poem.
(5) Per contra—the view advocated in the Commentary and in these Remarks has in its favor the following considerations:
a. It furnishes by far the most satisfactory explanation of the more difficult expressions of the text. See above.
b. It is most in harmony with the representations of the future found elsewhere in the book, especially Job_14:13-15, of which this passage is at once the glorious counterpart and complement;—that being a prophetic yearning for the recovery of his departed personality from the gloom of Sheol, a recovery which is to be a change into a new life, even as this is a prophetic pæan of a Divine interposition which is not only to vindicate his cause, but also to realize his restored personality as a witness of the scene.
c. It is most in harmony with the doctrinal development of the Old Testament. It carries us beyond the abstract idea of a disembodied immortality to an intermediate realistic conception of the resuscitation of the whole personality, a conception which is an indispensable stepping-stone to the distinct recognition of the truth of the resurrection. The development of the doctrine would be incomplete, if not unintelligible, without the Book of Job, thus understood.—E.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
In the treatment of this chapter for practical edification, the passage in Job_19:25-27 will of course be the centre and the goal of our meditations. It must not, however, be separated from its surroundings in such a way that on the one side the preparation and immediate occasion for the upsoaring of his soul in yearning and hope to God, to be found in the sorrowful plaint of Job_19:6-20, and on the other side the stern and earnest warning to the friends, with which the whole discourse closes (Job_19:28-29), will fail of being set forth in the proper light and in their organic connection. It is fitting accordingly to show that it is one who feels himself to be forsaken by God and men, to be cast out by this world, and even by all that he held dearest in it, who here suddenly leaps up to that hope out of the most painful agitation and the profoundest depression of spirit, being supported in this flight by the train of thought developed in Job_19:21-24 :—that when his contemporaries refuse to hear his appeals for compassion, and when the acknowledgment of his innocence, which he has reason to expect from posterity, presents itself as something which he can by no possibility live to see for himself, God, the Everlasting One, who is above all time, still remains to him as his only consolation, although, indeed, a consolation all the more sure and powerful. Not less is it to be shown how Job, feeling himself to be, as it were, sanctified and lifted high above this lower earthly sphere by the thought of this God and the joy of future union with Him, which he waits for with such longing, immediately after the utterance of his hope turns all the more sharply against the friends, in order that—being filled as yet by the thought of God’s agency in judicial retribution, through which he hopes one day to be justified—he may warn them still more urgently than before against becoming, through their continued harshness and injustice towards himself, the objects of God’s retributive interposition, and of His eternal wrath. Essentially thus, only more briefly and comprehensively, does v. Gerlach give the course of thought in the entire discourse: “The pronounced sharpness, visible in the speeches of the friends, intensifies also in Job the strong and gloomy descriptions which he gives of his sufferings. But the wonderful notable antithesis which he presents—God Himself against God!—God in His dealings with him showing His anger, and inflicting punishment, but at the same time irresistibly revealing Himself to the inmost consciousness of faith as all-gracious, bringing deliverance and blessedness—this gives to the sufferer the clear light of a knowledge in which all his former faint, yearnings shape themselves into fixed certainty. God appears to him as the holy and merciful manager of his cause, and even, after a painful end, as the Giver of a blessed eternal life. … To the friends, however, he declares finally with sharp words, that although their legal security and rigor has already made them sure of victory, God’s interposition in judgment will so much the more completely put them to shame.
Particular Passages
Job_19:6 seq. Brentius: When conscience confronts the judgment, when it cries out to God in trouble, and its prayer is not answered, it accuses God of injustice. … But the thoughts of a heart forsaken by the Lord are in this passage most beautifully described; for what else can it think, when all aid is withdrawn, than that God is unjust, if, after first taking sin away, He nevertheless pays the wages of sin, even death? and if again, after promising that He will be nigh to those who are in trouble, He seems not only not to be affected, but even to be delighted by our calamities? When the flames of hell thus rage around us, we must look to Christ alone, who was made in all things like to His brethren, and was tempted that He might be able to succor those who are tempted.—Zeyss: There is no trial more grievous than when in affliction and suffering it seems as though God had become our enemy, has no compassion upon us, and will neither hear nor help.—Idem (on Job_19:13 seq.): To be forsaken and despised by one’s own kindred and household companions is hard. But herein the children of God must become like their Saviour, who in His suffering was forsaken by all men, even by His dearest disciples and nearest relations: thus will they learn to build on no man, but only on the living God, who is ever true—Egard: Friends do not (usually) adhere in trial and need; with prosperity they take their departure, forgetful of their love and troth. Men are liars; they are inconstant as the wind, which passes away. But because trial and need come from God, the withdrawal of friends is ascribed to God, for had He not caused the trial to come, the friends would have remained.
Job_19:23 seq. Wohlfarth: The wish of the pious sufferer that his history might be preserved for posterity, was fulfilled. In hundreds of languages the truth is now proclaimed to all the people of the earth—that even the godly man is not free from suffering, but in the consciousness of his innocence, and in faith in God, Providence and Immortality, he finds consolation which will not permit him to sink, and his patient waiting for the glorious issue of God’s dark dispensations, is crowned without fail.
Job_19:25 seq. Oecolampadius: These are the words of Job’s faith, nay, of that of the Church Universal, which desires that they may be transmitted to all ages: “And I know,” etc. … We, taking faith for our teacher, and remembering what great things Job has declared beforehand he is about to set forth here, understand it of the resurrection. We believe that we shall see Christ, our Judge, in this body which we now bear about, and in no other, with these eyes, and no others. For as Christ rose again in the same body in which He suffered and was buried, so we also shall rise again in the same body in which we now carry on our warfare.—Brentius: A most clear confession of faith! From this passage it may be seen what is the method of true faith, viz., in death to believe in life, in hell to believe in heaven, in wrath and judgment to believe in God the Redeemer, as the Apostle, whoever he may have been, truly says in writing to the Hebrews: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, etc. (Heb_11:1). For in Job nothing is less apparent than life and the resurrection; rather is it hell that is perceived. “Nevertheless,” he says, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, however He may now seem to sleep and to be angry; nevertheless I know and by faith I behold beneath this wrath great favor, beneath this condemner a redeemer. You will observe in this place how despair and hope succeed each other by turns in the godly.”—Starke (after Zeyss and Joach. Lange): As surely as that Christ, our Redeemer, is risen from death by His power, and is entered into His glory, so. surely will all who believe in Him rise again to eternal life by His divine power. … The Messiah is in such wise the Living One, yea more, the Life itself (Joh_14:6; Joh_11:25), in that he proves Himself to be the Living One, by making us alive. … This is the best comfort in the extremity of death, that as Christ rose again from the dead, therefore we shall arise with him (Rom_8:11; 1 Corinthians 15.).—V. Gerlach: It is remarkable in this passage that Job, after indulging in those most gloomy descriptions of the realm of the dead, which run through his discourses from Job 3. on, should here soar up to such a joyous hope touching his destiny after death. Precisely this, however, constitutes the very kernel of the history that through his fellowship with God Job’s sufferings become the means, first, of overcoming in himself that legal stand-point, with which that gloomy, cheerless, outlook was most closely united, and thereby of gaining the victory over the friends with their legalistic tendencies.—Moreover, we must not be led astray by the fact that in the end Job’s victory is set even for this life, and that he receives an earthly compensation for his losses. The meaning of this turn of events is that God gives to His servant, who has shown himself to be animated by such firm confidence in Himself, more than he could ask or think.
Job_19:28 seq. Seb. Schmidt: Job’s friends knew that there is a judgment, and they had proceeded from this principle in their discussions thus far. Job accordingly would speak of the subject here not in the abstract, but in connection with the matter under consideration: “in order that ye may know that God will administer judgment in respect to all iniquities of the sword, which you among yourselves imagine to be of no consequence, and not to be feared, and that He will punish them most severely.”—Cramer: God indeed punishes much even in this life; but much is reserved for the last judgment. Hence he who escapes temporal punishment here, will not for that reason escape all divine punishment.
Footnotes:
[1]The above extract from Watts will supply for the English reader the place of the extract given by our author from P. Gerhard’s hymn: “Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld.”
[2][Among other prominent English theological writers who interpret the passage of Christ and the final resurrection, may be mentioned Owen, Vol. XII., Stand. Lib. of Brit. Divines, p. 508 seq.; Bp. Andrew’ Sermons, Vol. II., p. 251 seq. in Lib. of Ang.—Cath. Theol.; Bp. Sherlock, Works 1830, Vol. II., p. 167 seq.; John Newton, Works, Vol. IV., p. 435 seq.; Bp. Pearson on the Creed, Art. XI.; Dr. W. H. Mill, Lent Sermons, Cambridge, 1845; Dr. W. L. Alexander, Connec. and Harm. of O. and N. Tests., p. 153 seq.—E.]
[3]Even in Job_41:25 [33] it suggests, as Umbreit correctly observes, earth as a transitory state of activity for leviathan.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1. Job_19:7-12. A dark picture of the desertion of…
1. Job_19:7-12. A dark picture of the desertion of God and His terrible hostility to him.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 1-29. Job begins his answer to Bildad"s second…
Vers. 1-29. Job begins his answer to Bildad"s second speech by an expostulation against the unkindness of his friends, who break him in pieces, and torture him, with their reproaches (vers. 1-5). He then once more, and more plainly than on any other occasion, recounts his woes.
(1) His severe treatment by God (vers. 6-13);
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(2) his harsh usage by his relatives and friends (vers. 14-19): and
(3) the pain caused him by his disease (ver. 20); and appeals to his friends on these grounds for pity and forbearance (vers. 21, 22). Next, he proceeds to make his great avowal, prefacing it with a wish for its preservation as a perpetual record (vers. 23, 24); the avowal itself follows (vers. 25-27); and the speech terminates with a warning to his "comforters," that if they continue to persecute him, a judgment will fall upon them (vers. 28, 29).
Vers. 1, 2. Then Job answered and said, How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words? Job is no Stoic. He is not insensible to his friends" attacks. On the contrary, their words sting him, torture him, "break him in pieces," wound his soul in its tenderest part. Bildad"s attack had been the cruellest of all, and it drives him to expostulation (vers. 2-5) and entreaty (vers. 21, 22).
Vers. 1-22. Job to Bildad: 1. A reply, an appeal, a complaint.
I JOB"S WRATHFUL REPLY TO HIS FRIENDS. Job accuses his three friends of:
1. Irritating words. (Ver. 2) Their solemn addresses and eloquent descriptions were an exquisite torture, harder to endure than the miseries of elephantiasis. The cruel insinuations and unkind reproaches contained in their speeches crushed him more deeply and lacerated him more keenly than all the sharp strokes of evil fortune he had lately suffered. Wounds inflicted by the tongue are worse to heal than those given by the hand. "There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword"; (Pro_12:18) and to "talk to the grief of those whom God has wounded" (Psa_69:26) is the severest of all kinds of persecution to sustain, as it is the wickedest of all sorts of crimes to commit.
2. Persistent hostility. (Ver. 3) Not once or twice simply had they charged him with being a notorious criminal, but they had harped upon this same string ad nauseam; they had carried their insulting behaviour to the furthest limits; the force of their acrimonious opposition could not further go. Their reproaches had well-nigh broken his great heart; cf. the language of David, who in his sufferings was a type of Messiah. (Psa_69:20)
3. Astounding callousness. (Ver. 3) Job was simply amazed at the cool indifference with which they could behold his sufferings, the unfeeling ease, if not the manifest delight, with which they could hurl their atrocious impeachments against him, and the utter insensibility which they displayed to his piteous appeals amazed that one who claimed to be a friend of his should so completely show himself to be "A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch Incapable of pity, void and empty From any dram of mercy. ("The Merchant of Venice," act 4. sc. 1.)
4. Unnecessary cruelty. (Ver. 4) There was no "firm reason to be rendered" why they should thus remorselessly pursue him with their hate. They would not be called upon to expiate any of his unpunished crimes. Their theology and their saintly virtues would combine to shield them from that. Believing, as they did, that "the son shall not hear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son," but that "the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him", (Eze_18:20) there was no occasion to dread that any portion of the Divine retribution due to him would recoil on them. Hence they might have spared him any wanton aggravation of his woes. Job"s language reminds us
(1) that men may be guilty of sins of which they are unconscious;
(2) that the only thing in which man can claim a true proprietorship on earth is his sin;
(3) that in the ultimate issues of Divine government every man must bear his own burden; and
(4) that this consideration should move a good man rather to commiserate than condemn the wicked.
1. Arrogant assumption. In "pleading against him his reproach i.e. in urging the intolerable miseries he suffered as a proof of his guilt, they were" magnifying themselves against him" (ver. 5), i.e. tacitly boasting of their superior goodness. And as much perhaps as by anything in their language, the soul of Job was stung by the solemn Pharisaic aspect which sat upon their marble visages, and the atmosphere of awful sanctity in which they wrapt their holy persons. But true piety is ever meek and humble, never vaunteth herself, and is never puffed up, certainly never gloats over either the sins or the sufferings of others. A good man may magnify the grace of God that is in him, (1Co_15:10) or the office that has been entrusted to him, (Rom_11:13) but of himself he ever thinks with lowliness of mind, esteeming others better than himself, (Php_2:3) whom he regards but as "less than the least of all saints", (Eph_3:8) if not as "the chief of sinners". (1Ti_1:15)
2. Conspicuous falsehood. Bildad had alleged that Job, by his incorrigible wickedness, had been the author of his own misfortunes, that he had been cast into a net by his own feet, (Job_18:8) that his calamity had come upon him as the recompense of his own crime; and to this Job replies with a direct contradiction, insisting that it was God who had flung his net about him, and that, if their theory of retribution was correct, God had wrested his cause and wronged him in so doing (ver. 6). That Job"s feet were entangled in a net, the testimony of Job"s senses proclaimed. That this net had been cast around him by God, the eye of his faith could see. That God could not have done so on account of his wickedness, the inner witness of Job"s spirit cried aloud. Hence this theory of the friends, which sometimes lay across his soul like a nightmare, was a blunder, and the allegation of the friends that he was being punished for his iniquity was a lie.
II JOB"S DOLEFUL COMPLAINT AGAINST GOD.
1. Treating him like a criminal And that in respect of two particulars.
(1) Assailing him with violence: "Behold, I cry out of wrong;" literally, "I cry out Violence!" (ver. 7), "like a wayfarer surprised by brigands" (Cox). A strong metaphor, which may describe the suddenness and severity of the saint"s affliction, but never can apply to the Divine motive or purpose in afflicting, since God doth not afflict the children of men willingly, but for their profit; (Lam_3:33 Heb_12:10) never rushes on his people like a giant, (Job_16:14) or overpowers them like a highwayman, but chastises and corrects them as a father; (Heb_12:7) and in all his inflictions never does them wrong or evinces hate, but confers on them a blessed privilege and manifests towards them the purest (Heb_12:6)
(2) Disregarding his outcries, withholding from him sympathy and succour: "Behold, I cry, but I am not heard;" extending to him neither hearing nor redress: "I cry aloud, but there is no judgment" (ver. 7). A complaint, again, which may sometimes receive colour from the saint"s own thoughts and feelings, but which never can be really true of God, who never fails to sympathize with his people in affliction, (Psa_103:18 Isa_63:9 Heb_4:15) never disregards the prayer of the destitute, (Psa_102:17) never declines to aid them in distress, (Isa_41:10 Isa_43:2 2Co_12:9) and certainly never denies them justice unless to give them mercy.
2. Punishing him as a convict. (Vers. 8-10) And that by:
(1) Consigning him to prison (ver. 8). The image that of a cell, or narrow space, bounded by a high wall or fence, shutting out the light of heaven, and shutting in the captive it confines. (cf. Job_3:23 Job_13:27) Two frequent effects of affliction: to darken the soul"s look its inward look by bringing sin to remembrance, (1Ki_17:18) its upward look by hiding God"s face, (Job_13:24 Psa_42:3, Psa_42:10) its onward look by beclouding the path of duty; (Isa_50:10) and to shorten the soul"s way, so that it can neither escape from its misery nor enjoy its wonted freedom in religious exercises or in ordinary duties, but feels itself shut up, first to absolute submission, and then to cheerful resignation.
(2) Arraying him in prison robes (ver. 9). Job"s robe and crown were his righteousness and integrity. (Job_29:14) Of these he had been divested, and clothed in the unsightly as well as humiliating garment of affliction, which was to him, what a prison dress is to a convict, an outward badge of guilt. Job in this, however, doubly erred, first in thinking that affliction was either a proof of condemnation or a mark of degradation, and secondly in supposing that he had really lost either his crown or his robe. If by these latter he alluded merely to his former prosperity, that was certainly taken from him; and so whatever of an earthly nature man may glory in wealth, honour, friends God can strip him of at any moment. But the crown of righteousness which God sets upon a saint"s head is never wantonly displaced, and the garment of salvation which God wraps round a saint"s person can never, without his own fault, be removed.
(3) Extinguishing his hope of liberty (ver. 10). Like a ruined house whose stones lie scattered on every side, like a great tree plucked up by the roots, Job had no further expectation of seeing the splendid edifice of his prosperity rebuilt, or the expiring life of his sad heart revived. Like the prisoner of Chillon, he had no earthly hope of returning to freedom. "I had no thought, no feeling none; Among the stones I stood a stone, And was scarce conscious what I wist, As shrubless crags within the mist," etc. (Byron, " Prisoner of Chillon," 9) Such a picture is true, not of the saint in the correction-house of affliction, (Psa_34:17) not even of the sinner in the prison-house of condemnation, who is yet a prisoner of hope, (Zec_9:12) but only of the lost in the dungeon of everlasting death.
3. Counting him for an enemy.
(1) Regarding him with anger (ver. 11). Against this conclusion, however, Job manfully struggled, especially when replying to the friends, and ultimately triumphed; but at such times as he fell back to brood upon his inward misery, or turned his weary face upward to God, the thought threatened to overmaster him. (cf. Job_13:24 Job_16:9) Yet all the while God was his real Friend, and regarded him with tenderest affection, which shows that God"s dealings with his people are often fur of painful and inexplicable mystery, (Psa_73:16 Psa_77:19) that "behind a frowning providence" God frequently "hides a smiling face", (Rev_3:19) that God"s people cannot always see the bright light which is in the cloud, (Job_37:21Jo Job_13:7) and that God only is a competent Expounder of his own acts.
(2) Besieging him with trouble (ver. 12). The magnificent imagery here employed is borrowed from the operations connected with a siege (vide Exposition). God"s armies were the calamities that had befallen Job. Afflictions and the causes that produce them, diseases and the germs from which they spring, misfortunes and the instruments that bring them about, are all under God"s command, (Exo_8:8 Exo_9:6 Exo_11:4 2Ki_19:35 Luk_7:7) advancing and retiring as he directs.
4. Cutting him off from human sympathy. (Vers. 13-19) A pitiful picture of abject degradation, even worse than that which Bildad predicted for the wicked man who should be chased from the world. (Job_18:19) Surrounded by kinsmen and relatives, and still attended by wife and servants, he is to one and all an object of supreme contempt.
(1) Those immediately outside the circle of his household (vers. 13, 14), his "brethren" and "acquaintance," meaning probably his neighbours, with his "kinsfolk" and "familiar friends," who were, as distinguished from the former, his relatives, had abandoned him.
(2) Those within the circle of his household, from whom better things might have been expected, had followed their example. His domestics, not excepting the tender maidens whose sex might have "touched" them "with human gentleness and love," gave him no more obedience than a stranger. His body-servant, who was to him as Eliezer to Abraham, (Gen_24:2) and the centurion"s servant to his master, (Luk_7:3) must now be entreated for what was formerly performed at the slightest glance or gesture. Even his wife, the mother of his noble sons and fair daughters, now dead, had forsaken him, her delicate sensibilities unable to endure the offensive exhalations from his body. His own brothers, sons of the same womb, turned away from the intolerable stench.
(3) In short, all who saw him poured on him supreme contempt. The boys, probably of neighbouring families or clans, laughed at his feeble efforts to raise himself or stand upon his ash-heap. His "inward friends," those to whom he confided his secret thoughts and plans, now abhorred him. His very friends, to whom he had given his love, meaning probably Elipbaz, Bildad, anti Zophar, had turned against him.
III JOB"S PITEOUS APPEAL FOR HIMSELF.
1. A pathetic representation. (Ver. 20) Indicating the ground of Job"s appeal. Bodily disease and mental anguish had reduced him to a skeleton, so that his bones appeared through his skin; the second clause, a cruz interpretum (vide Exposition), probably depicting extreme emaciation. His condition may remind us of the value of physical health, of its instability, and of the ease with which it can be made to consume away like a moth. (Psa_39:11)
2. A melting supplication. (Ver. 21) Expressive of the fervent of Job"s appeal. It was not much he craved only pity, and that on two pleas:
(1) The bond of friendship that subsisted between them. His terrible emaciation was enough to "Pluck commiseration of his state From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint
Much more, then, from those who were united to him by ties of affection. (cf. Job_6:14, homiletics)
(2) The severe affliction that had been laid upon him. "The hand of God hath touched me." The phrase descriptive of the source of Job"s affliction, but pointing chiefly to its intensity.
3. A tender expostulation. (Ver. 22) Were the miseries he was suffering at God"s hand not enough to satisfy their insatiable appetites or was God not able to exact retribution for his supposed iniquities, that they must assist him to crush the poor emaciated skeleton who had become his victim? Was it really come to this, that they were less merciful than God; that God"s thirst for vengeance, if so be it was that he was being punished, was more easily slaked than theirs? So, alas! it has been found that man"s tender mercies are cruel, (2Sa_24:14) and in particular that when bigots turn persecutors they never cry, "Enough!
Learn:
1. There is a limit beyond which even good men are not expected to endure aspersions against their character.
2. It is a shame for professors of religion to indulge in suspicions, or utter slanders, against their brethren.
3. The greatest safeguard a suffering saint has, if also one of his acutest pains, is to connect his afflictions with God.
4. It is better to direct the soul"s plaint to God than to utter aloud the soul"s complaint against God.
5. The man has fallen low indeed who, besides being deserted by God (or appearing to be so), is also abandoned by man.
6. The woman who forsakes her husband in his hour of sorrow, not only violates her marriage vow, but proves herself unworthy of the honour of wifehood, and brings disgrace upon the name of woman.
7. It is an infinite mercy that God"s heart is not so little pitiful as man"&;
8. A man"s flesh is all that a persecutor can devour.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-29. Unconquerable convictions.
Job feels bitterly hurt by the speeches of Eliphaz and Bildad, and pleads, in face of their harsh constructions, for compassion in his unutterable sufferings. At the same time, he raises himself to bolder confidence in God"s help than ever before. He expresses the definite hope that, if not on this side the grave, then on the other side, a justification awaits him by the personal appearance of God.
I INTRODUCTION: INDIGNANT CENSURE OF HIS FRIENDS AS MALICIOUS SUSPECTERS OF HIS INNOCENCE. (Vers. 1-5) "How long will ye trouble my soul, and crush me with words?" "Ten times," he says, speaking in round numbers, i.e. again and again, have they slandered him by attacks on h-is innocence; they are not ashamed to deafen him with their revilings. It is true, he again confesses, (Job_6:24) he has sinned, but his sin remains with him alone; he is answerable to God alone, not to their unfeeling judgment. Is it their desire to magnify themselves to play the part of great speakers and advocates, and bring home to him his disgrace by ingenious pleas? Vanity and self-conceit are at the bottom of much censoriousness; and Job here lays his finger upon the moral weakness of his self-constituted judges.
II LAMENT OVER THE SUFFERING CAUSED HIM BY GOD. (Vers. 6-12) God has wronged him, and surrounded him with his nets, as a hunter takes his prey, depriving it of all means of escape (ver. 6). The sufferer cries out, "Violence!" but no answer is given; and there is no justice in response to his cry for help (ver. 7). His way is fenced in, and darkness is on his paths. (ver. 8; comp. Job_3:23 Job_13:27 Lam_3:7, 9 Hos_2:6) God has stripped him of his honour and of his fair esteem in the eyes of men, and taken away the crown from his head (ver. 9; comp. Job_29:14 Lam_5:16). "Honour " and the "crown" are two expressions for the same thing. (Isa_61:10 Isa_62:3) God pulls him down on every side, like a building devoted to destruction; roots out the hope of his restoration, like a tree (ver. 10). His warlike bands wounds, pains, and woes of every kind come on, and make their way against him as against a besieged fortress. (vers. 11, 12; comp. Job_16:14) All this is a true description of the thoughts of the heart from which Divine help has been withdrawn. It is a sore conflict, none sorer, when the mind is driven in its agony to view God as an end my, treating us unmercifully, willing neither to hear nor to help. Job is tempted to think God unjust; one who promises the forgiveness of sins, yet does not remove the penalty; promises his presence to the suffering, yet seems not to be touched by our woes nay, even to delight in them. "In so great and glowing flames of hell we must look to Christ alone, who was made in all things like to his brethren, and was tempted, that he might succour them that are tempted" (Brenz).
III LAMENT OVER THE SUFFERING CAUSED HIM BY MAN. (Vers. 13-20) In such crises we turn to friendship for solace. But to Job this is denied. In six different forms he mentions his kindred and friends, only to complain of their coldness and alienation (vers. 13, 14). His domestics, too (ver. 15), to whom he had doubtless been a kind master, are become strange to him. His servant does not answer when he calls so that he is obliged to change parts with him, and beg his help as a favour (ver. 16) His breath and diseased body make him offensive even to his wife, and sons, or "brethren" (ver. 17). The impudent little boys of the street, like those who mocked Elisha, (2Ki_2:23) make a butt of him, indulging in sarcastic taunts when he rises to speak (ver. 18). His bosom-friends abhor him, and those whom he had loved Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar turn against him as violent opponents (ver. 19). His bones cleave to his skin and flesh, can be seen and felt through his emaciated flesh, and only the skin of his teeth, the thin film, has escaped the ravages of his fearful mainly. He can only just speak still, without his mouth being filled with boils and matter, as in the last stage of the disease (ver. 20) Friends often fail in the time of sorest distress; they are summer-birds, and pass away when the colder weather sets in. Men are liars, fickle as the wind. Their alienation is ascribed to God, because he has caused the distress; if he had not caused the distress, they would have remained. Here, again, we are reminded that the child of God may be called to be conformed to the image of the Saviour"s sufferings. He knew what it was to be deserted by all men, even his dearest disciples and closest adherents. So we are to learn to build no confidence on man, but on the living God alone, whom faith can hold eternally fast.
IV RISE TO A BLESSED HOPE IN GOD, HIS ONLY REDEEMER AND AVENGER. (Vers. 21-27) This section is introduced by a woeful petition to his friends for compassion, "for the hand of God has touched him," alluding to the disease, which from its fearfulness was regarded as a stroke of God"s hand; and is it not the office of friendship to lend its hand to heal or soothe (ver. 21)? Why, on the contrary, do they persecute him as God, assuming an authority that is superhuman, and so behaving unnaturally to him? They are not "satisfied with his flesh," continually piercing and ploughing it with the envenomed tooth of slander (ver. 22). The appeal seems to be in vain, and he turns once more to God (ver. 23, sqq.). Oh that his words were written down, inscribed in a book or roll, that those to come might read the fervent, repeated protestations of his innocence! That they were engraven with an iron pen, or cast with lead, so as to remain an indelible and eternal record! And, so long as there is a God, this wish for the perpetuation of his testimony cannot be in vain. It has been fulfilled. "In a hundred languages of the earth it announces to this day to all peoples this truth: the good man is not free from sufferings, but in the consciousness of his innocence and in faith in God, providence, and immortality, he finds a consolation which suffers him not to fail; and his waiting for a glorious issue of God"s dark leadings will certainly be crowned" (Wohlforth). Ver. 25, "And I know that my Redeemer lives." "Redeemer" is probably to be taken, not in the sense of blood-avenger, but in that of restorer of my honouravenger of my honour; but the two meanings are connected. "And as Last One will he rise upon the dust." God is here viewed as he who will outlive all, especially in contrast to Job, now sinking into death. He will rise, stand up for Job"s defence and deliverance, on the dust in which he shall soon be laid. Ver. 26, "And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall behold Eloah." He is thinking of the time when he shall be treed from his wretched suffering and lacerated "flesh," and shall see God as a glorified spirit. Ver. 27, "Whom I shall behold for myself," i.e. in my own person, "and my eyes shall see, and not a stranger." "My reins be consumed within me," in longing after this glorious view. It is an expression of the desire of the deepest, tenderest part of the man for this high consummation. To discuss the different theological interpretations of this passage does not come within the scope of this part of the Commentary. Perhaps the best is that which steers between two extremes, and is adopted by many eminent expositors of the present day. It is that Job does not here express the hope of a bodily resurrection after death, but of a contemplation of God in the other world in a spiritually glorified state. It is the hope of immortality, rather than that of resurrection, to which he rises, with such clearness and definiteness, above that ancient Israelitish idea of Sheol, which he himself has admitted in earlier discourses. It is a glorious confession of faith one that, in a fuller sense, may well be that of the catholic Church. And once more the property and power of faith are exhibited in all their lustre. It cleaves to life in the very jaws of death; believes in heaven, even when hell is yawning at its feet; looks to God as the Redeemer even amidst anger and judgment; detects beneath seeming wrath his mercy; sees, under the appearance of the condemner, the Redeemer. Faith is here the "substance of things hoped for". (Heb_11:1) The best consolation in the trouble of death is that Christ is risen from the dead, and therefore we shall rise. (Rom_8:11 1Co 15) God gives more to his servant, who shows himself inspired by such firm confidence towards him, than he could ask or understand.
V SOLEMN WARNING TO HIS FRIENDS TO DESIST FROM THEIR ATTACKS. (Vers. 28, 29) "If ye think, How shall we persecute him? and (if ye think) the root of the "matter is found in me that is, if you think the reason fur my sufferings is solely to be found in myself, in my sin afraid of the sword," the avenging sword of God, "fur wrath falls in with the offences of the sword," which may mean either that wrath is a punishment of the sword, or that the punishments of the sword are with wrath wrath overtakes them. "That ye may know there is a judgment!" They knew this already, and upon this expectation their own warnings had been founded. But Job gives the thought an application to themselves. "That you may know that Gas exercises judgment on all the offences of the sword, which you do not own nor fear in your case, and that he severely punishes them." Thus Job opens that wider view of the future, of that day of discrimination, when the first shall be last, and the last first the innocent shall be justified, and the hypocrite exposed which corrects the narrow dogmatism of the friends. God punishes many sins in this life; but many are reserved for the last judgment. Temporal suffering may be escaped, and yet sure punishment may be in store. On the other hand, temporal suffering may be innocently endured, but for the true servant of God there will be final acknowledgment and eternal honour. J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN Vers. 1-21. An appeal for pity.
Job is brought lower and lower By the words of those from whom he might have expected a true consolation. He at length declares they "vex" his "soul," and "break" him "in pieces with words" He appeals for freedom. He would be let atone, for, as he had sorrowfully said, "miserable comforters are ye all. " The great underlying teaching is the insufficiency of those views of human suffering which find its cause only in judgment upon wrong-doing. Job, the typical sufferer typical for all future sufferers undergoes the painfulness of being assailed by helpers who have but a partial and very imperfect view of all the circumstances of his case. And he appeals to them for ease. His cry to them is also a cry to Heaven for relief.
I His appeal for pity is based ON THE GROUND OF THE WRONGFULNESS OF HIS ACCUSATION. "Behold, I cry out of wrong." His friends have set themselves against him. They have become his judges rather than his consolers or vindicators. They "reproach" him and make themselves "strange" to him; they "magnify" themselves against him. They try to plead his reproach against him. It is the way of the imperfectly instructed human helper, and more and more clearly makes plain the necessity for a voice to be raised on behalf of the sufferer that shall be of one better instructed.
II But the appeal is urged ON THE GROUND OF THE SEVERITY OF HIS SUFFERINGS Job acknowledges his affliction to be of God, and he most tenderly and touchingly refers to the several features of his suffering. He cries out of wrong; he has no impartial and just hearing. He is encompassed by darkness from which he cannot escape; his honour is beclouded; his substance is destroyed; his hope has perished; he is dealt with as an enemy; his acquaintances are estranged; he is forgotten by his best friends; he is treated with indignity in his own home; he is offensive even to his wife; even young children despise him and speak against him whom I loved are turned against me." Through the severity of his disease he is wasted to a skeleton; his "bone cleaveth" to his "skin." Surely this is a call for pity. Yet professed friends can stand by and argue with such a sufferer, seeking to prove his guiltiness and affirming all this to be the just punishment of his sin.
III He makes his further appeal to their pity ON THE GROUND OF FRIENDSHIP. "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends!" It is reasonable to expect that professed friends will at least show pity to him for whom they have declared their great friendship.
IV His final appeal to them is ON THE GROUND OF HIS AFFLICTION BEING THE STROKE OF GOD. "The hand of God hath touched me." Against the Almighty he cannot hope to contend. He is crushed under the Almighty"s power. This lowly confession does not abate the calm inward assurance of personal integrity. But the solution of the mysterious Divine ways is wanting. He endeavours to abide in patience. But human sympathy should strengthen the sufferer under the pressure of the Divine hand, and not add to the already excessive weight of his calamities. "Why do ye persecute me as God?
To whom should a sufferer turn if not to his friends? How obvious the office of friendship at such a time:
1. To sympathize.
2. To seek to ease the burden of the sufferer.
3. To strengthen by kindness and pity. R.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Then Job answered and said.
Job_19:1-29
Then Job answered and said.
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Complaints and confidences
I. Job bitterly complaining.
1. He complains of the conduct of his friends, and especially their want of sympathy.
(1) They exasperated him with their words.
(2) With their persistent hostility.
(3) With their callousness.
(4) With their assumed superiority.
Nothing tends more to aggravate a mans suffering than the heartless and wordy talk of those who controvert his opinions in the hour of his distress.
2. He complains of the conduct of his God. God had overthrown and confounded him: had refused him a hearing and hedged up his way. He complains that he was utterly deprived of his honours and his hope. God had even treated him as an enemy, and sent troops of calamities to overwhelm him. God had put all society against him. These complainings reveal--
(1) a most lamentable condition of existence;
(2) considerable imperfections in moral character.
II. Job firmly confiding. He still held on to his faith in God as the vindicator of his character.
1. His confidence arose from faith in a Divine vindicator.
2. A vindicator who would one day appear on the earth.
3. Whom he would personally see for himself,
4. Who would so thoroughly clear him that his accusers would be filled with self-accusation. But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me? (Homilist.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Job 19
XVI.
"MY REDEEMER LIVETH"
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Job 19
JOB SPEAKS
WITH simple strong art sustained by exuberant eloquence the author has now thrown his hero upon our sympathies, blending a strain of expectancy with tender emotion. In shame and pain, sick almost to death, baffled in his attempts to overcome the seeming indifference of Heaven, the sufferer lies broken and dejected. Bildads last address describing the fate of the godless man has been deliberately planned to strike at Job under cover of a general statement of the method of retribution. The pictures of one seized by the "firstborn of death," of the lightless and desolate habitation, the withered branches and decaying remembrance of the wicked, are plainly designed to reflect Jobs present state and forecast his coming doom. At first the effect is almost overwhelming. The judgment of men is turned backward and like the forces of nature and providence has become relentless. The united pressure on a mind weakened by the bodys malady goes far to induce despair. Meanwhile the sufferer must endure the burden not only of his personal calamities and the alienation of all human friendships, but also of a false opinion with which he has to grapple as much for the sake of mankind as for his own. He represents the seekers after the true God and true religion in an age of darkness, aware of doubts other men do not admit, labouring after a hope of which the world feels no need. The immeasurable weight this lays on the soul is to many unknown. Some few there are, as Carlyle says, and Job appears one of them, who "have to realise a worship for themselves, or live unworshipping. In dim forecastings, wrestles within them the Divine Idea of the World, yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. The Godlike has vanished from the world; and they, by the strong cry of their souls agony, like true wonder workers, must again evoke its presence. The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and irrevocable; the Old has passed away; but, alas, the New appears not in its stead, the Time is still in pangs of travail with the New. Man has walked by the light of conflagrations and amid the sound of falling cities; and now there is darkness, and tong watching till it be morning. The voice of the faithful can but exclaim: As yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night: birds of darkness are on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead. walk, the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to dawn.'"
As in the twelfth hour of the night, the voices of men sounding hollow and strange to him, the author of the Book of Job found himself. Current ideas about God would have stifled his thought if he had not realised his danger and the worlds danger and thrown himself forward, breaking through, even with defiance and passion, to make a way for reason to the daylight of God. Limiting and darkening statements he took up as they were presented to him over and over again; he tracked them to their sources in ignorance, pedantry, hardness of temper. He insisted that the one thing for a man is resolute clearness of mind, openness to the teaching of God, to the correction of the Almighty, to that truth of the whole world which alone corresponds to faith. Believing that the ultimate satisfying object of faith will disclose itself at last to every pure seeker, each in his degree, he began his quest and courageously pursued it, never allowing hope to wander where reason dared not follow, checking himself on the very brink of alluring speculation by a deliberate reconnaissance of the facts of life and the limitations of knowledge. Nowhere more clearly than in this speech of Job does the courageous truthfulness of the author show itself. He seems to find his oracle, and then with a sigh return to the path of sober reality because as yet verification of the sublime idea is beyond his power. The vision appears and is fixed in a vivid picture-marking the highest flight of his inspiration-that those who follow may have it before them, to be examined, tried, perhaps approved in the long run. But for himself, or at any rate for his hero, one who has to find his faith through the natural world and its revelations of Divine faithfulness, the bounds within which absolute certainty existed for the human mind at that time are accepted unflinchingly. The hope remains; but assurance is sought on a lower level, where the Divine order visible in the universe sheds light on the moral life of man.
That inspiration should thus work within bounds, conscious of itself, yet restrained by human ignorance, may be questioned. The apprehension of transcendent truth not yet proved by argument, the authoritative statement of such truth for the guidance and confirmation of faith, lastly, complete independence of ordinary criticism-are not these the functions and qualities of inspiration? And yet, here, the inspired man, with insight fresh and marvellous, declines to allow his hero or any thinker repose in the very hope which is the chief fruit of his inspiration, leaving it as something thrown out, requiring to be tested and verified; and meanwhile he takes his stand as a prophet on those nearer, in a sense more common, yet withal sustaining principles that are within the range of the ordinary mind. Such we shall find to be the explanation of the speeches of the Almighty and their absolute silence regarding the future redemption. Such also may be said to be the reason of the epilogue, apparently so inconsistent with the scope of the poem. On firm ground the writer takes his stand-ground which no thinker of his time could declare to be hollow. The thorough saneness of his mind, shown in this final decision, gives all the more life to the flashes of prediction and the Divine intuitions which leap out of the dark sky hanging low over the suffering man.
The speech of Bildad in chapter 18, under cover of an account of invariable law, was really a dream of special providence. He believed that the Divine King, who, as Christ teaches, "maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust," really singles out the wicked for peculiar treatment corresponding to their iniquity. It is in one sense the sign of vigorous faith to attribute action of this kind to God, and Job himself in his repeated appeals to the unseen Vindicator shows the same conception of providence. Should not one intent on righteousness break through the barriers of ordinary law when doubt is cast on His equity and care? Pardonable to Job, whose case is altogether exceptional, the notion is one the author sees it necessary to hold in check. There is no Theophany of the kind Job desires. On the contrary his very craving for special intervention adds to his anxiety. Because it is not granted he affirms that God has perverted his right; and when at last the voice of the Almighty is heard, it is to recall the doubter from his personal desires to the contemplation of the vast universe as revealing a wide and wise fidelity. This undernote of the authors purpose, while it serves to guide us in the interpretation of Jobs complaints, is not allowed to rise into the dominant. Yet it rebukes those who think the great Divine laws have not been framed to meet their case, who rest their faith not on what God does always and is in Himself, but on what they believe He does sometimes and especially for them. The thoughts of the Lord are very deep. Our lives float upon them like skiffs upon an unfathomable ocean of power and fatherly care.
Of the treatment he receives from men Job complains, yet not because they are the means of his overthrow.
How long will ye vex my soul
And crush me utterly with sayings?
These ten times have ye reproached me;
Ye are not ashamed that ye condemn me.
And be it verily that I have erred,
Mine error remaineth to myself.
Will ye, indeed, exult against me
And reproach me with my disgrace?
Know now that God hath wronged me
And compassed me about with His net.
Why should his friends be so persistent in charging him with offence? He has not wronged them. If he has erred, he himself is the sufferer. It is not for them to take part against him. Their exultation is of a kind they have no right to indulge, for they have not brought him to the misery in which he lies. Bildad spoke of the snare in which the wicked is caught. His tone in that passage could not have been more complacent if he himself claimed the honour of bringing retribution on the godless. But it is God, says Job, who hath compassed me with His net.
"Behold, of wrong I cry, but I am not heard;
I cry for help, but there is no judgment."
Day after day, night after night, pains and fears increase: death draws nearer. He cannot move out of the net of misery. As one neglected, outlawed, he has to bear his inexplicable doom, his way fenced in so that he cannot pass, darkness thrown over his world by the hand of God.
Plunging thus anew into a statement of his hopeless condition as one discrowned, dishonoured, a broken man, the speaker has in view all along the hard human judgment which numbers him with the godless. He would melt the hearts of his relentless critics by pleading that their enmity is out of place. If the Almighty is his enemy and has brought him near to the dust of death, why should men persecute him as God? Might they not have pity? There is indeed resentment against providence in his mind; but the anxious craving for human sympathy reacts on his language and makes it far less fierce and bitter than in previous speeches. Grief rather than revolt is now his mood.
He hath stripped me of my glory
And taken my crown from my head.
He hath broken me down on every side,
Uprooted my hope like a tree.
He hath also kindled his wrath against me
And counted me among His adversaries.
His troops come on together
And cast up their way against me
And encamp around my tent.
So far the Divine indignation has gone. Will his friends not think of it? Will they not look upon him with less of hardness and contempt though he may have sinned? A man in a hostile universe, a feeble man, stricken with disease unable to help himself, the heavens frowning upon him-why should they harden their hearts?
And yet, see how his brethren have dealt with him! Mark how those who were his friends stand apart, Eliphaz and the rest, behind them others who once claimed kinship with him. How do they look? Their faces are clouded. They must be on Gods side against Job. Yea, God Himself has moved them to this.
He hath put my brethren far from me,
And my confidants are wholly estranged from me.
My kinsfolk have failed
And my familiar friends have forgotten me.
They that dwell in my house and my maids count me for a stranger,
I am an alien in their sight.
I call my servant and he gives me no answer,
I must entreat him with my mouth.
My breath is offensive to my wife,
And my ill savour to the sons of my body.
Even young children despise me;
If I would arise, they speak against me.
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,
And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
The picture is one of abject humiliation. He is rejected by all who once loved him, forced to entreat his servants, become offensive to his wife and grandsons, jeered at even by children, of the place. The case appears to us unnatural and shows the almost fiendish hardness of the Oriental world: that is to say, if the account is not coloured for dramatic purposes. The intention is to represent the extremity of Jobs wretchedness, the lowest depth to which he is reduced. The fire of his spirit is almost quenched by shame and desolation. He shows the days of his misery in the strongest shadow in order to compel, if possible, the sympathy so persistently withheld.
"Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends,
For the hand of God hath touched me.
Why do ye persecute me as God,
And are not satisfied with my flesh?"
Now we understand the purpose of the long description of his pain, both that which God has inflicted and that caused by the alienation and contempt of men. Into his soul the prediction of Bildad has entered, that he will share the fate of the wicked whose memory perishes from the earth, whose name is driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world. Is it to be so with him? That were indeed a final disaster. To bring his friends to some sense of what all this means to him-this is what he struggles after. It is not even the pity of it that is the chief point, although through that he seeks to gain his end. But if God is not to interpose, if his last hour is coming without a sign of heavens relenting, he would at least have men stand beside him, take his words to heart, believe them possibly true, hand down for his memorial the claim he has made of integrity. Surely, surely he shall not be thought of by the next generation as Job the proud, defiant evildoer laid low by the judgments of an offended God-brought to shame as one who deserved to be counted amongst the offscourings of the earth. It is enough that God has persecuted him, that God is slaying him-let not men take it upon them to do so to the last. Before he dies let one at least say, Job, my friend, perhaps you are sincere, perhaps you are misjudged.
Urgent is the appeal. It is in vain. Not a hand is stretched out, not one grim face relaxes. The man has made his last attempt. He is now like a pressed animal between the hunter and the chasm. And why is the author so rigorous in his picture of the friends? It is made to all appearance quite inhuman, and cannot be so without design. By means of this inhumanity Job is flung once for all upon his need of God from whom he had almost turned away to man. The poet knows that not in man is the help of the soul, that not in the sympathy of man, not in the remembrance of man, not in the care or even love of man as a passing tenant of earth can the labouring heart put its confidence. From the human judgment Job turned to God at first. From the Divine silence he had well nigh turned back to human pity. He finds what other sufferers have found, that the silence is allowed to extend beneath him, between him and his fellows, in order that he may finally and effectually direct his hope and faith above himself, above the creaturely race, to Him from whom all came, in whose will and love alone the spirit of man has its life, its hope. Yes, God is bringing home to Himself the man whom He has approved for approval. The way is strange to the feet of Job, as it often is to the weary half-blinded pilgrim. But it is the one way to fulfil and transcend our longings. Neither corporate sympathy nor posthumous immortality can ever stand to a thinking soul instead of the true firm judgment of its life that waits within the knowledge of God. If He is not for us, the epitaphs and memoirs of time avail nothing. Mans place is in the eternal order or he does indeed cry out of wrong and is not heard.
From men to the written book, from men to the graven rock, more enduring, more public than the book-will this provide what is still unfound?
"Oh that now my words were written,
That they were inscribed in a book;
That with an iron stylus and with lead
They were graven in the rock forever."
As one accustomed to the uses of wealth Job speaks. He thinks first of a parchment in which his story and his claim may be carefully written and preserved. But he sees at once how perishable that would be and passes to a form of memorial such as great men employed. He imagines a cliff in the desert with a monumental inscription bearing that once he, the Emeer of Uz, lived and suffered, was thrown from prosperity, was accused by men, was worn by disease, but died maintaining that all this befell him unjustly, that he had done no wrong to God or man. It would stand there in the way of the caravans of Tema for succeeding generations to read. It would stand there till the ages had run their course. Kings represent on rocks their wars and triumphs. As one of royal dignity Job would use the same means of continuing his protest and his name.
Yet, so far as his life is concerned, what good, -the story spread northward to Damascus, but he, Job, lost in Sheol? His protest is against forms of death: his claim is for life. There is no life in the sculptured stone. Baffled again he halts midway. His foot on a crumbling point, there must be yet one spring for safety and refuge.
Who has not felt, looking at the records of the past, inscriptions on tablets, rocks and temples, the wistful throb of antiquity in those anxious legacies of a world of men too well aware of mans forgetfulness? "Whoever alters the work of my hand," says the conqueror called Sargon, "destroys my constructions, pulls down the walls which I have raised"-may Asshur, Nineb, Raman and "the great gods who dwell there pluck his name and seed from the land and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe." Invocation of the gods in this manner was the only resource of him who in that far past feared oblivion and knew that there was need to fear. But to a higher God, in words of broken eloquence, Job is made to commit his cause, seeing beyond the perishable world the imperishable remembrance of the Almighty. So a Hebrew poet breathed into the wandering air of the desert that brave hope which afterwards, far beyond his thought, was in Israel to be fulfilled. Had he been exiled from Galilee? In Galilee was to be heard the voice that told of immortality and redemption.
We must go back in the book to find the beginning of the hope now seized. Already Job has been looking forth beyond the region of this little life. What has he seen?
First and always, Eloah. That name and what it represents do not fail him. He has had terrible experiences, and all of them must have been appointed by Eloah. But the name is venerable still, and despite all difficulties he clings to the idea that righteousness goes with power and wisdom. The power bewilders-the wisdom plans inconceivable things-but beyond there is righteousness.
Next. He has seen a gleam of light across the darkness of the grave, through the gloom of the underworld. A man going down thither, his body to moulder into dust, his spirit to wander a shadow in a prison of shadows, -may not remain there. God is almighty-He has the key of Sheol-a star has shown for a little, giving hope that out of the underworld life may be recovered. It is seen that Eloah, the Maker, must have a desire to the work of His hands. What does that not mean?
Again. It has been borne upon his mind that the record of a good life abides and is with the All-seeing. What is done cannot be undone. The wasting of the flesh cannot waste that Divine knowledge. The eternal history cannot be effaced. Spiritual life is lived before Eloah who guards the right of a man. Men scorn Job, but with tears he has prayed to Eloah to right his cause, and that prayer cannot be in vain.
A just prayer cannot be in vain because God is ever just. From this point thought mounts upward. Eloah forever faithful-Eloah able to open the gate of Sheol-not angry forever-Eloah keeping the tablet of every life, indifferent to no point of right, -these are the steps of progress in Jobs thought and hope. And these are the gain of his trial. In his prosperous time none of these things had been before him. He had known the joy of God but not the secret, the peace, not the righteousness. Yet he is not aware how much he has gained. He is coming half unconsciously to an inheritance prepared for him in wisdom and in love by Eloah in whom he trusts. A man needs for life more than he himself can either sow or ripen.
And now, hear Job. Whether the rock shall be graven or not he cannot tell. Does it matter? He sees far beyond that inscribed cliff in the desert. He sees what alone can satisfy the spirit that has learned to live.
"Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."
Not dimly this great truth flashes through the web of broken ejaculation, panting thought.
"But I know it: my Redeemer liveth;
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And after my skin they destroy, even this,
And without my flesh shall I see Eloah,
Whom I shall see FOR ME,
And mine eyes shall behold and not the stranger-
My reins are consumed in my bosom."
The Goel or Redeemer pledged to him by eternal justice is yet to arise, a living Remembrancer and Vindicator from all wrong and dishonour. On the dust that covers death He will arise when the day comes. The diseases that prey on the perishing body shall have done their work. In the grave the flesh shall have passed into decay; but the spirit that has borne shall behold Him. Not for the passing stranger shall be the vindication, but for Job himself. All that has been so confounding shall be explained, for the Most High is the Goel; He has the care of His suffering servant in His own hand and will not fail to issue it in clear satisfying judgment.
For the inspired writer of these words, declaring the faith which had sprung up within him; for us also who desire to share his faith and to be assured of the future vindication, three barriers stand in the way, and these have successively to be passed.
First is the difficulty of believing that the Most High need trouble Himself to disentangle all the rights from the wrongs in human life. Is humanity of such importance in the universe? God is very high; human affairs may be of little consequence to His eternal majesty. Is not this earth on which we dwell one of the smaller of the planets that revolve about the sun? Is not our sun one amongst a myriad, many of them far transcending it in size and splendour? Can we demand or even feel hopeful that the Eternal Lord shall adjust the disordered equities of our little state and appear for the right which has been obscured in the small affairs of time? A century is long to us; but our ages are "moments in the being of the eternal silence." Can it matter to the universe moving through perpetual cycles of evolution, new races and phases of creaturely life arising and running their course-can it matter that one race should pass away having simply contributed its struggle and desire to the far-off result? Conceivably, in the design of a wise and good Creator, this might be a destiny for a race of beings to subserve. How do we know it is not ours?
This difficulty has grown. It stands now in the way of all religion, even of the Christian faith. God is among the immensities and eternities; evolution breaks in wave after wave; we are but one. How can we assure our hearts that the inexterminable longing for equity shall have fulfilment?
Next there is the difficulty which belongs to the individual life. To enjoy the hope, feel the certainty to which Job reached forth, you or I must make the bold assumption that our personal controversies are of eternal importance. One is obscure; his life has moved in a very narrow circle. He has done little, he knows little. His sorrows have been keen, but they are brief and limited. He has been held down, scorned, afflicted. But after all why should God care? To adjust the affairs of nations, to bring out the worlds history in righteousness may be Gods concern. But suppose a man lives bravely, bears patiently, preserves his life from evil, though he have to suffer and even go down in darkness, may not the end of the righteous King be gained by the weight his life casts into the scale of faith and virtue? Should not the man be satisfied with this result of his energy and took for nothing more? Does eternal righteousness demand anything more on behalf of a man? Included in this is the question whether the disputes between men, the small ignorances, egotisms, clashing of wills, need a final assize. Are they not trifling and transient? Can we affirm that in these is involved an element of justice which it concerns our Maker to establish before the worlds?
The third barrier is not less than the others to modern thought. How is our life to be preserved or revived, so that personally and consciously we shall have our share in the clearing up of the human story and be gladdened by the "Well done, good and faithful servant" of the Judge? That verdict is entirely personal; but how may the faithful servant live to hear it? Death appears inexorable. Despite the resurrection of Christ, despite the words He has spoken, "I am the resurrection and the life," even to Christians the vision is often clouded, the survival of consciousness hard to believe in. How did the author of Job pass this barrier-in thought, or in hope? Are we content to pass it in hope?
I answer all these questions together. And the answer lies in the very existence of the idea of justice, our knowledge of justice, our desire for it, the fragmentariness of our history till right has been done to us by others, by us to others, by man to God, and God to man-the full right, whatever that may involve.
Whence came our sense of justice? We can only say, From Him who made us. He gave us such a nature as cannot be satisfied nor find rest till an ideal of justice, that is of acted truth, is framed in our human life and everything possible done to realise it. Upon this acted truth all depends, and till it is reached we are in suspense. Deep in the mind of man lies that need. Yet it is always a hunger. More and more it unsettles him, keeps him in unrest, turning from scheme to scheme of ethic and society. He is ever making compromises, waiting for evolutions; but nature knows no compromises and gives him no clue save in present fact. Is it possible that He who made us will not overpass our poor best, will not sweep aside the shifts and evasions current in our imperfect economy? The passion for righteousness comes from him; it is a ray of Himself. The soul of the good man craving perfect holiness and toiling for it in himself, in others, can it be greater than God, more strenuous, more subtle than the Divine evolution that gave him birth, the Divine Father of his spirit? Impossible in thought, impossible in fact.
No. Justice there is in every matter. Surely science has taught us very little if it has not banished the notion that the small means the unimportant, that minute things are of no moment in evolution. For many years past science has been constructing for us the great argument of universal physical fidelity, universal weaving of the small details into the vast evolutionary design. The micoscopist, the biologist, the chemist, thee astronomer, each and all are engaged in building up this argument, forcing the confession that the universe is one of inconceivably small things ordered throughout by law. Finish and care would seem to be given everywhere to minutiae as though, that being done, the great would certainly evolve. Further, science even when dealing with material things emphasises the importance of mind. The truthfulness of nature at any point in the physical range is a truthfulness of the Overnature to the mind of man, a correlation established between physical and spiritual existence. Wherever order and care are brought into view there is an exaltation of the human reason which perceives and relates. All would be thrown into confusion if the fidelity recognised by the mind did not extend to the mind itself, if the sanity and development of the mind were not included in the order of the universe. For the psychological student this is established, and the working of evolutionary law is being traced in the obscure phenomena of consciousness, subconsciousness, and habit.
Is it of importance that each of the gases shall have laws of diffusion and combination, shall act according to those laws, unvaryingly affecting vegetable and animal life? Unless those laws wrought in constancy or equity at every moment all would be confusion. Is it of importance that the bird, using its wings, shall be able to soar into the atmosphere; that the wings adapted for flight shall find an atmosphere in which their exercise produces movement? Here again is an equity which enters into the very constitution of the cosmos, which must be a form of the one supreme law of the cosmos. Once more, is it of importance that the thinker shall find sequences and relations, when once established, a sound basis for prediction and discovery, that he shall be able to trust himself on lines of research and feel certain that, at every point, for the instrument of inquiry there is answering verity? Without this correspondence man would have no real place in evolution, he would flutter an aimless unrelated sensitiveness through a storm of physical incidents.
Advance to the most important facts of mind, the moral ideas which enter into every department of thought, the inductions through which we find our place in another range than the physical. Does the fidelity already traced now cease? Is man at this point beyond the law of faithfulness, beyond the invariable correlation of environment with faculty? Does he now come to a region which he cannot choose but enter, where, however, the cosmos fails him, the beating wing cannot rise, the inquiring mind reaches no verity, and the consciousness does flutter an inexplicable thing through dreams and illusions? A man has it in his nature to seek justice. Peace for him there is none unless he does what is right and can believe that right will be done. With this high conviction in his mind he is opposed, as in this Book of Job, by false men, overthrown by calamity, covered with harsh judgment. Death approaches and he has to pass away from a world that seems to have failed him. Shall he never see his right nor Gods righteousness? Shall he never come to his own as a man of good will and high resolve? Has he been true to a cosmos which after all is treacherous, to a rule of virtue which has no authority and no issue? He believes in a Lord of infinite justice and truth; that his life, small as it is, cannot be apart from the pervading law of equity. Is that his dream? Then any moment the whole system of the universe may collapse like a bubble blown upon a marsh.
Now let us clearly understand the point and value of the argument. It is not that a man who has served God here and suffered here must have a joyful immortality. What man is faithful enough to make such a claim? But the principle is that God must vindicate His righteousness in dealing with the man He has made, the man He has called to trust Him. It matters not who the man is, how obscure his life has been, he has this claim on God, that to him the eternal righteousness ought to be made clear. Job cries for his own justification; but the doubt about God involved in the slur cast upon his own integrity is what rankles in his heart; from that he rises in triumphant protest and daring hope. He must live till God clears up the matter. If he dies he must revive to have it all made clear. And observe, if it were only that ignorant men cast doubt on providence, the resurrection and personal redemption of the believer would not be necessary. God is not responsible for the foolish things men say, and we could not look for resurrection because our fellow creatures misrepresent God. But Job feels that God Himself has caused the perplexity. God sent the flash of lightning, the storm, the dreadful disease; it is God who by many strange things in human experience seems to give cause for doubt. From God in nature, God in disease, God in the earthquake and the thunderstorm, God whose way is in the sea and His path in the mighty waters-from this God, Job cries in hope, in moral conviction, to God the Vindicator, the eternally righteous One, Author of nature and Friend of man.
This life may terminate before the full revelation of is made; it leave the good in darkness and the evil flaunting in pride; the believer may go down in shame and the atheist have the last word. Therefore a future life with judgment in full must vindicate our Creator; and every personality involved in the problems of time must go forward to the opening of the seals and the fulfilment of the things that are written in the volumes of God. This evolution being for the earlier stage and discipline of life, it works out nothing, completes nothing. What it does is to furnish the awaking spirit with material of thought, opportunity for endeavour, the elements of life; with trial, temptation, stimulus, and restraint. No one who lives to any purpose or thinks with any sincerity can miss in the course of his life one hour at least in which he shares the tragical contest and adds the cry of his own soul to that of Job, his own hope to that of ages that are gone, straining to see the Goel who undertakes for every servant of God.
"I know it: my Redeemer liveth,
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And without my flesh I shall see Eloah."
By slow cycles of change the vast scheme of Divine providence draws toward a glorious consummation. The believer waits for it, seeing One who has gone before him and will come after him, the Alpha and Omega of all life. The fulness of time will at length arrive, the time fore, ordained by God, foretold by Christ, when the throne shall be set, the judgment shall be given, and the aeons of manifestation shall begin.
And who in that day shall be the sons of God? Which of us can say that he knows himself worthy of immortality? How imperfect is the noblest human life, how often it falls away into the folly and evil of the world! We need one to deliver us from the imperfection that gives to all we are and do the character of evanescence, to set us free from our entanglements and bring us into liberty. We are poor erring creatures. Only if there is a Divine purpose of grace that extends to the unworthy and the frail, only if there is redemption for the earthly, only if a Divine Saviour has undertaken to justify our existence as moral beings, can we look hopefully into the future. Job looked for a Redeemer who would bring to light a righteousness he claimed to possess. But our Redeemer must be able to awaken in us the love of a righteousness we alone could never see and to clothe us in a holiness we could never of ourselves attain. The problem of justice in human life will be solved because our race has a Redeemer whose judgment when it falls will fall in tenderest mercy, who bore our injustice for our sakes and will vindicate for us that transcendent righteousness which is forever one with love.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Job_19:23. “O that my words were now written!” The…
Notes
Job_19:23. “O that my words were now written!” The “words” understood as either—
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(1) Those now to be uttered. So JEROME, PISCATOR, CARYL, HENRY, &c. As an everlasting monument of his faith in the resurrection.—MAYER. Such as would come within the inscription on a rock; therefore, those contained in Job_19:25-27.—SCOTT. Or
(2) Those which he had already uttered in defence of his innocence. So MERCER, NOYES, &c. All the declarations he had already made of his integrity, together with his solemn appeals to God.—WEMYSS. BARTH, in his “Bible Manual,” combines both: “The words of his lamentation and sorrow misunderstood by his friends, as well as those of his hope, which he was now about to utter.” GREGORY understood not so much his “words,” as his sufferings. “Words” put for the things themselves.—POLYCHROMIUS. Instead of “written,” WEMYSS and KITTO would read “recorded.” CAREY: “Engraven.” SCOTT says: “Written, perhaps, on linen: painting on linen very ancient among the Egyptians; the use of papyrus a later invention.”
“O that they were printed in a book!” בַּסֵּפֶר (bassçpher) “in the, or a, book;” סֵפֶר (sçpher) from סָפַר (sâphar) to shave, engrave, write. וְיֻחָקוּ (veyukhâkoo) “and were printed, or engraved;” Hophal form of חָקַק (khâkak) to cut, make an incision, engrave. So GESENIUS. PISCATOR, however, thinks that the verb חקק does not mean to “engrave,” but to “delineate” or “paint,” and refers to Isa_30:8; Isa_19:16; Eze_6:1. MERCER observes that the order of the words is inverted, and translates: “That they might be engraven in a book.” JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS: “Carved out.” PAGNINUS: “Written out.” SCULTETUS thinks that the first clause indicates simple writing; the second, writing in an entire book, or among histories or public records. So SCHULTENS understands בַּסֵּפֶר: “in a public record, in which more remarkable events were registered.” J. H. MICHAELIS translates: “Who will put them into the book, that they may be engraven?” GRYNŒUS: “Engraven for eternal remembrance in all time to come.” ADAM CLARKE: “Fairly traced out in a book, formed either of the leaves of the papyrus or on a sort of linen cloth.” KITTO: “Engraven on a tablet of wood, earthenware, or bone.” SCOTT observes that letters were supposed by Sir Isaac Newton to have been invented by the Edomites, from whom Moses learned them when he fled into Midian. NOYES renders the words: “O that they were marked down in a scroll!” CONANT: “In the book, where all might read them,” as indicated by the presence of the article. CAREY thinks some particular book intended, perhaps that part of the Bible then extant, containing the records of the Creation and the history of the Antediluvian World. ZÖCKLER, however, thinks this unnecessary, and translates: “In a book,”—any book, or skin prepared for writing.
“That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!” יַחָצִבוּן (yekhatsebhoon), Niphal, or passive form of חָצַב (khatsable), to cut, or cut out; “were cut.” So GESENIUS and J. H. MICHAELIS. KITTO: “Graven.” WEMYSS: “Sculptured.” BOOTHROYD: “Cut deep.” לָעַד (la-adh) from עָדָה (‘adhah, to pass); עַד (adh), primarily, a passage or progress; then perpetuity. GROTIUS conjectures the reading to have been לְעֵד (le’-edh) “for a testimony,” which agrees with the version of the Septuagint. בְּעֵט (be-et), “with a pen;” עֵט (çt) being, according to Gesenius, a pen for writing on stone or metal. “And with lead,” i.e., poured into the letters carved with the iron pen for greater distinctness. So JARCHI, PISCATOR, BOCHART, JUNIUS, SCHULTENS, UMBREIT, and most of the moderns. The TIGURINE version, however: “In lead.” So the VULGATE: “With a plate of lead.” LUTHER: “Upon lead.” A. CLARKE: “On leaden tablets.” WEMYSS, BOOTHROYD, and KITTO: “On rolls of lead.” TOWNSEND quotes PAUSANIAS, who says that near Helicon he was shown some leaden tablets, on which were engraven the works of HESIOD. TIRINUS observes that writing tablets among the ancients were made not only with wax, but lead, as is seen in the ancient tombs of Fabricius and Valesius, near Naples. It is known that with the Romans public acts were inscribed on leaden plates, as well as brazen ones. PLINY (“Nat. Hist., xiii. 11) says: “Formerly people wrote on the leaves of the palm and the inner bark of certain trees: afterwards, public monuments were written on reals of lead; and soon after, private ones on linen and wax.” SCULTETUS observes that for security against fire, Job wishes the inscription to be also in a rock. So MERCER, PISCATOR, JUNIUS, and TREMELLIUS. PAGNINUS and MONTANUS, however, translate: “In stone.” PINEDA: “On a pillar of stone.” CODURCUS and SCHULTENS think the allusion is to sepulchral pillars, with epitaphs inscribed on them. SEB. SCHMIDT translates: “On tables of stone.” POCOCKE remarks that hieroglyphical characters are cut in the rock in the tombs of the kings at Thebes. SCOTT observes, from GREAVES, that an inscription of one line in the same characters is found in the second pyramid. LEE, after SCHULTENS and HALES, notices that it was customary with the ancient Arabs of Yemen to inscribe their precepts of wisdom on the rocks, in order 10 preserve them. HUFNAGEL observes that Orientals appear to have been accustomed to make inscriptions on the rocks. NIEBUHR saw such in his travels. Those high up on the rocks, at the Nahr el Kelb, near Beyroot, now pretty well known. A. CLARKE remarks that all the modes of writing then in use are apparently alluded to in this passage.
Job_19:25. “For I know,” &c. Various opinions as to the nature and object of Job’s present declaration. It has been viewed
(1) as a confession of his faith, in opposition to the calumnies of his friends So DRUSIUS, &c. More especially of his faith in the promised Redeemer. So SCHULTENS, MICHAELIS, ROSENMÜLLER, HALES, GOOD, PYE SMITH, &C. Of his faith in a future judgment for the vindication of his character. So SCOTT. Of his faith and hope in reference to the resurrection of the body. So CAREY, &C. Of his faith in the Redeemer, and an assured expectation of a happy resurrection.—CARYL. M. HENRY calls it “Job’s creed or confession of his faith,” declaring that he sought a better country (Heb_11:14), and appealing to the coming of the Redeemer. A. CLARKE says: “Job speaks prophetically; pointing out the future redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ, and the general resurrection of the human race.” Dr. CHALMERS observes that—” To the consolations of a good conscience, Job adds those of a far-seeing faith.” Others view it as
(2) the declaration of an expectation which the close of the book thorns to have been fulfilled. So KITTO. An expression of the conviction that he should himself see the restoration of his honour and health; and that, although reduced to a perfect skeleton, he should be gladdened by an appearance of God on his behalf, and not on that of the others. So CHRYSOSTOM, JOHN of Damascus, and some of the early Greek Fathers; also some of the Reformed, as MERCER, GROTIUS, LE CLERC; those on the Continent with rationalistic tendencies, as JUSTI, KNOBEL, HIRZEL, STICKEL; supernaturalists, as DATHE, DÖDERLEIN, BAUMGARTEN-CRUSIUS, KNAPP, AUGUSTI, UMBREIT; even some of the directly orthodox, as v. HOFFMANN and HAHN; and in our own country WEMYSS, STUART, BARNES. Some regard it as
(3) the expression of his hope of seeing God in a spiritually glorified condition beyond the grave. So EWALD, SCHLOTTMANN, DELITZSCH, DILLMANN, ZÖCKLER, DAVIDSON in his Introduction; and of Jewish interpreters, ARNHEIM and LOWENTHAL.
The force of the Copula at the beginning of the sentence has been variously understood. “For:” as in our English version. So the VULGATE, DUTCH, GENEVA, COVERDALE, and SCHULTENS. “Since,” or “because:”—the older Hebrew interpreters. “Indeed:” so the SYRIAC, ARABIC, CASTALIO, PISCATOR, COCCEIUS, JUNIUS, and TREMELLIUS. “But:” LUTHER, DE WETTE, EWALD, LEE, CONANT, &C. DIODATI has: “Now.” MERCER and PAGNINUS: “ALEB.” MONTANUS: “And truly.” SCULTETUS: “Yet”—notwithstanding my complaints. MENOCHIUS and DRUSIUS: “Yet,”—whatever you object to me, and although you continue wicked. DELITZSCH: “But yet.” COLEMAN: “Verily.” PYE SMITH: “Surely.” FRY: “That.” ZÖCKLER: “And.” PINEDA observes: “The expression יָדַעְתִּי (yadha’ti) ‘I know,’ excludes all doubt, as in Gen_48:19.” SCULTETUS: “Implies the faith which is both knowledge and trust.” GRYNŒUS and HIRZEL: “The conviction that will not be shaken by opponents.” The “I,” emphatic—“I know, if you do not,” So FAUSSET, HIRZEL: “I, for my part,” in opposition to those who deny him. GRYNŒUS: “I, in whom the arrows of God and man are now sticking, as in a wicked person.”
“My Redeemer liveth.” גֹּאְלִי (goali) from גָּאַל (gaal) to redeem, deliver; my Re-deemer. So GEEINIUS. COCCEIUS: From גָאַל (gaal) to claim as one’s own, as Psa_119:154; Isa_43:1; Rth_4:6; Psa_74:2; Isa_48:20; used also of things sold and consecrated: hence to redeem; גוֹאֵל (goel), a relative who can claim or vindicate the honour, life, goods, &c., of another as his own (Lev_25:25; Rth_3:13). SCULTETUS: Properly, a blood relation, who claims or recovers the alienated goods of a near relative, or himself from slavery, or demands his blood, if slain at the hands of the slayer (Num_35:12). GROTIUS: A deliverer, in a general sense. SCULTENS and ROSENMǙLLER: An avenger. GRYNŒUS and PYE SMITH: A deliverer or avenger; here pointing to the Messiah. UMBREIT: A blood-avenger—meaning God who should appear as his avenger before his death. LEE and HALES: An avenging Redeemer; viz. God, who should clear him of all charges. TOWNSEND: His Redeemer,
(1) As the restorer of his temporal prosperity;
(2) The vindicator of his innocence;
(3) The redeemer of his soul from sin and death: the several offices of the Goel united in the person of Jesus Christ, who took our nature and become our Kinsman. גוֹאל (goel) originally applied to a person whose duty it was to maintain the rights, interests, and reputation of a near relative, either by repurchasing his mortgaged inheritance, by marrying his widow and saving his family from extinction, by redeeming him from servitude, or by avenging his blood; applied elsewhere to God as a Deliverer from any kind of calamities. This believed, by some, to be the application here, without any reference to Christ. So MERCER, CALVIN, GROTIUS, LE CLERC, PATRICK, WARBURTON, HEATH, KENNICOTT, DATHE, DODERLEIN, Dr. WETTE, BARNES, &c. GESENIUS: גֹאֲלִי חַי (goali khai), “my Redeemer liveth,”—God Himself will deliver me from these calamities. STICKEL observes; גֹאַל (goel) here used without הַדָּם (haddam), “of blood;” hence employed in the more general sense of a judicially valid intercessor and deliverer of life and property. So OLSHAUSEN and CONANT. Here a deliverer, not an avenger of blood. On the other hand, FAUSSET observes: Job uniformly despairs of restoration and vindication in this life (chap. Job_17:15-16); therefore the allusion here to a vindication in a future life. According to MERCER, the Redeemer here is God the Father. So called as delivering the godly from their troubles. GROTIUS: The view of the Jews and Socinians; but the office only appropriately ascribed to God the Son, man’s Kinsman; and so always understood elsewhere. Redemption peculiarly ascribed to Christ. Job’s Redeemer the God-man, the “living one,” yet standing on the earth. SFEIFFER: The Incarnate Word. PINEDA, TIRINUS, SCULTETUS, &c.: The opinion of the fathers as well as of the earlier and modern evangelical interpreters in general. EPHREM SYRUS: A prediction of the incarnate Emmanuel. MUNSTER: “Of the Messiah, as the first-fruits of them that slept.” COCCEIUS: Christ is Redeemer, as
(1) Near of kin,
(2) Redeeming by that right;
(3) Taking the prey from the unrighteous possessor, and that without paying him any price;
(4) Paying a price to the true proprietor. All redemptions and deliverances of the Church and people of God ascribed to Christ, as Zec_9:11; Isa_43:9; Gen_48:16. TOWNSEND observes: Job, in the age of error, may be considered as the faithful witness in his day to the hope of the Messiah. BARTLE, in his “Bible Manual,” remarks: Though having no well-defined conception of the Messiah as his Redeemer, Job yet expresses his expectation that God would prove a Redeemer to him, and the Vindicator of his innocence. PINEDA: In the expression “My Redeemer,” Job declares his singular love to Christ, as in the expression “My brother” (1Ki_20:32). CARTWRIGHT: Job appropriates Christ to himself, and calls Him his own.
חַי (khai) “liveth” or “living;” always lives, is immortal and eternal. So DRUSIUS and MENOCHINS. CARTWBIGHT:” Liveth,” without distinction of time as past or future; God the Eternal I am: Christ, as God, lives from eternity, while, as man, believes to eternity: “Liveth,”—hath life in Himself as the Prince of life; also denotes His strength and power, as Psa_38:19. COCCEIUS: “Job opposes the Redeemer’s life to his own death: perhaps, also, alludes to the death of the Redeemer Himself” (Rev_1:18). SCULTFTUS; Although he shall die for me, yet is He the true and living God; the faith of the Old Testament saint is a true and saving faith in Christ (Gen_48:16; Act_4:12; Act_15:11). JUNIUS: “My Redeemer liveth;” therefore, though men may bury my cause in oblivion, it remains safe with God. Others read: My Redeemer is the Living One. So SCOTT, PYE SMITH, DR. HENDERSON. HALES translates: My Redeemer is living. DR. THOMAS, in the “Homilist”: My living Redeemer; like אֵל חַי the living God,—having life in Himself.
“And that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.” A clause very variously interpreted and understood. אַחֲרוֹן (akharon) from אָחַר (akhar, to remain, tarry, or be behind; here rendered “at the latter day;” properly “the last,” but may be used adverbially, with בְ or לְ understood, as in Isa_9:1; Isa_30:8, &c.; and then meaning “at last.” “At length he shall stand (or appear) on the dust,” i.e., on the earth. So GESENIUS, HEILIGSTEDT, MAURER, NOYES. Or “Over the tomb,” as EWALD, ZÖCKLER, and others. To witness for him: DELITZSCH. To protect him: FAUSSET. To deliver him: ZÖCKLER. Ancient translators seem to have read the verb variously; as אָקוּם “I shall rise.” So the VULGATE: “At the last day I shall rise from the earth.” יָקִים “He shall raise up.” So the SEPTUAGINT: “He shall raise up my skin on the earth.” יָקוּם “He shall stand up or appear.” So the SYRIAC and ARABIC: “In the end he shall appear on the earth.” The TARGUM: “And afterwards his redemption shall rise upon the earth.” In this way THEODORET read the word: “The last one shall rise upon the dust, or the tomb.” So most of the translators at and since the Reformation. LUTHER, however, following the Septuagint, has: “He shall hereafter awaken me out of the earth.” But the Dutch and French (MARTIN’S) versions: “He shall remain the last on the earth.” DIODATI’S Italian: “At the last day he shall stand over the dust.” VATABLUS: “He shall stand over the earth,” i.e., in heaven. GROTIUS, CASTALIO, LE CLERC: “At the last he shall stand over the dust,” or earth. MERCER, COCCEIUS, SCULTETUS: “The latter or last One, he shall stand over the dust,” i.e., on the earth, as being to remain for ever. The TIGURINE: “In the last time he shall stand over the dust,” applying his power over it. BROUGHTON: “He shall rise upon the dust,” i.e., from death. JUNIUS “The latter one or last man,” &c.,—living again in the resurrection and at the coming of Christ, compared with the former or first man, as in 1Co_15:42; perhaps Christ understood. MONTANUS: “The last one shall rise again from the dead,” alluding to Christ, the first-fruits of them that slept; or, “He shall stand over the dust,” i.e., those lying in the dust. COCCEIUS: “The last,” as never leaving us, or as remaining after all enemies are destroyed; or, last in life, alone immortal, ruling over death and the dust; or, as my deliverer, demanding me from the dust, having abolished the claim of death. SCULTETUS and GROTIUS: “Shall stand over the dust,” as conqueror, raising it to life. CODURCUS: “The last shall stand over the dust,” at the last judgment—the Son of God and the goel of our race. DRUSIUS and CARYL: “The last one,” viz., the Redeemer. So SCHULTENS: “The last man”—an epithet of Christ—“He shall stand over dust,”—the dust of the grave, to claim this flesh from the spoiled prison of death; shall come as the avenger of a good cause and of oppressed innocence, and will put the crown of righteousness upon my head. GRYNOEUS: “The last,” for, “At the last day.” So WEMYSS, GOOD, DATHE, DÖDERLEIN: “At last he shall appear on the earth.” HALES: “At the last day he shall stand over the dust,” i.e., over mankind—shall rise in judgment. FRY: “At the end he shall stand upon the earth.” LEE: “In the last age or hereafter” (the “last days” of the prophets and apostles). CONANT: In after time. So NOYES, BARNES, HENDERSON. KITTO: “Hereafter or at last.” Many of the moderns, however, prefer the other rendering of אַחֲרוֹן viz., “the last one.” So both the MICHAELISES, STICKEL, MAURER, HEILIGSTEDT, DE WETTE, DELITZSCH, SCOTT, PYE SMITH, Dr. ALEXANDER, FAUSSET. ZÖCKLER says: “As the last one,” surviving all, with special reference to Job himself. ROSENMÜLLER: “He shall stand to assist or avenge the dust, i.e., the dead.” HUFNAGEL, viewing עָפָר (‘aphar) as from i.e., “an enemy,” has: “He shall stand over or overcome my enemies.” A. CLARKE: He shall be manifest in the flesh, and shall stand over them who sleep in the dust, or who have been reduced to dust, CONANT: “He shall stand up,” &c„ as a judge, and will decide the case in my favour, as Psa_12:5; Psa_44:26; or, “On the dust,” i.e., on (he earth, including the sense of vileness. NOYES: “Dust,” probably emphatic, as constrasted with heaven, the residence of the Creator. DÖDERLEIN understands by “dust” the patriarch himself reduced to dust and ashes. So ZÖCKLER: “The dust of my decayed body or of my grave.” KENNICOTT: “Over this dust.” Dr. ALEXANDER: “By my dust.”
The drift of this sublime declaration thus variously understood. By most the sentence is viewed as declarative of Job’s assurance regarding the promised Redeemer and future resurrection of the body. CASTALIO. The reference is to the resurrection of Christ, to be followed by that of all men. The arguments in favour of this view, as given by COCCEIUS, SCHULTENS, and others: (l) The sublime preface;
(2) A final judgment threatened by Job to his friends (Job_19:26);
(3) His thoughts obviously lifted above this world, and the tone of his discourse now and henceforth more hopeful than before;
(4) All hope in this life already given up (Job_17:5);
(5) The opinion of the fathers, as Jerome, Augustine, Cyprian, Gregory, &c.;
(6) The interpretation of the Targum and the Septuagint;
(7) The wish that this testimony should be read after his death, perhaps on a sepulchral pillar;
(8) The certainty expressed by him as resting on the immovable foundation of faith, that his Redeemer would come;
(9) The simplicity of this interpretation;
(10) Its agreement with the argument and scope;
(11) The truth of the thing itself;
(12) The majesty of the words;
(13) The joyful hope exhibited by the patriarch;
(14) The oneness of the Spirit in patriarchs, apostles, and all the faithful. TOWNSEND observes: These words have always been interpreted by the Church as expressive of the patriarch’s faith and hope in a spiritual Redeemer, who should restore him after the death of his body; hence embodied by the Churches of Rome and England in their offices for the dead. LEE speaks of the passage as “a recognition of the first promise made to Eve, and therefore a prediction of the Messiah.” JEROME, in his Epistle to Pammachus, says: “None speaks so plainly of the resurrection after Christ, as Job does before Him” The passage was also applied by some of the Rabbis to the Messiah. Thus R. Hakkodesh: “God shall be seen in our flesh; as Job testifies. Out of my flesh I shall see God.” The reference to an existence beyond the grave, apart from the resurrection of the body, understood by some modern interpreters, as SCHLOTTMANN, ZÖCKLES, CONANT, &c.
According to an opposite view, the reference is to a figurative resurrection of Job, and his restoration to a better condition in this life. So GROTIUS, MERCER, CALVIN, (who yet fluctuates between the two opinions,) CHRYBOSTOM, AMBROSE. THEOPHYLACT, &c. The argument in favour of this view, as given by MERCER, ROSENMÜLLER, BARNES and others:
(1) Its agreement with the history;
(2) Its harmony with other passages of Scripture where a resurrection is spoken of, as Ezekiel 37;
(3) The views of the Hebrew writers, who, in searching for proofs of the resurection, never mention this passage;
(4) The doctrine of the resurrection not likely to be found in this place of the Old Testament alone, nor in the Old Testament at all;
(5) Job’s restoration to prosperity and happiness solves the difficulty of suffering innocence;
(6) The expectation of restored health naturally kept by the poet before Job’s mind;
(7) The assurance of restoration natural to one conscious of suffering innocently;
(8) The language fairly interpreted not necessarily implying a reference to a future and literal resurrection;
(9) Such a view inconsistent with the argument, and with many other places in the book;
(10) The resurrection never referred to as a topic of consolation either by Job or his friends;
(11) Such a view wholly in advance of his age;
(12) All that the words fairly convey met by the supposition that they refer to the events at the end. STICKEL observes, that the decision of the mystery is given in the Epilogue without the immortality of the spirit being in the remotest manner touched; and adds, that Job’s vindication required to be on the earth, and before those who were acquainted with the matter, or the inscription would be meaningless. NOYES: The idea of the resurrection inconsistent with the general design, the course of the argument, the connection of the discourse, and several express declarations, as Job_7:7-8; Job_10:20-22; Job 14, passim. EWALD however, on the contrary, asserts: That through the certainty of that truth alone could the contest be victoriously carried on; while the more respectable of the reformed Biblical interpreters essentially agreed with the Vulgate in understanding the passage of a literal resurrection. So many Orientalists and Hebraists, as SCHULTEES, both the MLCHAELISES, WELTHAUSEN, ROSENMULLER, GOOD, &c. CONANT observes, that the views of early Christian fathers, who differed in their interpretation of the passage, are of little account on either side, having been based on the defective translations of the Septuagint, the Itala, and the Vulgate.
“And though after my skin worms destrey this body” וְאַחַר עוֹרִי נִקְּכּוּ זֹאת ‘on nikkepkoo zotk.) These words variously rendered and understood. נִקְּכּוּ (nikke-pkoo from נָקַף “to strike, or cut;” Piel from, to destroy; or, according to some, from נָקַף=יָקַף “to surround.” GESENIUS, in 1829, rendered the passage: “After they have destroyed my skin (equivalent to, ‘After my skin has been destroyed’), this shall be,” viz., that God shall appear. In 1840, he preferred to render it: “After my skin, which they shall have destroyed, this shall be.” The SEPTUAGINT has: “he shall raise up my skin on the earth, which has endured such things.” The VULGATE, followed by COVERDALE and LUTHER: “Again I shall be surrounded with my skin.” TARGUM: “After my skin shall have been taken away, or burnt up, this shall be,” viz., that my Redeemer shall remain the last. SYRIAC: “After this has spread all over and around my body.” DIODATI: “However, after my skin, this body be corroded.” MARTIN: “When, after my skin, this shall have been devoured.” DUTCH: “After my skin has been eaten.” TIGURINE: “After they (the Trinity) have surrounded this with my skin.” CASTALIO: “After this (my body) shall be surrrounded with my skin.” MONTANUS and PAGNINUS: “After they have bruised this my skin.” MUNSTER: “After [worms] shall have gnawed this body.” JUNIUS: “After [worms] shall have pierced this, when I wake up,”—reading עוּרִי (‘oori) instead of עוֹרִי (ôri) PISCATOR: “Although after my skin they (worms) pierce this,”—supplying כי (chi), or אִם (im). MERCER: “After my skin (corroded and consumed with my whole body), they (the worms in my ulcers, or my extreme pains) have shaken this (viz., his body,—not named, as so deformed, but pointed to).” COCCEIUS: “After they have stripped this that remains of my skin, or this my skin,—the whole of it, even to this particle; or, after my skin has burst, there shall be this,—pointing to his body.” VATABLUS: “After my skin (has been perforated,) pains have broken this [mass of bones].” GROTIUS: “Although not only my skin, but also this (the fat that is under it), disease has consumed.” DE DIEU: “After my skin has been consumed, they (my redeemer) shall make this to follow,” viz., that I shall see God. SEB. SCHMIDT: “After my skin has ceased to be,” viz., after my death. CALOVIUS, and GERHARD: “After my being raised up, this (all I see with my bodily eyes) shall be destroyed.” J. H. MICHAELIS: “When, therefore, after my skin worms, shall have despatched this.” LE CLERC: “If after my skin they have crushed this to pieces.” HALES: “After my skin has been mangled thus.” SCHULTENS: “After they (my pains and ulcers) have bruised my skin in this manner.” STOCK: “After they shall have swathed my skin, even this.” KENNICOTT: “After they (my adversaries) have mangled me thus.” J. D. MICHAELIS, and SCOTT the translator: “My skin, which is thus torn, shall become another,” i.e., shall be renewed. DÖDERLEIN: “I shall cast away my skin,” understanding אחר for אאחר. WEMYSS: “Though this skin of mine is thus corroded.” GOOD: “After the disease has destroyed my skin.” PYE SMITH: “Has cut down my skin.” ADAM CLARKE: “After my skin they (diseases and afflictions) destroy this [wretched composition of misery and corruption].” ROSENMÜLLER: “When after my skin this [body] has been broken into fragments.” BOOTHROYD: “If after my skin this [body] be destroyed.” DE WETTE: “After my skin, which has been mangled, even this here.” So EWALD, HIRZEL, and ZÖCKLER. NOYES: “Though with my skin this body be wasted away.” DELITZSCH: “After my skin, which is thus mangled.” CONANT, SCHLOTSMANN, and CAREY: “After this my skin shall be destroyed.” BARNES: “Though after my skin the flesh be destroyed;” or, “after my skin has been pierced through thus.” FAUCETT: “Though after my skin (is no more), this [body] is destroyed,”—the body not deserving to be named. FRY: “After I awake shall this be brought to pass,”—reading, like Junius and Calovius, עוּרִי instead of עוֹרִי.
“Yet in my flesh shall I tee God.” מִבְּשָׂרִי (mibbesari),—literally, “from my flesh,”—variously translated and understood. The VULGATE has: “in my flesh.” The TARGUM:” Out of my body.” MARTIN (French): “From my flesh.” DIODATI (Italian): “With my flesh.” PAGNINUS, MONTANUS, MERCER, PISCATOR, JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS: “Out of my flesh.” CASTALIO: “From my body.” VATABLUS: “After my flesh has been wasted,” or, “After the affliction endured in my flesh.” So R. NACHMANN. MERCER: “Out of so great affliction of my flesh.” COCCEIUS: “Out of my flesh,” not put off, but received. CALVIN: “In my flesh,”—after I have been restored to a new state,—uncertain what. So GRYNOEUS: “Out of my revivified flesh.” BROUGHTON “From my flesh,—I being raised and clothed with flesh.” GUSSET: “Out of my flesh, as my abode. J. H. MICHAELIS: “From out of my flesh.” KENNICOTT: “Even in my flesh.” ADAM CLARKE: Either, “See Him in my renewed body,” or, “See Him as my kinsman in my flesh and blood,” FRY: “Of my flesh,” i.e., of my nature and kindred, as Gen_2:23. LEE: “From or out of my flesh,” i.e., while still in it. KITTO: “In his flesh before he died, or in his flesh restored to soundness.” BARTH (Bible Manual): “When the flesh is raised up”—in the re-animated glorified body. FAUSSET and ROSENMULLER (Second Edition): “From my renewed body,” as the starting point of vision, as Son_2:9,—the next clause proving bodily vision to be meant. STICKEL: “Without my flesh,”—as a mere skeleton; Job now comes to the point in which God, according to Satan’s desire, “touched his bone and his flesh;” with only his life spared. MAURER: “After my flesh has been all wasted away, yet still in the body.” So CHRYSOSTOM, UMBREIT, HIRZEL, HEILIGSTEDT, HAHN, NOYES, BARNES: “Yet even without my flesh,” COLEMAN: “Apart from my flesh.” EWALD: “Without my flesh,” i.e., as a glorified spirit. So VAIHINGER, SCHLOTTMANN, DILLMANN, DELITZSCH, ZOCKLER.
“I shall see God.” According to PISCATOR, CODURCUS, and others, Job foretells the incarnation of the Divine Word. MERCER: “I shall contemplate him,”—discern His power, providence, and goodness in preserving me.” GROTIUS: “Shall experience him propitious to me.” So HUFNAGEL and ROSENMULLER. COCCEIUS: “Shall behold him in beatific vision,” as Psa_16:11; Psa_17:15; Mat_5:8; 1Jn_3:2. MENOCHIUS: Shall see Christ with bodily eyes, but his Divine Esssence with the eyes of the mind. SCHULTENS: Shall then see God face to face, since access to him is denied me in this life; shall see God in glory,—not the God-man who is the Goel. SEB. SCHMIDT: Shall see God incarnate as the Messiah. DODERLEIN: From my condition, I shall understand that God wishes well to me and approves my life. LE CLERC: The expectation fulfilled when God spoke to him out of the whirlwind. STICKEL: Expresses the expectation of a vindication of his innocence before his death, though it should be only in the last moments of his life. So HOFMANN. NOYES: Shall see God interposing in my favour. DELITZSCH: Shall sec God spiritually after death; Job’s hope, not that of a resurrection, but of a life beyond the grave, and so a breaking through the idea of Hades. EWALD: Refers to the immortality of the soul in the spirit-world. Dr. THOMAS, in the Homilist: Refers to bodily, not mental, vision; the resurrection of the dead found taught here as resulting upon the advent of the Messiah. So AUGUSTINE: Job prophesies of the resurrection; “I shall be in my flesh when I see God.” So CLEMENS ROMANUS, ORIGEN, CYRILL of JERUSALEM, EPHREM SYRUS, AMBROSE, EPIPHANIUS, JEROME, LUTHER, &c.
Job_19:27. “Whom I shall see for myself.” “See,” repeated for emphasis: LEE. לִי (li), literally “for me or myself,” variously understood. The SEPTUAGINT renders the passage: “Which things I know in myself.” VULGATE: “Whom I myself shall see.” MERCER: “Whom I shall discern to be for me, by His kindness in preserving me.” SCULTETUS, “For me,” i.e., for my good. So MONTANUS, PISCATOR, PAGNINUS, and COCCEIUS. JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS: “The same that I shall see for me.” CASTALIO: “Whom I indeed myself shall see.” VATABLUS: “I shall enjoy the sight of Him to my salvation.” COCCEIUS: “Whom I shall see, not angry but abounding in love, to my life and joy, or as mine.” MUNSTER: “On my side.” So KENNICOTT, HALES, SCOTT, WEMYSS, BOOTHROYD, CODURCUS: “Whom I even contemplate as standing by me.” GROTIUS: “I, I say, with these eyes shall see him,”—לִי being emphatic. GRYNŒUS: “Whom I shall see as favourable to me, or as eternally mine.” J. D. MICHAELIS: “For myself.” So GOOD, BARNES, Dr. ALEXANDER. Dr. CHALMERS: “For myself and my own comfort.” Dr. THOMAS: “In my proper personality.” COLEMAN: “As my own.” NOYES: “As my friend.” KITTO: “Interposing on my behalf.” FAUSSET: “For my advantage.” SO HEILIGSTEDT, MAURER, PYE SMITH. ZOCKLER: “For my salvation.” DELITZSCH: “Whom I shall see, I, for my salvation.” DE WETTE: “Yea, I shall see Him myself.” CONANT: “Whom I, for myself, shall see.” So SCHLOTTMANN. SCOTT: “Expresses more explicitly and emphatically his faith that in a disembodied state be should see God.” CAREY: “Whom that I may see as my own,” the object of the desire in the last clause. BARTH: “Anticipates partly his justification, and partly compensation for his sufferings.” ADAM CLARKE: “Speaks as having a personal interest in the resurrection as in the Redeemer.”
“And my eyes shall behold.” The Septuagint translates רָאוּ (raoo) as past: “Which things mine eye hath seen.” So MONTANUS, CODURCUS and COCCEIUS: “My eyes have seen.” The latter explains by saying: “The eyes of my mind have seen and tasted beforehand in my heart the vision of God by the illumination of the Holy Spirit.” CODURCUS translates: “I myself have seen with these eyes;” and adds, “applying to himself the resurrection common to all the saints.” MERCER renders the verb as present: “Whom my eyes see—not corporcally but spiritually: I contemplate His power with the eyes of my mind.” JUNTUS, followed by CARYL, has: “Whom I myself shall see with these eyes, being restored, though now I be entirely dissolved.” MUNSTER has: “Inasmuch as I myself shall behold him,” SCHULTENS views the words as equivalent to—“I believe the resurrection especially of myself.” ROSENMULLER: “I shall see with the eyes of my renewed body.” HUFNAGEL: “I shall yet experience that God makes me happy.” Dr. THOMAS, in the Homilist, observes that רָאָה (raah) implies bodily vision.
“And not another.” זָר (zar) from זוּר (zoor) to “turn aside;” a stranger. The word differently understood. GESENIUS readers it here “an adversary.” “So PINEDA, BOLDUC, STICKEL, CAREY. MERCER, MONTANUS, and PAGNINUS: “A stranger.” So DE WETTE and MICHAELIS. CONANT observes that זָר denotes only a national enemy, and translates: “Another.” So SCHLOTTMANN. VATABLUS has: “Another,” with “for me” understood. So DRUSIUS, COCCEIUS, GROTIUS, MERCER: “I who know my pain and grief and not a stranger.” OSIANDER: “Not a hypocrite,” a stranger in faith and hope. SCULTETUS and CODURCUS: “In this body and not another,” as Isa_26:19. HENRY: “He and not another for him shall be seen;” or, “I and not another for me.” CARYL: “I myself, the very man who now speaks, and not changed into another;” intimating a personal resurrection. So GREGORY and BEZA. MAYER: “TO show that as Christ lives again after death, so shall all the faithful, and that in the same bodies in which they lived before.” GRYNŒUS: “Not only your eyes, who in this might think you had a precedency over me.” HALES: “Not estranged from me.” So KENNICOTT, DATHE, UMBREIT, WEMYSS, SCOTT, PYE SMITH. A. CLARKE: “Not a stranger, who has no relation to human nature.” BOOTHROYD: “Not another’s [eyes].” DELITZSCH: “I and not another person.”
“Though my reins be consumed within me,” כָּלוּ כִלְיוֹתַי בְחֵקִי (caloe chilyothai bekheki) literally: “My reins are consumed in my bosom.” So GESENIUS and others; understanding: “From desire and longing for this consummation.” The SEPTUAGINT has: “All things hare been fulfilled to me in my bosom.” VULGATE: “This my hope has been laid up in my bosom.” TARGUM: “My reins are consumed in my bosom.” SYRIAC: “My reins are consumed on account of my cause.” COVERDALE: “My reins are consumed within me, when ye say,” &c. GENEVA version: “My strength has been consumed and destroyed.” VATABLUS: “My bowels have failed from affliction.” SCULTETUS: “From sorrow and pain.” LE CLERC: “From indignation.” MERCER: “My reins have been consumed in my bosom”—בְּחֵקִי (in my bosom) expressing the greater violence of his pain. PISCATOR and others supply, as in our authorized version: “Although.” CODURCUS has: “My desires have been fulfilled in my bosom.” The TIGURINE translators view the expression as equivalent to: “Which alone is my desire.” Similarly, CARYL and HENRY: “I have nothing more to desire.” DE DIEU: “My reins are consumed with desire in my bosom,” as Psa_84:3. So SCULTETUS: “I also faint with desire of seeing him.” COCCEIUS and SCHCLTENS: “With desire of seeing him clearly and openly.” Dutch annotators: “With desire of obtaining so great a blessing.” SEB. SCHMIDT connects with what follows: “Because ye say,” &c. SCHULTENS regards the words as part of the desired inscription. J. H. MICHAELIS: “From desire of him, or of it, my reins are consumed in my bosom.” So GREGORY: “I burn with desire of enjoying that wished-for time.” To the same effect, J. D. MICHAELIS, DATHE, ROSENMULLER, DE WETTE, PATRICK, WEMYSS, SCOTT, and ZOCKLER. A. CLARKE: “My reins, i.e., my desires are spent;” equivalent to: “Though now apparently at the point of death.” KENNICOTT: “All this have I made up in my own bosom.” PYE SMITH: “The thoughts of my bosom are accomplished.” BOOTHROYD: “Accomplished shall be the desires of my breast.” LEE: “When my reins,” &c.; connecting with the preceding. HOMILIST: “Should my reins have been consumed,” &c.
Job_19:18. “Seeing He root of the matter is found in me” For בִּי (bi) “in me,” upwards of a hundred of MSS. have בִּוֹ (bo) “in him.” The expression שֹׁרָש דּבָרָ (shoresh dabhar), literally, “the root of a word or matter,” very variously understood. The interpretations reduceable to four:—
(1) A ground of accusation;
(2) A ground of dispute;
(3) The true faith;
(4) A holy life. The first and second are the most probable, and now generally adopted: “[How] shall we find the root of the dispute or ground of accusation in him?” So GESENIUS, DELITSZCH, NOYES, CAREY, ZOCKLER, and others, reading נִמְצַא (nimlsa) as first person plural in Kal. The SEPTUAGINT has: “And find the root of the word in him.” VULGATE and TARGUM: “And let us find the root of a word against them.” LUTHER: “And find a matter against him.” COVERDALE: “We have found an occasion against him.” MARTIN (French): “Since the foundation of my words is found in me.” DIODATI (Italian): “Since the root of the word is found in me.’ So MONTANUS, MERCER, VATABLUS, PAGNINUS, PISCATOR, JUNIUS, and TREMELLIUS. COCCEIUS: “And the root of the matter has been found in me,” or is in me; change of person for “in him.” Mercer understands the expression as implying Job’s innocence. CODURCUS: “And that the cause of the quarrel is in me.” So DE DIEU, POOLE, and SCHULTENS. GRYNŒUS: “The cause,” &c. viz., that I am a wicked man, and so deserving the calamities. HUFNAGEL: “Why sought we the cause of his misfortune in himself.” AQUINAS, JEROME, BEDE, SANC-TIUS, understand by “The root,” &c, the words which Job had spoken, or some other charge which the friends brought against him. According to TIRINUS: “An occasion of calumniating him.” OSIANDER: “Of chiding him.” The Dutch annotators regard it as the affliction he endured, or the confession he had just made. COCCEIUS: “The ground of speaking boldly.” VATABLUS: “Truth and innocence.” PISCATOR: “Solid arguments.” GROTIUS: “A good foundation.” CODURCUS translates: “The root of the question;” and understands it of the faith and hope of the resurrection. According to the Assembly’s Annotations: “The root of the Divine Word, or promise of a Redeemer.” J. H. MICHAELIS and SEB. SCHMIDT understand the expression as: “The foundation of his faith.” KENNICOTT and SCOTT have: “The truth of the matter.” HALES, with the Dutch annotators: “The strength of the argument.” The TIGURINE: “The foundation of the matter of salvation.” CARTWRIGHT: “Integrity of heart; the grace of God; true faith.” So MAYER, SIMON, J. D. MICHAELIS, BARNES, and FAUSSET. LE CLERC: “The Word of God.” BARTH: “The assurance he has just expressed.” GOOD translates: “When the root of the matter is disclosed in me.” WEMYSS: “Since there is no ground of accusation in me.” FRY: “A ground of accusation is invented against me.”
JOB’S REPLY. BILDAD’S SECOND SPEECH
This chapter the crowning part of the controversy. Both in form and in fact the centre of the whole book. Like the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the jewel in the ring. Job’s faith soars like an eagle through clouds and tempests into the open heaven, and gazes for a few moments on the sun. The culmination of all the preceding conflict. What follows of a considerably different character. Job afterwards descends again into the arena, but much more tranquillised in spirit.
I. His complaint of his friends’ continued reproaches and unkind treatment
Their treatment of him was—
1. Distressing (Job_19:2). How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces (‘bruise or pound me as in a mortar’) with words (unkind and reproachful words, or with speeches and recitations which contain only words instead of arguments)?” The bruising of Job’s sorrowful spirit the natural effect of his friends’ speeches; especially of their long-drawn and highly-coloured quotations about the late of the wicked. Job put down in them for a wicked man, suffering the righteous consequence of his sins, and threatened with still more dreadful ones. Bruised in soul by his friends’ words, as in body by Satan’s blows. His internal afflictions thus made to rival his external ones. More grievously robbed by his friends than by either Chaldeans or Sabeans. Worse to be robbed of our peace and good name than of our property. “Who steals my purse steals trash.” The experience of David, or whoever wrote Psalms 119 : “Bands of the wicked robbed me” (Psa_119:61). Reproach the bitterest of Christ’s sufferings, next to the hiding of His Father’s face (Psa_69:20). Job’s affliction reaches its height in this chapter, as also his faith and his consolation. Observe—
(1.) Truth misapplied as mischevious as error.
(2.) A sin not to soothe affliction; a still greater one to aggravate it. A high offence in God’s sight to “talk to the grief of those whom God has wounded” (Psa_69:26). The part of the wicked to “help forward the affliction” of God’s suffering people (Zec_1:15).
2. Persistent (Job_19:3). “These ten (many) times have ye reproached me.” Each of the three friends had now attacked him, and two of them a second time. Their speeches all partaking of the same reproachful character Their harshness and vehemence only increased as they advanced. The complaint of David as typical of the Messiah, “Reproach hath broken mine heart” (Psa_69:20).
3. Shameless. “Ye are not ashamed.” A sin to act harshly to any; a shame to act harshly to the afflicted; still more shameful when the afflicted one is a friend. An aggravation of any sin when it is committed without shame.
4. Their treatment was cruel. “Ye make yourselves strange to me,” margin, “harden yourselves against me”; or, “treat me cruelly;” or, “stun me” [with your reproaches]. Unfeeling conduct towards a friend held base even among the heathen. The light of nature teaches that “he who hath friends, must show himself friendly.” The effect of false religious views to render men cruel and unfeeling towards others. Religious persecutions especially malignant. True religion a religion of gentleness and love. The more of it, the more gentle and loving. The more of a false religion, the more cruel and unfeeling. Herod put one or two of Christ’s disciples to death because it pleased the Jews: Saul, with more religion, kept “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against them” (Act_12:1-3; Act_9:1).
II. He wards off their reproaches
Does so with three considerations—
1. That he suffers, alone, the effect of his error, if he has committed any (Job_19:4). “And be it indeed that I have erred (‘gone astray’ from God and His commandments), mine error (in the consequences of it) remaineth with myself.” Sufficient to a man to suffer the effect of his error, without his having to bear the additional pain of reproach. The reproach of friends often harder to bear than the violence of enemies.
2. That his offence, if committed, was an unconscious one. “Mine error.” Marked difference made in the law between sins committed presumptuously or deliberately and those committed in error or ignorance. Job’s among the latter. Such found in the best, “Who can understand his errors?” Yet even then calling for humiliation, and requiring the blood of atonement. One object of affliction to bring sins of ignorance to our consciousness in order to their confession. Many, perhaps most, of our sins, like letters, written with invisible ink, requiring the fire to bring them to view; or, like the characters traced with phosphorous, only made visible in the dark chamber of trouble. Cleansing to be sought “from secret faults” (Psa_19:12).
3. That his afflictions were from the hand of God (Job_19:5). “If, indeed, ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me, my reproach (make my calamities which you reproach me with an argument to prove my guilt; or, prove to me my reproach, that I am guilty and suffer deservedly), know now (on the contrary, or, as a thing I fully admit, but which ought to move your pity), that God hath overthrown me (hath thrust me down and brought me low, doing it of His own free will and pleasure, without reference to any guilt of mine as the cause), and hath compassed me with His net,” (as a hunter the animal that he wishes to take). Bildad had said the wicked are entangled in a net: Job admits he was taken in a net; but that net was God’s. Observe:—
(1.) A Godly man sees and acknowledges God in his troubles, as well as in his triumphs. In the friend’s view, as well as Job’s, his afflictions from God; the difference, that in theirs, they were retributive; in his, arbitrary and mysterious. This pleaded by Job as a reason for their pity and more gentle treatment. Enough for God to lay on His hand, without man adding his also.—
(2.) That our afflictions are from God may be either an alleviation or an aggravation. An alleviation, when there is faith in His Fatherly love; an aggravation, when there is only apprehension of His wrath. The hand of a loving Father seen in our trouble takes away its sting; the apprehension of His anger exasperates the wound.—
(3.) Sin, and not suffering, in itself a “reproach.” Suffering no reproach, but as the effect of sin. “Sin, a reproach to any people.”
4. That he can obtain no redress from God (Job_19:7). “Behold, I cry out of wrong (of violence done to me in these afflictions sent without any guiltiness as the cause), but I am not heard: I cry aloud (from intensity of suffering and earnestness to be heard), but there is no judgment” (no impartial trial afforded of my case, and no redress of my wrongs). One of the hardest things spoken by Job in regard to God. Seemed to charge God foolishly. Even Moses, the meekest man on earth, “spake unadvisedly with his lips.” One of the sayings for which Job was at last reproved by God, and for which he humbled himself in dust and ashes. Yet the language in a sense true, though both rash and irreverent. According to God’s own testimony, Job was “destroyed without cause” (ch. Job_2:3). Job correct as to the fact itself; not correct as to the conduct he ascribes to God in the matter. God might have, as He actually had, the holiest, kindest, wisest, best reasons for treating, or allowing others to treat, him as He did. But to ascribe wrong or violence to his Creator was only the suggestion of his adversary, and enough to bring Job, as it did afterwards bring him, to the dust. Job’s language sinfully presents God in the view of the unjust judge in the parable. Observe—
(1.) God’s outward dealings not always the criterion of His character or His heart. Seems at times to wink at the sins of His enemies and to disregard the cry of His friends. May, however, bear long with His people, but in the end will avenge them. Their part to believe this, and still to cry and wait on (Luk_18:1-8).
(2.) God’s silence to His people’s cry one of their greatest trials. Experienced by David and by David’s Antitype (Psa_22:1-2).
III. Enlarges on God’s severe treatment of him (Job_19:8-19). Specifies—
1. His bringing him into inextricable straits (Job_19:8). “He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths.” Describes his troubles—
(1) Externally; as of the nature of ah impassable fence. By the character of his disease, excluded from society and confined to his ash-heap. His disease an incurable one. All his troubles apparently irremediable.
(2) Internally; his mind full of darkness and confusion. Saw no way of escape. Acknowledges that “the steps of his strength” were “straitened,” but straitened by God, for what cause he knew not. Observe—One usual way in which God afflicts and tries His people is to bring them into straits, out of which they can find no escape. Hedges up their way that they cannot find their paths (Hos_2:6; Lam_3:7; Psa_88:8). Thus shuts them up to Himself—(i.) to humble submission to Him; (ii.) to entire dependence upon Him.
2. His so deeply humbling and abasing him (Job_19:9). “He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.” Similar complaint in ch. Job_16:15. The change in his circumstances here ascribed directly to God. The Chaldeans and Sabeans, the fire and the whirlwind, and finally, the loathsome leprosy itself, only God’s instruments. Observe—
(1) The part of faith and piety, to view all our adversities, whatever the instruments, as coming from God himself (Psa_66:11-12; Psa_71:20).
(2) All earthly “glory,” such as a man can be stripped of by Divine Providence,—children, friends, wealth, fame, influence, rank. That only the true “glory” of which a man cannot be stripped, even by death itself. God himself the believer’s unfading glory (Isa_40:19).
(3) The brightest earthly crown such as may, like Job’s, be suddenly laid in the dust. The poorest believer the heir of “a crown that fadeth not away” (1Pe_5:4). A man’s crown, whatever is his ornament and honour. For Job’s earthly crown, read ch. 29.
3. His utterly extirpating him and blighting his hopes (Job_19:10). “He hath destroyed me (‘plucked me up’) on every side, and I am gone; and mine hope he hath removed like a tree.” The figure that of a tree thoroughly torn up by the roots. Job’s case, both in regard to person and progeny, property and position. All his expectation of comfort, prosperity, and usefulness hopelessly blasted. For his hope, see chap. Job_29:18. The frustration of his hopes, a part of his trial (chap. Job_14:19; Job_17:11). Hard to give up our hopes and see our expectations blasted. All earthly hopes liable to disappointment. Job’s previous condition and character such as might warrant such hopes, if any could.
4. His treating him as an enemy (Job_19:11). “He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies.” Job had lived, like Abraham, as the “friend of God;” had experienced his friendship and familiarity (chap. Job_29:4-5); had, like Enoch, “walked with God,” and sought to please Him (chap. Job_6:10). Intensely trying to be now treated by Him as an enemy (chap. Job_13:24). Yet God’s secret testimony of him: “My servant Job.” The same borne openly at the close of the trial. Observe—
(1) Love and hatred, on the part of God, and His estimate of individuals, not known from His dealings with men in this world (Ecc_9:1).
(2) Apprehended wrath on the part of God, the believer’s greatest trial.
5. His appearing to employ His creatures for his destruction (Job_19:12). “His troops (His creatures whom He employs as a general does his troops) come together (as if summoned from different quarters to the siege), and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle.” The Sabeans and Chaldeans, lightning and whirlwind, hostile friends and neighbours, good and bad angels, all viewed as God’s armies, employed by Him for his destruction. All nature, animate and inanimate, rational and irrational, visible and invisible, capable of being employed as His forces, either for mercy or judgment. The Roman troops besieging Jerusalem spoken of as God’s armies (Mat_22:7). So the swarms of locusts devastating Judæa (Joe_2:25). Creation but “a reservoir of means” made ready for the Creator’s use. Man being in rebellion against God,
“The very elements, though each be meant
The minister of man to serve his wants,
Conspire against him.”
Holy angels especially God’s troops (Psa_103:21). These pitch their tent around God’s servants for their protection (Psa_34:7; Psa_91:10-11). Appeared now to do so around Job’s tabernacle for his destruction. “Blind unbelief is sure to err,” &c. Job’s affliction now apparently chronic. The ministers of destruction had not only raised up their way, as troops advancing to the siege, but had sat down around the beleaguered fortress.
6. His alienating from him his friends, domestics, and others (Job_19:13-15). “He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed (ceased from their kind offices as such), and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in my house (servants and dependents, or strangers partaking, according to Arab custom, of his hospitality and protection, ch. Job_31:17-18), and my maids (from whose sex more tenderness and respect might have been expected) count me for a stranger. I am an alien in their sight,”—instead of being regarded as the master in my own dwelling. A painful aggravation of adversity and affliction when relations are more kin than kind. Job enlarges on this distressing change in his domestic and social relations (Job_19:16). “I called my servant and he gave me no answer (thus treating me not only with disrespect but contempt): I entreated him (instead of commanding him, as a master) with my mouth” (with my own mouth instead of another’s, or with a loud call instead of a mere whisper; or rather, instead of summoning him with my hands,—servants in the East being summoned, not by the voice, but by clapping the hands). A still greater trial, however, than this humiliation in his own house, was his (Job_19:17). “My breath (or my spirit) is strange (odious and disgusting) to my wife (causing her to withdraw from all nearness to me and intercourse with me), though I entreated for the children’s sake of mine own body” (or, ‘and I stink in the nostrils of the children of my womb; i.e. of the womb that bare me, viz. my own brothers and sisters; or the children of my own body—either grandchildren, or the children of concubines; or, ‘my prayer is loathsome to the children,’ &c.). The contemptuous treatment extended beyond his own house (Job_19:18). “Yea, young children (possibly those of his slaves or domestics, or according to margin, ‘the wicked,’ the idle rabble, drawn from curiosity to such a spectacle of misfortune and disease) despise me; I arose (or ‘I rise’ or ‘stand up’ to speak, treating them with courtesy and respect, or commanding them away), and they spake against me.” Sad contrast with his former treatment (chap. Job_29:8-10; Job_29:21-23). One of the greatest indignities in the East to be treated by young persons and inferiors with disrespect. Deference to seniors and superiors a prominent feature in Oriental manners. Job_19:19.—“All my inward friends (Heb. ‘the men of my secret,’ my most intimate and confidential friends) abhorred me; and they whom I loved are turned against me.” Job’s treatment by his three friends a specimen of this part of his affliction, and probably now alluded to. Their feeling, instead of sympathy, one of abhorrence. Their abhorrence from—
(1) His loathsome disease;
(2) The appearance of his being treated as a wicked man and a hypocrite, whom Divine justice was only now overtaking and bringing his secret wickedness to light. A duty suggested by the light of Nature to withdraw from such. This treatment one of Job’s keenest sufferings. The bitter complaint of David and of David’s Antitype, Messiah. (Psa_41:9; Psa_55:13-14; Psa_55:20). This treatment, like his other trials, ascribed by the patriarch to God. So with David—“Lover and friend hast thou put far from me” (Psa_38:11; Psa_31:11; Psa_69:8). “The Lord hath said unto him, Curse David” (2Sa_16:10). Observe—
1. The sinful and undutiful conduct of men to be ascribed to God only as secretly permitted, and for wise and holy ends providentially appointed, but neither as commanded nor instigated by Him. So Joseph’s treatment by his brethren, and the Crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews.
2. The bonds of affection and friendship in God’s hands. These He has but to loose and friends turn foes. The social as well as physical system under His control, and dependent on His will.
3. Satan a willing and powerful agent in producing evil as soon as he obtains permission. His part that of the tale-bearer, to “separate chief friends,” and “sow discord among brethren.” His name Diabolus, or Devil, “the slanderer,” indicative of his character and employment.
4. Evil latent in every heart, and only requiring the removal of restraints in order to its breaking forth. These restraints in God’s hand, who makes the wrath of man to praise Him, while the “remainder” of that wrath He restrains (Psa_76:10).
5. Civil and domestic concord, and the dutiful conduct of subjects and inferiors, due to God’s overruling Providence. The sins of rulers and heads of families often punished by the removal of Providential restraints, and the abandonment of the heart of subjects and children to its own corruption. Hence insubordination, alienation, disobedience, discord. On the other hand, “when a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Pro_16:7).
6. Job, in these verses, a manifest type of God’s Righteous Servant, the Messiah, in His last sufferings. (Read Matthew 26, 27).
IV. Touching appeal to his friends (Job_19:20-22).
1. Describes his reduced condition (Job_19:20). “My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh (or ‘as to my flesh,’—his flesh gone, and his bones adhering to and appearing through his skin); and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth” (with only the skin about the teeth and gums left free from ulcers,—proverbial expression denoting extreme emaciation and peril of life). Satan goes the utmost length of his permission (ch. Job_2:6). Job’s emaciation already alluded to (ch. Job_16:8). The result partly of his disease, partly of his continued grief. Man’s beauty soon made to consume away under God’s rebukes (Psa_39:11).
2. Entreats the pity of his friends (Job_19:21). “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.” Job’s spirit calmer and more humble. The heart a flinty rock that could resist his appeal. Yet resisted by his friends. Left to himself man has “no flesh in his obdurate heart.” Pity no less his duty, and the want of it his sin (ch. Job_6:14). Job’s appeals for pity on the ground—
(1) Of their relation to him as his “friends.” Natural for a man in trouble to cast himself on the sympathy of his friends. Even an enemy will pity in deep distress. A brother born for adversity. Men bearing the name and profession of friends to be careful to act as such (Pro_18:24). Jesus the “Friend of sinners” (Mat_11:19); a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother (Pro_18:24). Appropriated by believers as their Friend (Son_5:16). Touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Heb_4:15). Precious privilege to possess a true and tried friend. Such to be grappled to our soul “with hooks of steel.”
“Poor is the friendless master of a world;
A world in purchase for a friend is gain.”
(2) On the ground of his great affliction. “The hand of God hath touched me.” When God smites, man should pity, not reproach. The heavier the blow, the more tender the sympathy. Observe—All Job’s afflictions but the touch of God’s hand. That touch all that Satan craved. Able in a moment to turn our joy into sorrow, our comeliness into corruption. Can in a few days strip us of our property, bereave us of our children, alienate our friends, deprive us of our health, and render us an object of loathing to all who see us. “A fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
3. Deprecates their severity (Job_19:22). “Why do ye persecute me as God (adding your groundless severity to His), and are not satisfied with my flesh” (which you see mangled and consumed, but will add your reproaches and thus lacerate my spirit as well). Appeals to conscience and humanity as well as to friendship and pity. God’s apparent severity towards any of His creatures no reason for man’s severity to his suffering fellow-creature. In all circumstances God makes humanity man’s duty. “To love mercy” one of the three grand requirements on the part of man (Mic_6:8). Mercy “twice blessed.” Neither man’s sins nor God’s strokes intended to turn the “milk of human kindness” into gall. The more God wounds in His Providence, the more man’s duty to heal with his pity, his prayers, and if need be, his purse. Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan to be the Christian’s practice as it was His own.
V. An impassioned wish (Job_19:23-24). “O that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book (or public register)! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!” Observe—
1. Reference made to the various modes of writing then practiced—
(1) On linen or papyrus;
(2) On leaden tablets;
(3) On rocks or stone pillars, the characters formed with an iron graver and filled up with lead for greater preservation and distinctness. Papyrus rolls still exist from the remotest age of the Pharaohs. Such mode of writing common in the age of Cheops, the founder of the Great Pyramid, 2000 years before Christ. Montfaucon, in 1699, purchased a book in Rome entirely of lead. Wady Mokatteb, along the route of the Israelites in the Desert, full of inscriptions cut in the rocks. At Hisn Ghorab, on the shores of South Arabia, on a high rock terrace, is a large inscription of ten lines in Himyaritic characters, the letters four inches long by one-third of an inch broad, and one-tenth deep, cut in notches, and having apparently been “graven with an iron pen.” The inscription is made on a very light grey or lead-coloured stone, a vein of the quarry coming out on the face of the cliff. It is as follows: “We believed in the miracle-mystery, and in the resurrection-mystery, and in the nostril-mystery.” The name of Aws at the foot of the inscription indicates it to be a relic of the long-lost tribe of Ad, the son of Aws or Uz, the son of Aram and grandson of Shem, and connects it closely with the country in which Job lived.—(Sermons in Stones).
2. Reference to writing as already well known. Practised long anterior to the time of Moses. Originally in hieroglyphics; then in letters formed from these. Three kinds of writing practised among the ancient Egyptians—the hieroglyphic, the hieratic (used by the priests), and the demotic, used by the people. Printing originally by carving in stone. Printing by blocks long practised in China. Printing by types only invented in 1440 A.D.; the art begun at Haarlem, in Holland, and perfected at Mainz, in Germany. The first printed book, with a date, a Psalter printed by John Faust in 1457. The first printed Bible with a date, produced by the same person, in 1460.
3. Job’s spirit elevated to a high pitch of sublimity and faith. Looks into the future with calmness and triumph. His language that of conscious integrity, and of certainty as to his ultimate vindication. Desires the perpetuation of his words to all generations. His words either those in which he had already declared his innocence, or those in which he was about to declare the certainty of his faith in his Divine Redeemer and Vindicator. Wished to tell out his confidence and confession of Him, without the fear of having a single word to efface.
4. Job’s wish fulfilled to an extent undreamt of at the time. His words written in the imperishable records of Holy Scripture. Printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society fifty millions of times in more than a hundred languages, and spread over all the earth, during the last seventy years. The last language in which they have been printed, viz., in this present year 1875, by the Pilgrim-Mission Printing Press at St. Chrischona, near Bale, is the Amharic, the modern Ethiopic or Abyssinian, nearly related to the language which Job spoke. The Himyaritic, already mentioned, is closely allied to the Ethiopic and Hebrew; and the Amharic has chiefly helped to interpret it. May contain the remains of the language of the earlier races of Arabia, as the Adites and Amalekites, and is considered a form of Arabic which preceded the Ishmaelitic, the Kufic, and of course the ordinary Arabic of the Koran. Hmyar, from whom it has its name, was a grandson of Kahtan or Joktan, the brother of Peleg; and from him were all the princes descended who reigned in Yemen or Arabia Felix, till the time of Mahomed. His father Yarab is said to have been the inventor of the Arabic language and the progenitor of all the Arabs of Yemen. Abyssinia, whose language is the Amharic, is called by the natives Habesh, or ‘mixture,’ from the united descendants of Shem and Ham who peopled it, Ham having probably fled at once from his father’s presence across the Desert into Egypt, his posterity multiplying in the valley of the Nile and in Abyssinia.
All our words graven as in a rock for ever as a testimony either for us or against us. By our words, as well as by our deeds, we shall be justified or condemned at the final assize (Mat_12:36-37; Jud_1:15).
VI. Job’s triumphant testimony and joyful assurance (Job_19:25-27). “For I know (Heb. ‘And,’—‘even, or also, I know,’) that my Redeemer liveth (or, ‘is living,’ or ‘is the living One’), and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth (or, that He at last,—hereafter, or as the last One,—shall arise upon the dust or earth,—or ‘shalt stand over the dust,’ viz., my dust, or the dust of the grave, or mankind); and though after my skin worms destroy this body (or, ‘and after my skin shall be mangled thus; or, ‘even this,’ pointing to it), yet in my flesh (Heb. ‘out of my flesh,’ i.e., as my habitation or point of vision,—or, ‘without my flesh,’ i.e., in a disembodied state) shall I see God; whom I (emphatic, ‘Even I myself’ shall see for myself—to my advantage, on my side, or as my own), and mine eyes shall behold and not another (or, ‘not estranged’ as he now appears to be); though my reins he consumed within me” (Heb. “my reins,—without ‘though’—are consumed in my bosom,” viz., either from disease, or, as margin, with desire for that day). One of the most remarkable and magnificent passages in the Bible. Observe—
(1) the solemnity with which in the previous verses it has been introduced;
(2) The place which it holds in the Book as the climax in Job’s speeches. Job’s faith here rises to its loftiest triumph. The words uttered when, to outward sense, all was cheerless despair. A glorious example of Christian faith. Job’s faith “the substance of (or what gives reality to) things hoped for, the evidence (or certain conviction) of things not seen” (Heb_11:1). Believes what it sees not. Hopes even against hope, or contrary to all appearances against it. His faith and hope the cordial in his trouble. All calumny and suffering easily borne in the certain possession of a personal Redeemer and the assured hope of a blessed deliverance. The passage early incorporated in the Church’s burial service, as the expression of her faith and hope of a glorious resurrection. The opening words—
“I know that my Redeemer liveth,”
Among the most memorable sayings of Scripture. Worthy to be written in gems and gold. Perhaps more familiar to Christians than any other text either in the Old or New Testament. Repeated over the open sepulchre for hundreds of years, proclaiming death a conquered foe, and the grave rifled of its spoils. A cheering and joyous light to millions in the dark valley of trouble and of death itself. Job amply compensated for all his suffering in being made thereby the author of these blessed and imperishable words. Consider under the passage—
1. The assured knowledge which Job asserts: “I know.” The language of absolute certainty. The thing no mere guess, or conjecture, or vague hope. No hesitation or doubt about the matter. Known by Job as certainly as that the sun was shining in the heavens. His faith neither to be shaken by his terrible losses, nor his wife’s reproaches, nor his friends’ suspicions and accusations. Like the life-boat, which buried for a few moments in the surging billows, comes again to the surface. Christian faith is certain knowledge (Heb_2:1).
Job glories in his knowledge. I know. The “I” emphatic. I, who am so reduced in body and in circumstances, so despised, so wretched, so loathsome. I, who am standing on the very brink of the grave. I know, whatever you may do, and whatever your unfavourable opinion concerning me. I know it, as my unspeakable comfort and my glorious privilege. The believer’s knowledge of Christ something to glory in. “I know whom I have believed.”
The grounds and sources of this assurance. Both internal and external. Internally—
(1) Divine enlightenment. All true and saving knowledge of God as our Redeemer the result of Divine teaching (Isa_54:13). “No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas; for flesh and blood hath not revealed this [knowledge of me] unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” “It pleased God to reveal his Son in me.” “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true” (Mat_11:27; Mat_16:17; Gal_1:15-16; 1Jn_4:20).
(2) Previous personal acquaintance with God, experience of His grace, and habitual walking with Him (Hos_6:3).—Externally:
(1) The original promise in Eden. That promise one of a Redeemer who should avenge on the serpent, the devil, the injuries he had inflicted on the human race, to be claimed therefore by Job as his Redeemer. This promise the germ of all redemption acts and offices performed by Jehovah towards mankind. Handed down from father to son and extended through the world. Found in various tribes and nations in a distorted form. Preserved pure in the line of Shem. The Fall through the Serpent represented on the temple of Osiris at Phyle, in Upper Egypt. The resurrection exhibited on the tomb of Mycerinus in one of the Pyramids four thousand years ago.
(2) Enoch’s prophecy, preserved by tradition and quoted by Jude in his epistle (Job_19:14-15).
(3) Enoch’s translation to heaven before the Flood.
(4) The preservation of Noah and his family in the Ark.
(5) The continually offered sacrifices, which told of a Redeemer who by death should destroy him that had the power of death (Heb_2:14). Observe—
(1) Job’s certainty as to a living Redeemer in that early age more than 2000 years before his appearance on the earth, a solemn witness against all unbelief in our own, nearly 2000 years after it.
(2) Job’s happiness and comfort in the knowledge of a personal Redeemer before he came, rather to be exceeded by our own so long after he has done so.
(3) The sweetest and surest knowledge of God as in Christ our own gracious Redeemer obtained in the time of trouble and affliction. At eventide light.
2. The contents of Job’s knowledge, or the thing asserted to be known. Has reference—
(1). To God. “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” &c. Regarding God, he knew—
(i.) That He was his Redeemer. The name (Heb. Goel), applied—(a) To the kinsman, whose duty under the law, was, as next-of-kin, to redeem a captive or enslaved relative; to buy back his sold or forfeited inheritance; to marry his childless widow if unmarried himself; and to avenge his innocent blood. The institution recognised and established in the Mosaic law, but doubtless in existence long before. Still existing more or less in the East. Like others under the law, typical of the Messiah and His redemption-work. The name applied—(b) To God as the Redeemer and Deliverer of His people, especially of Israel from Egyptian bondage and Babylonian captivity. Peculiarly applied—(c) To God the Son, who, as the promised Deliverer of the human race, should become incarnate as the woman’s seed, and through His own death bruise the Serpent’s head. The name not expressly applied to Him in the New Testament, but the thing every where. (See Rom_3:24; Eph_1:7; Gal_3:13; Gal_4:5; Tit_2:14; Heb_9:12; Rev_5:9). The name proper to a kinsman. Under the law, only such had the right to redeem. Pointed to the fact that He who was to be man’s Redeemer was to be also his Brother. The human kinsmanship of the Divine Redeemer, a subject of express prophecy: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man that it my fellow” (Zec_13:7). Such kinmanship ascribed to Him by the Apostle as necessary for His undertaking. “Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he likewise himself also took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, and deliver them,” &c. (Heb_2:14). God the Son the Author of all redeeming acts towards Israel. (Psa_68:17-18, compared with Eph_4:8-10).
God the Son regarded by Job more or less distinctly as his Redeemer, in—(a) Delivering him from troubles (so Jacob, Gen_48:16); (b) Vindicating his character and avenging his wrongs; (c) Delivering him from death and the grave; (d) Delivering him from the hand of the great adversary, the devil. His words uttered under a deep sense of his wants and necessities. His spirit at the time more than ordinarily elevated and illuminated. His language, perhaps, primarily referring to the divine vindication of his character, out extending much beyond it. Appears to triumph over death and the grave, of which he had the nearest prospect. The language only understood in its fullest sense in New Testament times. Words uttered by the prophets with a meaning not fully apprehended at the time by themselves (1Pe_1:10-12). Redemption the term most generally employed in the New Testament to designate the Saviour’s work. Viewed as redemption from the curse or condemning sentence of the Divine law (Gal_3:13); the power of Satan, who had acquired a right over us through that sentence (Heb_2:14); death and hell, as the punishment awarded by the Divine law to transgression (1Co_15:56-57); and very specially from sin itself (Tit_2:14; 1Pe_1:18-19; Eph_5:25-27; Mat_1:21). Israel’s national and external redemption typical of that of mankind as sinners, by Jesus Christ. The great redemption by the Son of God effected—
(1) By purchase;
(2) By power. The price of human redemption the blood of Christ, His substituted suffering and death. The power employed in it that of the Holy Ghost, sent in virtue of the price paid upon the Cross. His power required—
(1) In quickening the soul to a new spiritual life;
(2) Preserving and perfecting it in the image of God.
Job declares his personal interest in the Redeemer: “My Redeemer.” The language—
(1) Of appropriation;
(2) Of faith;
(3) Of choice;
(4) Of love;
(5) Of knowledge and past experience;
(6) Of satisfaction. Something to say the Redeemer; more to say our Redeemer; most and best to say my Redeemer. Devils able to say the first; unsaved men the second; only saved believers the last. ‘My’ the word that links the lost sinner to the dying Saviour. I may well rejoice that Christ is a Redeemer; immensely more that He is my Redeemer. This little word, like the honey on the point of Jonathan’s staff, enlightens the eyes and puts strength into the soul. Inexpressibly more sweetness and satisfaction in two such words as “My God,” &c., than in all the pleasures of the world since its creation [John Brown of Haddington]. His last words were: “My Christ.” My does not engross the Redeemer, but claims its share in Him with others. Faith’s first act is to believe Christ to be a Redeemer; the second to take Him as my Redeemer The privilege as well as duty of each human soul thus to appropriate Christ as his Redeemer. The world’s as well as Israel’s sin and condemnation not to do so. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God” (Joh_1:11-12).
(ii.). Job asserts that this, his Redeemer, was living, or “the living One.” “My Redeemer liveth.” The Redeemer thus viewed as—(a) Personally living. (b) Continuing to exist beyond the bounds of time. Able, therefore, to redeem him from death and the grave. Lived to vindicate His character after his body had mingled with the dust. Able to save to the uttermost, or to the end. (c) The Mighty One. Life the expression of strength and power. “Mine enemies are lively, and they are strong.” Job’s Redeemer and our’s possessed of all power in heaven and earth. “Has power over all flesh to give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given Him” (Joh_17:3). (d) The Author and Giver of life. Having life in Himself and able to communicate it to others. The living and life-giving Redeemer set over against Job’s state as dying, or virtually dead. The epithet one proper to God. Called “the living God;” He that “liveth for ever and ever.” Appropriated by Christ: “I am He that liveth and was dead, and am alive for evermore.” Christ the Resurrection and the Life. The Way, the Truth, and Life. The true God and eternal life (Rev_1:18; Joh_2:25; Joh_14:16; 1Jn_5:20). A living and life-giving Redeemer our comfort in a dying body in a dying world, and with the remains of death in our soul. Christ, as our Redeemer, lives—(a) To plead our cause in heaven (Heb_7:25); (b) To send down supplies of needed grace (2Co_12:9); (c) To prepare a place for us in Paradise (Joh_14:2); (d) To attend to all our concerns (Heb_4:14-16); (e) To overcome all our enemies; (f) To deliver us out of all our troubles; (g) To give victory over temptation and sin; (h) To make us partakers of his life; (i) To receive us to Himself; (j) To come again in glory. Christ as an ever-living Redeemer, the hope and trust of the believer. That our Redeemer lives, an antidote against the fear of man, of troubles, of death, of judgment (Isa_51:12-13; Isa_43:2-3; Rev_1:17-18). Our case safe in the hands of a living Redeemer. Enough for a dying saint that his Redeemer lives. One at least whom death cannot remove from us. His life a pledge of His people’s (Joh_14:19).
(iii.) That He should “stand (or rise up) at the last day (or ‘as the last one’) upon (or over) the earth.” Job elevated by the Holy Spirit to the place and office of a prophet. The book a part of those Scriptures which “testify” of Christ, and out of which Christ expounded to the disciples the things concerning Himself. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The prophets testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow (1Pe_1:11). The testimony of Moses and the prophets that Christ should suffer, and should be the first that should rise from the dead (Act_26:22-23). Job’s present language a prophecy, as well as the expression of his faith and assurance. Declares—
(1) That God as his Redeemer would one day appear on behalf of his suffering servant. “Standing” or “rising up” the Scripture expression for a a Divine appearance as the deliverer and avenger of His people (Psa_7:6; Psa_10:12; Psa_12:5; Isa_33:10).
(2) That he would appear on or over the earth. Appears to be a double prophecy, viz., of the Redeemer’s incarnation and His coming to judgment. These often united in the prophets, being, as here, viewed together as one event. The first necessary to the second, the second the compliment of the first. His coming to suffer necessary in order to His coming to reign. His second coming completes what His first began. Christ called by the apostle, speaking of the resurrection of the dead, the last Adam, or second Man, as apparently here, the last or latter One (1Co_15:21-22; 1Co_15:45; 1Co_15:47). The first Adam brought man’s body to the dust; and second comes to raise it from it. Observe—
(1) Faith comforts by turning the sufferer’s eye from God’s present dealings with him to his future ones.
(2) The consolation of the Church is—(i.) That Christ has suffered for our sins, the Just One in the room of the unjust; (ii.) That he has risen as the first-fruits of them that slept; (iii.) That to them that look for Him He will appear the second time without sin unto salvation; (iv.) That them that sleep in Jesus God will bring with Him (1Pe_3:18; 1Co_15:20; 1Co_15:23; Heb_9:28; 1Th_4:14).—The knowledge asserted by Job has reference also—
(2) To himself (Job_19:27). “And though after my skin, &c., yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself,” &c. The centre of his faith and hope, not only that his Redeemer lives, and should one day appear, but that as the result of it he should
See God
Two ways of seeing God—(i.) Mentally and spiritually; (ii.) Physically and corporeally. God seen—(i.) In His character and works; (ii.) In His person. The former only our privilege here, while in the body; the latter, hereafter, out of the body and after the resurrection. God seen in His Person in His Son Jesus Christ. “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” In Christ is seen “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Isaiah, in vision, beheld the Lord (Jehovah) sitting on His throne in the temple (Isa_6:1). He beheld the “glory” of Christ (Joh_12:41). As distinct from the glorified Redeemer, at the right hand of the Father, Stephen beheld “the glory of God” (Act_7:55). In heaven the angels always behold “the face” of the Father (Mat_18:10). The vision of God, anticipated by Job, generally understood to be a corporeal one in His restored body. Appears to emphasize it in this view—“Whom mine eyes shall behold.” Christ, at His second appearing, the object of bodily vision. “Every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him.”
The prospect re-asserted and dwelt upon from its sweetness and certainty. I shall see God—see Him for myself—mine eyes shall behold Him. Contrasted with his present experience,—unable to perceive God. God hiding Himself from him, his greatest trial (ch. Job_13:24; Job_9:11; Job_23:8-9). Observe—(i.) The vision of God the blessedness of the glorified (Psa_17:15; Mat_5:8; 1Jn_3:2; Rev_22:4). Implies—
(1) A much higher and clearer knowledge of God (1Co_13:9-12).
(2) Enjoyment of immediate and uninterrupted fellowship with Him.
(3) More blissful consciousness of His favour and love.
(4) Fuller understanding of His providential dealings here.—(ii.) The nature of faith to believe that though God now hides His face, yet we shall again behold it (Mic_7:8; Hab_3:17-19). Faith trusts in the dark and hopes for what it sees not.—(iii.) Joyful anticipation of seeing God the peculiar privilege of a believer. Implies—
(1) A conscious state of peace and reconciliation with God.
(2) A renewed nature, capable of delighting in God and in His fellowship.
(3) Purity of heart, and conscious integrity of character. Only the pure in heart capable of seeing God (Mat_5:8). Evil cannot dwell with Him. A hypocrite shall not come before Him. To see God’s face, coupled with serving Him, the blessedness of the glorified (Rev_22:4). The sight of God and the Lamb at His second appearing, the world’s greatest dread (Rev_6:15-17). The comfort of believers that when God shall appear, it will be “for them,” as their Friend and Redeemer, for their full and everlasting salvation (Heb_9:28).
The appearing of his Redeemer, and the future sight of God as his friend, the object of Job’s intense longing. “My reins are consumed in my bosom”—with desire for that day (margin). Contrasted with the object of desire held forth by his three friends—health and prosperity in this life. The salvation of God, perfected at the Saviour’s second appearing, the Church’s desire both in the Old and New Testament. Jacob’s experience: “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.” David’s: “My flesh shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell” (wilt not leave me in the grave). “I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness.” Isaiah, and the Church in his day: “With my soul have I desired thee in the night;” the answer: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead” (Isa_26:9; Isa_26:19). The last words of the spouse in the Song: “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart upon the mountain of spices.” Christ’s glorious appearing the blessed hope and desire of the early Christians, exposed as they were to death and all kinds of suffering for the truth’s sake. “The Spirit and the Bride said, Come—the Spirit in the Bride” (Rev_22:17; Rom_8:23). In reply to the promise: “Behold, I come quickly;” the Church’s last recorded prayer is: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” The cry of the souls under the altar: “How long, O Lord, wilt thou not avenge our blood on the earth.”
The Lord’s second appearing, and the resurrection consequent on it, to be desired and longed for, as—
(1) The time of full redemption and salvation in body and soul to believers themselves;
(2) The same to their brethren in Christ, whether living or long departed;
(3) The time of deliverance to the whole creation from the bondage of corruption entailed upon them by man’s sin;
(4) The time when Christ shall be manifested in glory, and the kingdom of God shall fully come;
(5) The period for the creation of the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (Rom_8:19-23; 1Th_4:16-17; 2Th_1:10; 2Ti_4:1; 2Pe_3:12-13).
“He whose car the winds are, and the clouds
The dust that waits upon his sultry march,
When sin hath moved him, and his wrath is hot,
Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love;
And what his storms have blasted and defaced
For man’s revolt, shall with a smile repair.
Come then, and, added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth,
Thou who alone art worthy!”
VII. Addresses remonstrance and warning to his friends (Job_19:28-29).
1. The Remonstrance (Job_19:28). “But ye should say (or, ‘because ye say’) why persecute we him? (or, ‘how shall we persecute him,’) seeing the root of the matter is found in me,” (margin “and what root of matter is found in me?”—or, “and how shall we find a ground of accusation” [Heb. ‘the root of a word or thing’] against him?) The great offence of Job’s friends their persecution of a suffering brother. Their desire and aim to prove him a wicked man and deserving the calamities sent upon him. Sought therefore to find ground of accusation against him. Hence Job’s name: “the persecuted one.” In this, as in other things, a type of Christ. Job’s friends the representatives of the Scribes and Pharisees, priests and elders of the Jews (Mat_12:13; Luk_11:54; Joh_8:6).
Persecution
Bequeathed to all Christ’s members (Joh_15:20; 2Ti_3:12). Its endurance by the Church a characteristic of the reign of Antichrist (Rev_11:2-5; Rev_12:11-17). Satan the great persecutor. Persecution in accordance with the original promise of a Saviour (Gen_3:15). May be either bloody or unbloody—from the openly profane or the professedly godly. Petty persecution in the family or the workshop often as trying as that of the dungeon and the scaffold. Almost one continued persecution of the Church from Jews and Pagans during the first three hundred years of its existence. The Church nursed in blood. That blood made the means of its increase. Like Israel in Egypt (Exo_1:12). Ten great persecutions enumerated before the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Persecution frequently that of one part of the professing Church by another. The dominant section often a persecutor of the rest. The spirit and ground of persecution—
(1) Enmity to the truth;
(2) Desire for supremacy;
(3) Intolerance of opposition;
(4) Blind and misguided zeal (Gal_4:29; 3Jn_1:9-10; Joh_16:2-3). Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, the mystical seven-hilled city, drunk with the blood of the saints (Rev_17:6). Note in Rhemish Testament on this passage (Rev_17:6),—“Their blood,” viz., that of heretics, “is not called the blood of saints, no more than the blood of thieves, mankillers, and other malefactors; for the shedding of which by order of justice, no commonwealth shall answer.” More blood shed in Christian persecutions than in Pagan ones. A long blood-stained history of Inquisitions, Crusades, Massacres, and Star-chambers. Between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, about a million of non-conforming Albigenses and Waldenses put to death by armies sent for that purpose with the Pope’s blessing and the promise of eternal salvation. Nearly a million more suffered death on the same grounds, within fifty years after the institution of the order of the Jesuits in 1540. In the Netherlands, the Duke of Alva boasted that thirty-six thousand heretics had been put to death by the common executioner. Within thirty days from the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day (1572), thirty thousand at least calculated to have been butchered in Paris and throughout France. Public thanks ordered by the Pope to be given in one of the churches at Rome, and a medal to be struck for its commemoration.
2. The threatening (Job_19:29). “Be ye afraid of the sword; for wrath (such as you manifest against me) bringeth the punishments of the sword (or, ‘is one of the iniquities [deserving and meeting with the punishment] of the sword’), that ye may know that there is a judgment.” The sword, the symbol of justice, here the justice of God (Rom_13:4; Deu_23:21). An invisible avenger takes the part of the persecuted and oppressed. Persecutors especially threatened in the New Testament. Christ’s second appearing especially terrible to such as smite their fellow servants (Mat_24:49). A righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble His people (2Th_1:6-10). The judgments of the last days especially inflicted on the persecutors of the saints (Rev_18:6; Rev_18:24). Observe:—
(1) Persecution a hard and terrible enterprise. Pagan persecutors noted as having generally died by horrible deaths. Charles IX., who authorized the Parisian massacre of 1572, died in despair in a bloody sweat. Christ’s words to Saul addressed to all persecutors: “It is hard for thee to kick. against the pricks.”
(2) The part of charity and piety to seek to turn persecutors from their sin, and so avert their doom.
(3) Anger against the servants of God, though shewn only in words, viewed by God as a sin equivalent to murder. The sin of Job’s friends. Hence to be atoned for by sacrifice at the close of the controversy.
(4) Men not secured from Divine judgment by a religious profession.
(5) The treatment given to Christs’s servants and brethren one great criterion by which men will hereafter be judged (Mat_25:34-46).
(6) The comfort of God’s people that they can appeal from man’s judgment to God’s.
(7) A day coming when men’s character and doings will be clearly revealed (Mal_3:18). Men to be “brought out in their blacks and whites” [S. Rutherford].
(8) A day of judgment terribly certain. (i.) From the testimony of Scripture. The first recorded inspired declaration such a testimony (Jud_1:14, Jud_1:15). Enoch’s prophecy doubtless known to Job. Such testimony greatly accumulated since then (Ecc_2:9; Ecc_12:14; Mat_12:36; Act_2:30-31; Rom_2:16; Rom_14:10; Rom_14:12; 1Co_4:5; 2Co_5:10. (ii.) From the universal voice of conscience. (iii.) From God’s providential dealings in the world. Sin punished here so far as to shew that God marks and punishes it; left unpunished, so far as to shew that “there is a judgment” to come.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain Job 19:25-27
Job 19:25-27
I. Consider what were Job’s supporting convictions. (1) Nothing could be more decisive in tone or positive in assertion than the words, "I know." It is a bold challenge made by a suffering man to the ages. The ring of conviction resounds in every line, and fills the air with its thrilling music. (2) Three distinct assertions follow this quickening preface. First, he declares that God is the Vindicator of right-seeking and right-doing men. Of the fact he is sure; of the how, and when, and where he says nothing; but an invincible faith that before the "last" moment in his history comes God will be his Redeemer from all the ills of which he is now the victim animates and sustains his suffering spirit. (3) Job is sure that he himself, in his own conscious person, will be the rejoicing witness of that Divine vindication. "Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, not another." (4) The chief, the conquering, the most meritorious, quality in Job’s mood of mind is his clear and steadfast recognition of the real but dimly revealed law that the suspension of the accepted and outward manifestations of the Divine care and regard is not the suspension of the Divine sympathy, nor the withdrawal of the Divine love and help.
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II. Notice the fruitful origin of these strengthening convictions in the mind of Job, and to what uses he would have them put. (1) First in the genealogy of Job’s convictions comes his passion to set the great controlling and cleansing faith of his life in the spotless excellence and living sympathy of God directly over against all the seeming contradictions, chaotic perplexities, and bewildering entanglements of his experience. (2) From the spirit Job displays in his intercession for his friends, we may fairly credit him with the desire to guide them to the perception of the one true principle in the criticism of life. (3) The deepest reason and strongest motive of all with Job must have been the yearning that the truth he had lived, and felt, and suffered might secure an immortal career of enlightenment and benediction.
J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 305.
Reference: Job 19:23-27.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 331.
Job 19:25
I. Faith is most sorely tried when the hand of God touches ourselves. Yet even then the patriarch Job believed in the coming of Christ "I know," he said. True faith is solid, sure as knowledge. The senses know what will pass away and be no more; faith sees and knows what will abide for ever.
II. He contrasts, not only life with death, but life as the product of death. The glory of Christ began with the grave. What is the end of all earthly glory, and greatness, and wisdom and power is but the beginning of the heavenly. As to Him, so to us, the grave is the vestibule to glory. "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."
III. This change and transformation must begin here. Christ rose that thou mightest rise, but first from sin to grace, from vice to virtue, from things earthly to things spiritual, from love of self to the love of God. The road lies, not in feeling, but in acting, not in longing, but in obeying.
E. B. Pusey, Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, p. 406.
References: Job 19:25.—R. Glover, Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 243; G. D. Boardman, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 345; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Genesis to Proverbs, p. 126; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 112.
Job 19:25-26
I. The first point to notice is the use of the present tense by Job in speaking of his Redeemer: "I know that my Redeemer liveth." There is thus in the prophecy a distinct testimony to the pre-existence of Christ. In speaking of a Redeemer as already alive and yet as not to appear until ages had rolled away, Job displayed faith in the most mysterious truth of all, that the Being who was to stand in human form upon the earth existed in some other form, whether that of angel or of God.
II. The word here rendered "redeemer" frequently occurs in the writings of Moses, and is sometimes translated "kinsman."
The restriction of the office of the goel to the nearest of kin was itself a kind of prophecy that our Redeemer would be our Brother. In the circumstances of each case which called for his interference we have a most accurate picture of the person and office of Christ.
III. In the last clause of the text Job refers to the resurrection of the body. His closely connecting the facts of his having a Redeemer and his own resurrection sufficiently shows that he viewed in the one the cause or Author of the other. He may be said to have gathered into the resurrection the whole work or achievement of redemption, as though in announcing the deliverance of his body from the grave he announced all that was to be effected by the Goel, the Kinsman, of the alienated race.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2747.
References: Job 19:25, Job 19:26.—Old Testament Outlines, p. 95. Job 19:25-27.—F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 1st series, p. 167; Expositor, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 430; J. G. Murphy, Book of Daniel, p. 25; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 504; A. W. Johnson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 188; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 387. Job 19:26.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 10.
Job 19:26-27
The happiness of heaven is the seeing God; and because our Lord and Saviour is God incarnate, therefore to see Christ was to faithful men a kind of heaven upon earth; and losing sight of Him, as they did at His Passion, was like being banished from heaven.
I. The sight of God was the very blessing which Adam forfeited in Paradise, and which poor fallen human nature, so far as it is not utterly corrupt, has ever been feeling after and longing for. Adam, oppressed and alienated in his mind by sin, hid himself from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden, and he was cast out from the nearer vision of God; but both he and his posterity retained still a blind consciousness of what they had lost, and a blind hope of recovering it. All the holy men before the time of our Lord’s first coming in the flesh looked on by faith to the happiness of seeing God. The Apostles and those who were about Him when He came enjoyed in their lifetime that privilege which Job had to wait for till he came to the other world.
II. The Apostles and disciples had one thing wanting to their joy: they saw and touched Christ outwardly, but were not as yet made members of Him. We are members of His body, but we do not yet see Him. These two things, which are now separated, are to be united in the other world; and being united, they will make us happy for ever.
III. Hitherto we have seen Jesus Christ, as it were, with other men’s eyes; but the hour is coming when we shall see Him for ourselves. He will appear to each one of us with a different countenance according as we have behaved to Him here. As we see Him then, in wrath or mercy, such He will be to us for ever and ever; and His countenance will be according to our works.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times" vol. viii., p. 87 (see also J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day, pp. 14-24).
References: Job 19:26, Job 19:27.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 117. Job 19:28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 505, and vol. xxvii., No. 1598. Job 19—S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. vii., pp. 264, 321; Ibid., Commentary on Job, p. 230.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Job's Fifth Speech
Job's Fifth Speech
In this speech Job repeats his bitter complaints of God's injustice, and man's contemptuous abandonment of one formerly so loved and honoured. He appeals in broken utterances to his friends to pity him; then from them he would fain appeal to posterity, wishing that he might engrave in the rock a declaration of his innocence, sure that those who read it in the after-time would feel the ring of sincerity and exonerate him of guilt. But, baffled by the callous unbelief of his friends and the impossibility of an appeal to generations unborn, he is driven, as he had been driven before, from man to God. Already he had uttered the conviction that God would vindicate him to the world. Now he reiterates the conviction and rises to a still loftier height in the assurance that he will be permitted to know of his vindication. He does not expect to be restored to life, nor yet to escape from Sheol, nor to renew the old fellowship with God. His deepest anxiety is that his honour should be cleared from stain, and the thought that this will be accomplished, and that he shall be allowed to see God reversing the verdict against him, fills him with overwhelming emotion.
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1-22. After reproaching the friends for unfeeling conduct. Job again rejects their insinuations as to the reason of his calamities. He declares that God is treating him with unjustifiable severity, and that he has become estranged from all.
3. Ten times] i.e. continually: cp. Gen_31:7; Num_14:22.
4. Mine error remaineth with myself] i.e. 'is my own affair,' or, perhaps, 'injures myself alone.'
6. Job maintains, rightly, that his calamities were not due to his sins, but, wrongly, that they were the result of God's unjust action. As the reader knows from the Prologue, God permitted these trials in order to test and make manifest Job's uprightness. Job's ignorance of this explains and excuses much that otherwise might be deemed unpardonable.
7. Render, 'Behold, I shriek “Violence,” and am not answered. I clamour, and there is no justice.'
8. Job's bewildered state: his mind sees no clear course.
9. Glory.. crown] probably Job's righteousness, on which his sufferings seemed to throw doubt.
10. Mine hope] viz. of recovery, or perhaps of happiness.
12. Troops] of afflictions: cp. 'battalions of sorrows' ('Hamlet,' IV, 5). Raise up their way] The figure is that of casting up a mound by which to attack a city.
15. They that dwell in mine house] the servants or guests.
17. Render, 'My breath is offensive to my wife, and I am loathsome to the children of my (mother's) womb'; owing to his complaint.
18. I arose, etc.] RV 'If I arise, they speak,' etc.; i.e. the children mock him.
19. Inward] i.e. intimate.
20a. The words describe his leanness. I am escaped, etc.] Some would substitute, 'And I am escaped with my flesh in my teeth' (cp. Job_13:14).
22b. 'You cannot tear me to pieces enough' An 'eater of flesh' is an Eastern expression for a slanderer.
23-27. Job had frequently expressed a hope that his righteousness would be proclaimed, as a reply to the insinuation of the friends that he was suffering for his sins (cp. Job_13:15-19). We have also noted his longings, more or less definitely expressed, that he might find a mediator or vindicator who would do this office for him (cp. Job_9:32-35; Job_17:3). In this chapter these longings, already turned into conviction in Job_16:19-21, receive an even higher expression. He utters his belief (Job_19:23-27) that God Himself will once more manifest Himself as his friend, and vindicate his character after his death, and that he shall be suffered to see God proclaiming his righteousness over his grave. It is unfortunate that the rendering 'Redeemer' and the traditional reference of the vindicator to Christ, together with the supposition that Job expects a resurrection of the body, have completely disguised the true meaning from most readers. The vindicator is God Himself, who is now his persecutor, and Job anticipates neither deliverance from death nor a resurrection of the body after death, nor even a deliverance from Sheol and renewed fellowship with God, only the experience of one thrilling moment, when his shade will wake from its semi-conscious stupor to see God standing over his grave and declaring his innocence to the universe.
23, 24. Job longs to write down or, better still, to engrave upon a rock (a durable material to last into the future) his protestation of innocence. Lead] This may refer to the pouring of molten lead into the carved-out letters, though we have no other mention of such a practice.
23. Printed in a book] RV 'inscribed in a book'; but since a book quickly perishes, he substitutes the wish that his words might be graven in the imperishable rock.
25-27. Render, 'But as for me I know that my vindicator is alive (i.e. exists), and hereafter He will stand above the dust (either of Job or of his grave, as his vindicator). And after (the loss of) my skin, which has been destroyed (i.e. after my death) this shall be, I shall have vision of God, whom I shall gaze on as for me (i.e. as my friend), and mine eyes shall behold and not as a stranger.'
25. Redeemer] Heb. Go'el, from ga'al, 'to make a claim.' The Go'el was the next of kin whose duty it was to prevent land being sold out of the clan (Lev_25:25), and to avenge murder. See also Ruth 3, 4 and notes. Driver points out that the word means here the opposite to the Christian idea, viz. a deliverer, not from sin, but from affliction and wrong not due to sin. The best rendering here is 'Vindicator.'
26. In my flesh] rather, 'without' or 'apart from my flesh,' i.e. after death.
27. For myself] RM 'on my side.' Not another] or, 'not as another,' i.e. no longer estranged.
27b. RV 'my reins are consumed within me.' He faints with emotion at the thought of this vindication.
28. Probably with 'many ancient authorities' (RM) we should read 'him' instead of 'me' in the second line, and translate, 'If ye say, How we will persecute him, and find the root of the matter in him,' i.e. probe relentlessly till they find the secret sin which has led to Job's afflictions. Job proceeds in Job_19:29 to warn them of the vengeance that will overtake them.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain CHAPTER 19 Job’s Reply to Bildad
CHAPTER 19 Job’s Reply to Bildad
1. How long will ye vex my soul? (Job 19:1-6)
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2. And I am not heard! (Job 19:7-12)
3. Forsaken of men he pleads to be pitied (Job 19:13-24)
4. Faith supreme (Job 19:25-27)
5. The warning to his friends (Job 19:28-29)
Job 19:1-6. Bildad’s scathing speech did not bring Job into the dust. He acknowledges the words vexed his soul and broke him in pieces, but he does not change his viewpoint. He repudiates the guilt with which they charged him and continues to blame God.
Job 19:7-12. Afresh he breaks forth in accusing God. He charges Him with not answering his prayers. “He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath broken me down on every side, and I am gone.” He imagines that His wrath is kindled against him. But what a display of divine mercy and patience! God looked upon the worm in the dust and pities him, as He still pities His children.
Job 19:13-24. Then the description of his forsaken condition. Read it in these verses. His brethren, his kinsfolk, his wife, all have turned against him. His servants look upon him as an outcast. Young children even despise him. Then the wail for pity: “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O, ye my friends.”
Job 19:25-27. But what a change! Suddenly light breaks in. He does not speak by himself, but the Spirit of God enlightens his soul and utters words which stand in striking contrast with all his previous wailings. The witness he bears is not without difficulties in point of translation. Darby’s translation is as follows:
And as for me, I know that my Redeemer liveth
And at the Last, He shall stand upon the earth;
And if after my skin this shall be destroyed
Yet from out of my flesh I shall see God.
Whom I shall see for myself.
And mine eyes shall behold and not another.
Though mine eyes be consumed within me.
The Companion Bible paraphrases the text in an excellent way:
I know that my Redeemer ever liveth,
And in the latter day on earth shall stand;
And after worms this body have consumed,
Yet in my flesh I shall Eloah (God) see,
Whom I, e’en I, shall see upon my side,
Mine eyes shall see Him--stranger now no more:
For this my inmost soul with longing waits.
And the Redeemer of whom he speaks, enabled to utter these words of faith by the power of another, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen, living, coming Redeemer, the victor over death and the grave. Here is the testimony of the book of Job to the hope of the coming of the Lord, the resurrection of the body and the glorification of the saints.
Job 19:28-29. How astonished his friends must have been at this wonderful outburst from his lips, which but a few moments ago almost blasphemed God. He asks them why they persecute him, inasmuch as the root of true faith is in him. He warns them that there is judgment.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Job Reproaches his Friends for their Suspicions
Job Reproaches his Friends for their Suspicions
v. 1. Then Job answered and said,
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v. 2. How long will ye vex my soul, torturing his mind with their accusations and insinuations, and break me in pieces, crushing him to the point of annihilation, with words?
v. 3. These ten times, that is, very often, again and again, have ye reproached me, in attacking his innocence; ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me, stunning him without shame, trying to overwhelm him and render him stupid with their repeated charges.
v. 4. And be it indeed that I have erred, for Job had no intention of denying his sinfulness in general, mine error remaineth with myself, he alone was conscious of it, he was not trying to lead others astray nor causing them to become partakers of his guilt.
v. 5. If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, or, "will ye indeed boast yourselves against me?" and plead against me my reproach. If they were assuming his guilt without further proof, Job considered their procedure wrong; they should at least try to convict him with sound arguments. It is the way of meddling friends at all times to give themselves grave concern over a supposed transgression on the part of some one they know.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Job speaks to his three friends.
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General Information:
See: Poetry and Parallelism
How long will you make me suffer and break me into pieces with words?
Job uses this question to complain about how his friends are treating him. AT: "Stop making me suffer and breaking me into pieces with words." (See: Rhetorical Question)
break me into pieces with words
Job uses this image to say that their words make him feel very sad and hopeless. AT: "torment me with your words" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
Job
suffer
word
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.