“Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Parallel Translations
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“Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
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Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
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Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Cross-references (3)
Passages linked to Job 19:23 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Isaiah 30:8 Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever.
- Job 31:35 oh that I had one to hear me! Behold, here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me! Let the accuser write my indictment!
- Isaiah 8:1 Yahweh said to me, “Take a large tablet, and write on it with a man’s pen, ‘For Maher Shalal Hash Baz’;
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (17 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Job 19:23 Oh that my words were now written!…
Job 19:23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
Ver. 23. Oh that my words were now written!] This reiterated wish Job setteth as a preamble to that ensuing memorable testimony of the resurrection, as a matter most weighty and worthy the consideration of all ages; which therefore he wisheth recorded in some public instrument to all eternity; and God said Amen to it. For not only this precious passage, but the whole Book of Job, so full of divine instruction preparatory to the last day, was committed to writing (either by Moses, or some other prophet of that age, or else by Job himself after his restoration), and put among the canonical books of Scripture; concerning which David saith, "For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven," Psa 119:89. And Christ, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle," &c., Mat 5:18. Not one hair of that sacred head can fall to the earth. Thus God hath answered Job, ad cardinem desiderii, as a Father speaketh, letting it be to him even as he would (Aug. Confess. 1. 5, c. 8).
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Oh that they were printed] Or drawn out, that is, written (saith one) in great and capital letters, that every man might read them, Hab 2:2, for there was no printing in those days that we know of. The Chinese indeed tell us that they had the art of printing long before. But in Europe it was not heard of till the year 1440. It begun to be practised at Haarlem, in the Low Countries (by Lawrence Jans, say some, by John Guttenberg, say others), and was perfected at Mentz, where Cicero’s Offices, the first book that ever was printed, is still kept for a monument.
In a book!] That it might be preserved and laid up for the use of posterity, in some Kiriahsepher, or city of books. Let them that are able, be apt and active in setting forth books for the benefit of others, since Paulum sepultae distat inertiae celata virtus - (Horat.), he that buried his talents gave a heavy account to the master, and was therefore called evil, because an idle servant, Mat 25:26
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 Poole 1685 · Public Domain My words; either,
My words; either,
1. The following and famous confession of his faith, Job 19:25, &c. Or rather,
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2. All his foregoing discourses with his friends, which he was so far from disowning or being ashamed of, that he was desirous that all ages should know, that they might judge between him and them, whose cause was better, and whose arguments were stronger.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain In all the conferences between Job and his friends…
In all the conferences between Job and his friends we do not find any more weighty and considerable lines than these; would one have expected it? Here is much both of Christ and heaven in these verses: and he that said such things as these declared plainly that he sought the better country, that is, the heavenly; as the patriarchs of that age did, Heb 11:14. We have here Job's creed, or confession of faith. His belief in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and the principles of natural religion, he had often professed: but here we find him no stranger to revealed religion; though the revelation of the promised Seed, and the promised inheritance, was then discerned only like the dawning of the day, yet Job was taught of God to believe in a living Redeemer, and to look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, for of these, doubtless, he must be understood to speak. These were the things he comforted himself with the expectation of, and not a deliverance from his trouble or a revival of his happiness in this world, as some would understand him; for besides that the expressions he here uses, of the Redeemer's standing at the latter day upon the earth, of his seeing God, and seeing him for himself, are wretchedly forced if they be understood of any temporal deliverance, it is very plain that he had no expectation at all of his return to a prosperous condition in this world. He had just now said that his way was fenced up, (Job 19:8) and his hope removed like a tree, Job 19:10. Nay, and after this he expressed his despair of any comfort in this life, Job 23:8, Job 23:9; Job 30:23. So that we must necessarily understand him of the redemption of his soul from the power of the grave, and his reception to glory, which is spoken of, Psa 49:15. We have reason to think that Job was just now under an extraordinary impulse of the blessed Spirit, which raised him above himself, gave him light, and gave him utterance, even to his own surprise. And some observe that, after this, we do not find Job's discourses such passionate, peevish, unbecoming, complaints of God and his providence as we have before met with: this hope quieted his spirit, stilled the storm and, having here cast anchor within the veil, his mind was kept steady from this time forward. Let us observe,
I. To what intent Job makes this confession of his faith here. Never did any thing come in more pertinently, or to better purpose. 1. Job was now accused, and this was his appeal. His friends reproached him as a hypocrite and contemned him as a wicked man; but he appeals to his creed, to his faith, to his hope, and to his own conscience, which not only acquitted him from reigning sin, but comforted him with the expectation of a blessed resurrection. These are not the words of him that has a devil. He appeals to the coming of the Redeemer, from this wrangle at the bar to the judgment of the bench, even to him to whom all judgment is committed, who he knew would right him. The consideration of God's day coming will make it a very small thing with us to be judged of man's judgment, Co1 4:3, Co1 4:4. How easily may we bear the unjust calumnies and reproaches of men while we expect the glorious appearance of our Redeemer, and his redeemed, at the last day, and that there will then be a resurrection of names, as well as bodies! 2. Job was now afflicted, and this was his cordial; when he was pressed above measure this kept him from fainting - he believed that he should see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living; not in this world, for that is the land of the dying.
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II. With what a solemn preface he introduces it, Job 19:23, Job 19:24. He breaks off his complaints abruptly, to triumph his comforts, which he does, not only for his own satisfaction, but for the edification of others. Those now about him, he feared, would little regard what he said, and so it proved, He therefore wished it might be recorded for the generations to come. O that my words were now written, the words I am now about to say! As if he had said, "I own I have spoken many unadvised words, which I could wish might be forgotten, for they will neither do me credit nor do others good. But I am now going to speak deliberately, and that which I desire may be published to all the world and preserved for the generations to come, in perpetuam rei memoriam - for an abiding memorial, and therefore that it may be written plainly and printed, or drawn out in large and legible characters, so that he that runs may read it; and that it may not be left in loose papers, but put into a book; or, if that should perish, that it may be engraven like an inscription upon a monument, with an iron pen in lead, or in the stone; let the engraver use all his art to make it a durable appeal to posterity." That which Job here somewhat passionately wished for God graciously granted him. His words are written; they are printed in God's book; so that, wherever that book is read, there shall this be told for a memorial concerning Job. He believed, therefore he spoke.
III. What his confession itself is; what are the words which he would have to be written; we here have them written, Job 19:25-27. Let us observe them.
1. He believes the glory of the Redeemer and his own interest in him (Job 19:25): I know that my Redeemer liveth, that he is in being and is my life, and that he shall stand at last, or stand the last, or at the latter day, upon (or above) the earth. He shall be raised up, or, He shall be, at the latter day, (that is, in the fulness of time: the gospel day is called the last time because that is the last dispensation) upon the earth: so it points at his incarnation; or, He shall be lifted up from the earth (so it points at his crucifixion), or raised up out of the earth (so it is applicable to his resurrection), or, as we commonly understand it, At the end of time he shall appear over the earth, for he shall come in the clouds, and every eye shall see him, so close shall he come to this earth. He shall stand upon the dust (so the word is), upon all his enemies, which shall be put a dust under his feet; and he shall tread upon them and triumph over them. Observe here, (1.) That there is a Redeemer provided for fallen man, and Jesus Christ is that Redeemer. The word is Goel which is used for the next of kin, to whom, by the law of Moses, the right of redeeming a mortgaged estate did belong, Lev 25:25. Our heavenly inheritance was mortgaged by sin; we are ourselves utterly unable to redeem it; Christ is near of kin to us, the next kinsman that is able to redeem; he has paid our debt, satisfied God's justice for sin, and so has taken off the mortgage and made a new settlement of the inheritance. Our persons also want a Redeemer; we are sold for sin, and sold under sin; our Lord Jesus has wrought out a redemption for us, and proclaims redemption for us, and proclaims redemption to us, and so he is truly the Redeemer. (2.) He is a living Redeemer. As we are made by a living God, so we are saved by a living Redeemer, who is both almighty and eternal, and is therefore able to save to the uttermost. Of him it is witnessed that he liveth, Heb 7:8; Rev 1:18. We are dying, but he liveth, and hath assured us that because he lives we shall live also, Joh 14:19. (3.) There are those that through grace have an interest in this Redeemer, and can, upon good grounds, call him theirs. When Job had lost all his wealth and all his friends, yet he was not separated from Christ, nor cut off from his relation to him: "Still he is my Redeemer." That next kinsman adhered to him when all his other kindred forsook him, and he had the comfort of it. (4.) Our interest in the Redeemer is a thing that may be known; and, where it is known, it may be triumphed in, as sufficient to balance all our griefs: I know (observe with what an air of assurance he speaks it, as one confident of this very thing), I know that my Redeemer lives. His friends have often charged him with ignorance or vain knowledge; but he knows enough, and knows to good purpose, who knows Christ to be his Redeemer. (5.) There will be a latter day, a last day, a day when time shall be no more, Rev 10:6. That is a day we are concerned to think of every day. (6.) Our Redeemer will at that day stand upon the earth, or over the earth, to summon the dead out of their graves, and determine them to an unchangeable state; for to him all judgment is committed. He shall stand, at the last, on the dust to which this earth will be reduced by the conflagration.
2. He believes the happiness of the redeemed, and his own title to that happiness, that, at Christ's second coming, believers shall be raised up in glory and so made perfectly blessed in the vision and fruition of God; and this he believes with application to himself. (1.) He counts upon the corrupting of his body in the grave, and speaks of it with a holy carelessness and unconcernedness: Though, after my skin (which is already wasted and gone, none of it remaining but the skin of my teeth, Job 19:20) they destroy (those that are appointed to destroy it, the grave and the worms in it of which he had spoken, Job 17:14) this body. The word body is added: "Though they destroy this, this skeleton, this shadow (Job 17:7), this that I lay my hand upon," or (pointing perhaps to his weak and withered limbs) "this that you see, call it what you will; I expect that shortly it will be a feast for the worms." Christ's body saw not corruption, but ours must. And Job mentions this, that the glory of the resurrection he believed and hoped for might shine the more brightly. Note, It is good for us often to think, not only of the approaching death of our bodies, but of their destruction and dissolution in the grave; yet let not that discourage our hope of their resurrection, for the same power that made man's body at first, out of common dust, can raise it out of its own dust. This body which we now take such care about, and make such provision for, will in a little time be destroyed. Even my reins (says Job) shall be consumed within me (Job 19:27); the innermost part of the body, which perhaps putrefies first. (2.) He comforts himself with the hopes of happiness on the other side death and the grave: After I shall awake (so the margin reads it), though this body be destroyed, yet out of my flesh shall I see God. [1.] Soul and body shall come together again. That body which must be destroyed in the grave shall be raised again, a glorious body: Yet in my flesh I shall see God. The separate soul has eyes wherewith to see God, eyes of the mind; but Job speaks of seeing him with eyes of flesh, in my flesh, with my eyes; the same body that died shall rise again, a true body, but a glorified body, fit for the employments and entertainments of that world, and therefore a spiritual body, Co1 15:44. Let us therefore glorify God with our bodies because there is such a glory designed for them. [2.] Job and God shall come together again: In my flesh shall I see God, that is, the glorified Redeemer, who is God. I shall see God in my flesh (so some read it), the Son of God clothed with a body which will be visible even to eyes of flesh. Though the body, in the grave, seem despicable and miserable, yet it shall be dignified and made happy in the vision of God. Job now complained that he could not get a sight of God (Job 23:8, Job 23:9), but hoped to see him shortly, never more to lose the sight of him, and that sight of him will be the more welcome after the present darkness and distance. Note, It is the blessedness of the blessed that they shall see God, shall see him as he is, see him face to face, and no longer through a glass darkly. See with what pleasure holy Job enlarges upon this (Job 19:27): "Whom I shall see for myself," that is, "see and enjoy, see to my own unspeakable comfort and satisfaction. I shall see him as mine, as mine with an appropriating sight," Rev 21:3. God himself shall be with them and be their God; they shall be like him, for they shall see him as he is, that is seeing for themselves, Jo1 3:2. My eyes shall behold him, and not another. First, "He, and not another for him, shall be seen, not a type or figure of him, but he himself." Glorified saints are perfectly sure that they are not imposed upon; it is no deceptio visus - illusion of the senses. Secondly, "I, and not another for me, shall see him. Though my flesh and body be consumed, yet I shall not need a proxy; I shall see him with my own eyes." This was what Job hoped for, and what he earnestly desired, which, some think, is the meaning of the last clause: My reins are spent in my bosom, that is, "all my desires are summed up and concluded in this; this will crown and complete them all; let me have this, and I shall have nothing more to desire; it is enough; it is all." With this the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.
IV. The application of this to his friends. His creed spoke comfort to himself, but warning and terror to those that set themselves against him.
1. It was a word of caution to them not to proceed and persist in their unkind usage of him, Job 19:28. He had reproved them for what they had said, and now tells them what they should say for the reducing of themselves and one another to a better temper. "Why persecute we him thus? Why do we grieve him and vex him, by censuring and condemning him, seeing the root of the matter, or the root of the word, is found in him?" Let this direct us, (1.) In our care concerning ourselves. We are all concerned to see to it that the root of the matter be found in us. A living, quickening, commanding, principle of grace in the heart, is the root of the matter, as necessary to our religion as the root to the tree, to which it owes both its fixedness and its fruitfulness. Love to God and our brethren, faith in Christ, hatred of sin - these are the root of the matter; other things are but leaves in comparison with these. Serious godliness is the one thing needful. (2.) In our conduct towards our brethren. We are to believe that many have the root of the matter in them who are not in every thing of our mind - who have their follies, and weaknesses, and mistakes - and to conclude that it is at our peril if we persecute any such. Woe be to him that offends one of those little ones! God will resent and revenge it. Job and his friends differed in some notions concerning the methods of Providence, but they agreed in the root of the matter, the belief of another world, and therefore should not persecute one another for these differences.
2. It was a word of terror to them. Christ's second coming will be very dreadful to those that are found smiting their fellow servants (Mat 24:49), and therefore (v. 29), "Be you afraid of the sword, the flaming sword of God's justice, which turns every way; fear, lest you make yourselves obnoxious to it." Good men need to be frightened from sin by the terrors of the Almighty, particularly from the sin of rashly judging their brethren, Mat 7:1; Jam 3:1. Those that are peevish and passionate with their brethren, censorious of them and malicious towards them, should know, not only that their wrath, whatever it pretends, works not the righteousness of God, but that, (1.) They may expect to smart for it in this world: It brings the punishments of the sword. Wrath leads to such crimes as expose men to the sword of the magistrate. God himself often takes vengeance for it, and those that showed no mercy shall find no mercy. (2.) If they repent not, that will be an earnest of worse. By these you may know there is a judgment, not only a present government, but a future judgment, in which hard speeches must be accounted for.
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 That they were graven with an iron pen and…
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! Or "that they were written with an iron pen and lead, that they were cut or hewn out in a rock for ever"; not with both an iron and leaden pen, or pencil; for the marks of the latter are not durable, and much less could it be used on a rock according to our version; but the sense seems to be, that they might be written with an iron pen, which was used in writing, Jer 17:1; upon a sheet of lead, as the Vulgate Latin version; for it was usual in ancient times, as Pliny (q) and others relate, for books to be made of sheets of lead, and for public records to be engrossed, as in plates of brass, so sometimes in sheets of lead, for the perpetuity of them; or else it refers to the cutting out of letters on stones, as the law was on two tables of stone, and filling up the incisions or cuttings with lead poured into them, as Jarchi suggests: so Pliny, (r) speaks of stone pillars in Arabia and the parts adjacent, with unknown characters on them; also this may have respect to the manner of writing on mountains and rocks formerly, as the Israelites at or shortly after the times of Job did. There are now, in the wilderness through which the Israelites passed, hills called Gebel-el-mokatab, the written mountains, engraved with unknown ancient characters, out into the hard marble rock; supposed to be the ancient Hebrew, written by the Israelites for their diversion and improvement which are observed by some modern travellers (s). In the last age, Petrus a Valle and Thomas a Novaria saw them; the latter of which transcribed some of them, some of which seemed to be like to the Hebrew letters now in use, and others to the Samaritans; and some agreed with neither (t); and Cosmoss the Egyptian (u), who wrote A. D. 535, declares on his own testimony, that all the mansions of the Hebrews in the wilderness were to be seen in stones with Hebrew letters engraved on them, which seemed to be an account of their journeys in it. The inscription on a stone at Horeb, brought from thence by the above mentioned Thomas a Novaria, and which Kircher (w) has explained thus,
"God shall make a virgin conceive, and she shall bring forth a son,''
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is thought by learned men to be of a later date, and the explication of it is not approved of by them. (x) Job may have in view his sepulchre hewn out of a rock, as was usual, and as that was our Lord was laid in; and so his wish might be that the following words were his funeral epitaph, and that they might be cut out and inscribed upon his sepulchral monument, his rocky grave; that everyone that passed by might read his strong expressions of faith in a living Redeemer, and the good hope he had of a blessed resurrection.
(q) Nat. Hist. l. 13. c. 11. Alex. ab Alex. l. 2. c. 30. Pausaniae Messenica, sive, l. 4. p. 266. & Boeotica, sive, l. 9. p. 588. (r) Nat. Hist. l. 6. c. 28. & 29. (s) See a Journal from Cairo, &c. in 1722, p. 45, 46. and Egmont and Heyman's Travels, vol. ii. p. 171, 181. (t) Antiqu. Eccles. Orient. p. 147. (u) Apud Montfaucon, tom. 2. p. 205. (w) Prodrom. Copt. c. 8. p. 201, 207. (x) Vide Hottinger. Praefat. ad Cipp. Hebr. p. 6, 7, 8. Wagenseil Carmin. Lipman. Confut. p. 429, &c.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain My words - The words which I am now…
My words - The words which I am now about to speak. And that which Job wished for, God granted him. His words are written in God's book; so that wherever that book is read, there shall this glorious confession be declared, for a memorial of him.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 23. O that my words were now written!]…
Verse 23. O that my words were now written!] Job introduces the important subject which follows in a manner unusually solemn; and he certainly considers the words which he was about to utter of great moment, and therefore wishes them to be recorded in every possible way. All the modes of writing then in use he appears to refer to. As to printing, that should be out of the question, as no such art was then discovered, nor for nearly two thousand years after. Our translators have made a strange mistake by rendering the verb יחקו yuchaku, printed, when they should have used described, traced out. O that my words were fairly traced out in a book! It is necessary to make this remark, because superficial readers have imagined that the art of printing existed in Job's time, and that it was not a discovery of the fifteenth century of the Christian era: whereas there is no proof that it ever existed in the world before A.D. 1440, or thereabouts, for the first printed book with a date is a psalter printed by John Fust, in 1457, and the first Bible with a date is that by the same artist in 1460.
Three kinds of writing Job alludes to, as being practised in his time:
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1. Writing in a book, formed either of the leaves of the papyrus, already described, (see on Job 8:11,) or on a sort of linen cloth. A roll of this kind, with unknown characters, I have seen taken out of the envelopments of an Egyptian mummy. Denon, in his travels in Egypt, gives an account of a book of this kind, with an engraved facsimile, taken also out of an Egyptian mummy.
2. Cutting with an iron stile on plates of lead.
3. Engraving on large stones or rocks, many of which are still found in different parts of Arabia.
To the present day the leaves of the palm tree are used in the East instead of paper, and a stile of brass, silver, iron, c., with a steel point, serves for a pen. By this instrument the letters are cut or engraved on the substance of the leaf, and afterwards some black colouring matter is rubbed in, in order to make the letters apparent. This was probably the oldest mode of writing, and it continues among the Cingalese to the present day. It is worthy of remark that PLINY (Hist. Nat., lib. xiii., c. 11) mentions most of these methods of writing, and states that the leaves of the palm tree were used before other substances were invented. After showing that paper was not used before the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, he proceeds: In palmarum foliis primo scriptitatum deinde quarundam arborum libris: postea publica monumenta plumbeis voluminibus, mox et privata linteis confici caepta, aut ceris. "At first men wrote on palm tree leaves, and afterwards on the bark or rind of other trees. In process of time, public monuments were written on rolls of lead, and those of a private nature on linen books, or tables covered with wax."
Pausanias, lib. xii., c. 31, giving an account of the Boeotians, who dwelt near fount Helicon, states the following fact: -
Και μοι μολιβδον εδεικνυσαν, ενθα ἡ πηγη, τα πολλα ὑπο του χρονου λελυμασμενον, εγγεγραπται γαρ αυτῳ τα εργα;
"They showed me a leaden table near to the fountain, all which his works (Hesiod's) were written; but a great part had perished by the injuries of time."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Job 19:23-24. O that my words were now written!…
Job 19:23-24. O that my words were now written! — Either, 1st, All his foregoing discourses with his friends, which he was so far from disowning or being ashamed of, that he was desirous all ages should know them, that they might judge between him and them, and decide whose cause was better, and whose arguments were stronger: or, rather, 2d, The words which he was now about to speak, containing a remarkable confession of his faith. O that they were printed in a book! — Or, rather, inserted, or recorded (as the word יחקו, jochaku, signifies) in a register. The word printed is certainly used very improperly here, as being a term expressive of an art invented only about three hundred and fifty years ago: and, “especially as it does not, even by an improper expression,” as Dr. Dodd justly observes, “convey the idea of Job, which was the perpetuating his words; records, to which Job refers, being written, not printed among us. Observe, reader, that which Job wished for, God granted. His words are written in God’s book, are entered and preserved in the divine records. So that, wherever those records are read, there shall this glorious confession be declared for a memorial of him. That they were graven with an iron pen — Of which there is also mention Jer 17:1; and lead — Job here alludes to the ancient custom of graving the letters on stone or marble, and then filling them up with lead, to render the inscription more legible and lasting. The LXX. however, do not seem to have understood Job thus, but rather to have supposed that he meant the recording of his words, by engraving them on plates of lead. Their words are, εν γραφειω σιδηρω και μολιβω η εν πετραις εγγλυφηναι, To be engraven with an iron pen and lead, (that is, upon lead,) or on the rocks. And it is very probable it was customary in those times to engrave inscriptions on plates of lead as well as on stones. One of these ways of engraving must have been intended by Job; for it would be absurd to suppose, that he meant to have the inscription cut on stone with a leaden pen, which could make no impression on so hard a material.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Oh that my words were now written! - Margin,…
Oh that my words were now written! - Margin, as in Hebrew, “Who will give;” a common mode of expressing desire among the Hebrews. This expression of desire introduces one of the most important passages in the book of Job. It is the language of a man who felt that injustice was done by his friends, and that he was not likely to have justice done him by that generation. He was charged with hypocrisy; his motives were called in question; his solemn appeals, and his arguments to assert his innocence, were disregarded; and in this state of mind he expresses the earnest wish that his expressions might be permanently recorded, and go down to far distant times. He desired that what he had said might be preserved, that future ages might be able to judge between him and his accusers, and to know the justice of his cause. The desire thus expressed has been granted, and a more permanent record bas been made than if, in accordance with his request, his sentiments had been engraved on lead or stone.
Oh that they were printed! - It is clear that this expression may convey wholly an erroneous idea. The art of “printing” was then unknown; and the passage has no allusion to that art. The original word (חקק châqaq) means properly, to cut in, to hew; then to cut - e. g. a sepulchre in a rock, Isa 22:16; then to cut, or engrave letters on a tablet of lead or stone, Isa 30:8; Eze 4:1; and generally it implies the notion of engraving, or inscribing on a plate with an engraving tool. Anciently books were made of materials which allowed of this mode of making a record. Stone would probably be the first material; and then plates of metal, leaves, bark, skins, etc. The notion of engraving, however, is the proper idea here.
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In a book - - בספר besêpher. The word ספר drow sêpher is derived from ספר sâphar. In Arabic the kindred word shafar means to scratch, to scrape; and hence, to engrave, write, record - and the idea was originally that ofinsculping or engraving on a stone. Hence, the word comes to denote a book, of any materials, or made in any form. Pliny, speaking of the materials of ancient books, says, Olim in palmarum foliis scriptitatum, et libris quarundam arborum; postea publira monumenta plumbeis voluminibus, mox et privata lintels confici coepta aut ceris. Lib. xiii. 11. “At first men wrote on the leaves of the palm, or the bark of certain trees; but afterward public documents were preserved in leaden volumes (or rolls), and those of a private nature on wax or linen.” “Montfaucon purchased at Rome, in 1699, an ancient book entirely composed of lead. It was about four inches long, and three inches wide: and not only were the two pieces that formed the cover, and the leaves, six in number, of lead, but also the stick inserted through the rings to hold the leaves together, as well as the hinges and nails. It contained Egyptian Gnostic figures and unintelligible writing. Brass, as more durable, was used for the inscriptions designed to last the longest, such as treaties, laws, and alliances. These public documents were, however, usually written on large tablets. The style for writing on brass and other hard substances was sometimes tipped with diamond.”
The meaning of the word here is evidently a record made on stone or lead - for so the following verses indicate. The art of writing or engraving was known in the time of Job; but I do not know that there is evidence that the art of writing on leaves, bark, or vellum was yet understood. As books in the form in which they are now were then unknown; as there is no evidence that at that time anything like volumes or rolls were possessed; as the records were probably preserved on tablets of stone or lead; and as the entire description here pertains to something that was engraved; and as this sense is conveyed by the Arabic verb from which the word ספר sêpher, book, is derived, the word tablet, or some kindred word, will better express the sense of the original than book - and I have, therefore, used it in the translation.
Assyrian records are found generally in stone or clay; and the latter being more easily and speedily engraven with a triangular instrument, was more frequently employed.
(1) An Assyrian terra-cotta cylinder from Khorsabad contains the annals of the reign of Sargon. It is dated about 721 B.C.
(2) A hexagonal terra cotta cylinder from Koyunjik contains the annals of the first eight years of the reign of Sennacherib (702 to 694 B.C.), with an account of the expedition against Hezekiah.
(3) The inscription shows Assyrian scribes making notes of prisoners, heads of slain, spoils, etc. It comes from Koyunjik.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Despairing of justice from his friends in his lifetime,…
Despairing of justice from his friends in his lifetime, he wishes his words could be preserved imperishably to posterity, attesting his hope of vindication at the resurrection.
printed--not our modern printing, but engraven.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 23. Written — So ancient is the knowledge of…
23. Written — So ancient is the knowledge of writing that Pliny says “it appears to have been in use from all eternity.” It is now conceded that to the parent Semitic tribe belongs the honour to have been first in possession of this invaluable invention. The knowledge of letters comes into history through the Hebrews and Phoenicians, who, it will be remembered, are classed among the Semitic nations. These letters appear vastly more perfect than the hieroglyphic system of Egypt or the cuneiform one of Assyria. (EWALD, Hist. of Israel, 1:51; RENAN, Les Langues Sem., 1:105; WINER, Rwb. 2:421.) In remote times papyrus, (see note Job_8:11,) the skins of animals, and Egyptian linen cloth, furnished the materials on which writing was made with the pen. Books, in the ancient sense of the term, consisted of sheets of papyrus, etc., with writing on one side, and rolled around a staff. Papyrus rolls are now in existence written more than two thousand years B.C. The Turin copy of “The Book of the Dead,” written, probably, in the time of the Ptolemies, is more than a hundred feet long.
Printed in a book — Inscribed in the book. Septuagint, “a book” which Merx prefers. Schultens thinks some public book is meant, in which illustrious deeds were written. Exo_17:14 speaks of writing a memorial in the book, הספר. Taking one of the root meanings of this word, sepher, to scrape or shave off, Havernick insists that the word is used of no other writing materials than skins of animals. There would be, however, no more reason for pressing the prime meaning of the Hebrew for “book” than that of חקק, printed; which signifying to cut into, hew into, would demand some more solid material than that of parchment. The book of which Job speaks may have been of wood or of some kind of metal. Very recently there has been discovered a copy of an extraditionary treaty between Rameses II., king of Egypt, and a prince of the Hittites. This is described as having been engraved by the latter upon an oblong tablet of silver, of which the Egyptian text gives the figure. It was surmounted by a ring which must have been used for suspending it. (M. CHABAS, Voyage, etc., p. 345.) Among the early Canaanites there was a very important city called “the Book City,” Kirjath-sepher, Jos_15:15. This was, probably, a city of the Hittites. Pliny (xiii, 21) speaks of the preservation of public documents in leaden volumes. Folding wooden tablets were employed for the same purpose even before the time of the Trojan war. (Iliad, 6:169.) The native city of Hesiod honoured his memory by engraving one of his poems on tablets of lead. (Pausanias, Job_9:31.) Very possibly Job refers to clay tablets or cylinders, such as have been discovered in modern times at Nineveh, on which the work is so minute and exquisitely wrought that the aid of a magnifying-glass is requisite to ascertain the terms of the letters. See LAYARD, Nineveh, 2:186; 3:345.
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The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 23. in a book] The Heb. says in the…
23. in a book] The Heb. says in the book, using the Art. to indicate the kind of record, Exo_17:14; Num_5:23; 1Sa_10:25. The phrase means merely to “commit to writing.” The “words” which Job desires written are not those in Job_19:25 seq., but his general and oft repeated protestations of his innocence.
23–27. Job turns to the future. He desires that his protestation of innocence could find indelible record in the rock, that it might stand a perpetual witness to all generations. But he shall have something greater: he knows that God will yet appear for his vindication, and that he shall see Him with joy.
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The passage should probably be read something as follows:
23 Oh now that my words were written,
Oh that they were inscribed in a book;
24 That with a pen of iron and lead
They were graven in the rock for ever.
25 But I know that my redeemer liveth,
And in after time he shall stand upon the dust,
26 And after this my skin is destroyed
And without my flesh I shall see God:
27 Whom I shall see for myself,
And mine eyes shall behold and not another—
My reins consume within me!
In Job_19:21-22 Job in his terror of God appealed to his friends for pity, but probably he saw no signs of relenting there. They could not relent; their friend might be dear, but truth and religion were greater. Secure in their principles, their countenances shewed but austere reprobation of their wicked friend. They will be more austere because they are putting down humanity and sacrificing themselves in being austere. And turning from them the desire suddenly seizes Job to make his appeal to posterity, to record in writing his protestation of his innocence, or to grave it in the rock, that when he is gone men might read it to all time. Yet this thought satisfies him but for a moment. Even if the generations to come should pass a more gentle sentence upon him than his own time, being better able to estimate his circumstances and no more warped by the heats of controversy, and more inclined amidst the acknowledged mystery of his life to allow weight to the persistent testimony of his conscience, as that behind which it is impossible to go—even if they should not only mitigate but reverse the judgment of his contemporaries, how small a thing that would be to him. And his mind rebounds from this thought forward to a greater—he knows that his redeemer liveth and shall appear for his vindication and peace.
APPENDIX
Additional Note on Ch. Job_19:23-27
In these verses Job anticipates that God will appear and interpose in his behalf to vindicate him, and that he shall see God, and he faints before the joyful vision. The meaning is sufficiently clear except in Job_19:25-26, in regard to which some difference of opinion prevails. The point on which interpreters differ is chiefly the question, When, according to Job’s anticipation, shall this appearance of God on his behalf take place? Shall it be before or after his death?
The difference of view arises greatly from the ambiguity of the word umibbesârî, and from my flesh, Job_19:26 (see notes), though other points of construction are also involved. It is important to observe the connexion of ideas in the passage, and what the great thought is which fills Job’s mind. In Job_19:23-24 he desired that his protestations of rectitude were written in a book or rather graven with an iron pen in the rock for ever, that all generations of men to come might read them and know that he died in innocence. Suddenly a higher thought takes possession of his mind, namely the assurance that this innocence shall yet be vindicated by God appearing to uphold it, and that he himself shall see God to his joy. This seeing of God includes all within it, for now God hides His face; and this is the main thought of the passage, as the impassioned reiteration of it, Job_19:27, indicates. The connexion of Job_19:25-26 is: I know that my Goel liveth, and that he shall stand upon the dust, and … I shall see God. The bulk of Job_19:26 contributes nothing to the main idea of the passage, which is the assurance of seeing God; it merely describes the circumstances in, or rather, after which the vision shall take place. This makes it probable that the construction of Job_19:26 is light, and that its two clauses are parallel and not in antithesis to one another, in other words that the second clause begins with and, not with yet. The word after, too, is a prep. in the original, and this fact increases the improbability of the antithetical construction.
i. The words from my flesh might mean, (looking) from my flesh I shall see God, i. e. as A. V. in my flesh. Two interpretations are then possible, (1) that Job shall see God after his skin is destroyed and he is reduced to a mass of flesh; or (2) that endowed with flesh anew, in another (resurrection) body he shall see God. In the one case skin is opposed to flesh; in the other it is taken as denoting Job’s present body. Both of these interpretations require the second clause of Job_19:26 to be taken in antithesis to the first, and are liable to the objections urged above. But in truth the first sense is nothing short of grotesque. A distinction between skin and flesh might be made, if the second expressed more strongly the same meaning with the first, but in the circumstances to put them in antithesis seems ludicrous. Considering the nature of Job’s malady he could hardly express its worst ravages by saying that it would destroy his skin, leaving his flesh remaining. He had already said much stronger things than this of his actual condition, among others that he was become a skeleton of bones, ch. Job_7:15; that all his members were a shadow, ch. Job_17:7; that his leanness bore witness to his face, ch. Job_16:8, as he says later that his clothes clung to his shrunken frame like the opening of his shirt, ch. Job_30:18; and that he was escaped with the skin of his teeth, ch. Job_19:20. Besides, the word rendered destroyed is literally struck off, a meaning which suggests removal of the solid parts of the body. And that the word skin may be used in this general sense of the body appears from ch. Job_18:13. Where flesh is used along with skin the two words express the same general meaning, the accumulation of terms merely serving to intensify the expression, ch. Job_10:11, Job_19:20; Lam_3:4; comp. Psa_102:5; Lam_4:8.
If therefore we understand the words “from my flesh” in the sense of in my flesh, we must suppose that Job anticipated being clothed in a new body after death; and this body is what he names his “flesh.” Something may be said for this view. Undoubtedly in ch. Job_14:13 seq. Job already conceived the idea of being delivered from Sheol and living again, and fervently prayed that such a thing might be. And what he there ventured to long for he might here speak of as a thing of which he was assured. No violence would be done to the line of thought in the Book by this supposition. Nevertheless several things are against it. The great idea of the passage, as has been said, is that God shall appear and that Job shall see Him. The rest of the words in Job_19:26 seem unemphatic, and descriptive of something naturally to be understood. But it is highly improbable that the great thought of the resurrection of the body could be referred to in a way so brief. Even if this idea had been current and a commonplace of belief, a reference to it by the words my flesh would be singular and unnatural. But on Old Testament ground, and in the situation of Job, such a matter-of-course kind of reference is almost inconceivable. We may be certain, had such an idea been alluded to, that it would have been expressed in a manner much more formal and detailed.
A somewhat different view has been taken by some scholars. Finding it difficult to accept the meaning without, or, away from for the Heb. prep. here, they retain the sense from (i. e. in), and consider the words skin and flesh to be each used somewhat generally in the sense of the “body.” Hence they translate: and after my skin (i. e. my body) has been thus destroyed, yet from my flesh (i. e. in this body of mine) I shall see God. Though not liable to the objections urged above, this view is rather unnatural. The words skin and flesh express a single general idea when coupled together by and, but that each of them should mean generally the body when separated by yet is little probable. Though this view agrees in rendering with i. above, it coincides in meaning with ii. (1) just to be mentioned, and is liable to the difficulties urged below.
ii. The words from my flesh, however, may mean away from, or, without my flesh. In this case the words “after this my skin has been destroyed are taken up and their meaning repeated in a more intense form in the phrase and without my flesh. This is the natural construction. It is to be observed, however, that the language does not state in what condition precisely Job shall see God, but rather after what events, viz. after his skin has been destroyed and his flesh has been removed. Here, however, again a division of opinion exists. (1) By some the words are taken in a comparative sense, meaning that Job shall see God when his skin and flesh have been (virtually) destroyed by his disease and he is reduced to a skeleton of bones—though still in life. (2) By others the language is taken in an absolute sense, meaning that Job’s vision of God shall be after his disease has wholly destroyed his body and brought him to death. The second view is the more natural, does most justice to the language, and is most in harmony with the elevated character of the passage. It is also supported by many considerations suggested by other parts of the Book.
Before these considerations are referred to another remark may be made. It is always to be remembered what is the main thought here in Job’s mind; it is that God shall appear to vindicate his innocence, and that he shall see God to his joy. The question whether this shall be in this life or beyond this life is of subsidiary importance, and not the main point. At present Job’s afflictions are proof to him of God’s estrangement. God holds him guilty and hides His face from him. And his friends, arguing on his calamities, impute grievous sins to him. His misery was very aggravated in every view. His good name among men was sullied by shameful imputations, intolerable to his lofty mind; for the easy theory of his friends, that one might be a religious man and at the same time a great sinner, he repudiated with abhorrence, so far as his own life was concerned. Then, as a religious man, his heart was crushed by the loss of God’s favour. And the inexplicableness of this loss, combined with his unbearable afflictions at God’s hand, threw up before his mind great moral riddles which utterly baffled him. In this thick darkness he has nothing but his own consciousness to fall back upon. But his consciousness of his innocence assures him that God knows it also. And this assurance becomes the basis of the other assurance that God from His nature must yet make manifest the relation in which His servant stands to Him, and that he shall see God. Job’s assurance is based on his own past experience, on his life with God, on his consciousness of being a God-fearing man, and on his ineradicable convictions in regard to the nature of God and His relations to men. Job’s circumstances cause his principle to appear in its barest form: the human spirit is conscious of fellowship with God, and this fellowship, from the nature of God, is a thing imperishable, and, in spite of obscurations, it must yet be fully manifested by God. This principle, grasped with convulsive earnestness in the prospect of death, became the Hebrew doctrine of Immortality. This doctrine was but the necessary corollary of religion. In this life on earth the true relations of men and God were felt to be realized; and the Hebrew faith of Immortality—never a belief in the mere existence of the soul after death, for the lowest popular superstition assumed this (see notes on ch. Job_14:13 seq.)—was a faith that the dark and mysterious event of death should not interrupt the life of the person with God enjoyed in this world. Job’s afflictions make his faith not so much an assurance of the continuation of his fellowship with God as of its renewal or manifestation, and, of course, this might take place in this life. The similarity of the passage, however, to many others in the Old Testament, uttered in the prospect of death, makes it probable that Job speaks with death in view. And the probability is heightened by many other considerations.
1. The whole of the chapters 16, 17 and 19 are spoken by Job under the feeling that he shall die with his innocence unrecognised. Hence in ch. Job_16:18 he appeals to the earth not to cover his innocent blood; and in ch. Job_19:24 he desires that his protestations of his innocence might be graven in the rock for ever, that when he is gone men to all generations might read them. There is not the slightest ground to think that in the verses that follow these expressions in ch. 16 and 19. Job retracts or corrects this anticipation that he shall die an unjust death. The verses that follow proceed on the same assumption, but they express the prayer (ch. 16–17) or the assurance (ch. 19) that, though he die with God’s face hidden from him and under the reproach of being a transgressor, this perverse and cruel fate shall not for ever prevail over him; God shall yet appear to vindicate his innocence and he shall see Him to his joy.
On this view every word in ch. Job_19:25 seq. becomes full of meaning. Job’s Goel is he who shall vindicate him against his wrongful death. The word liveth derives its meaning from the fact that Job shall have died. The term aḥaron, however we render it, whether “he who shall come after me” or with Ewald an after-man, i. e. vindicator, equally implies Job’s previous death. Similarly the word dust. On the supposition that Job’s vindication shall be in this life, every one of those words is robbed of its just significance, and no account at all can be given of the use of the term liveth.
2. Further, it is certain that Job does not anticipate restoration to health and prosperity in this life. Neither in the lofty passages above referred to nor anywhere does he express such an opinion, but always and consistently an opposite one. He calls such a hope when held out by his friends “mockery,” ch. Job_17:2; comp. ch. Job_6:11, Job_17:10 seq. So certain is he that he shall die under his malady that he does not even pray for recovery, only for a little easing of his pain before he departs, ch. Job_10:20. If life is to be his portion at all, it must be a new life after this one comes to its rapid close, ch. Job_14:13 seq. This is his tone after ch. 19 as well as before it. In ch. Job_23:14 he says that God “will perform the thing appointed for him,” i. e. bring him to death through his malady. And almost his last words are, “I know that thou wilt bring me unto death,” ch. Job_30:23. It seems clear therefore that God’s intervention to declare Job’s innocence, ch. Job_19:23 seq., take place in this life, will not be accompanied by Job’s restoration to health. His disease will in spite of it carry him to the grave. But could such a thought have occurred to Job? His disease was to him the seal of God’s estrangement from him. It was God’s witness to his guilt. It was this moral meaning which his death had that caused him so to wrestle against it (see notes ch. Job_16:18 seq.). It seems impossible that Job could have conceived God declaring to men and to himself his innocence while He continued to afflict him fatally with his disease. To “see God” and to be chastened to death by Him are two things which on Old Testament ground are contradictory of one another.
The theory that God’s intervention in Job’s behalf is looked for by him in this life is thought to derive support from the actual dénouement of Job’s history (ch. 42). But the argument proves too much by a half. The author allows Job to be restored to prosperity in this life in contradiction to Job’s uniform and contemptuous rejection of such a hope. And he may equally well have advanced Job’s vision of God into this life, though Job pushed it back beyond his death. In truth, as has been said, the two things are inseparable. It would be a strange demand to make of a dramatic writer that he should make his personages express only opinions that coincide with his own, and allow them to anticipate the issue of the plot. Certainly the author of Job imposes no such restrictions on himself. He never allows Job to come within sight of the true cause of his afflictions, and as little does he permit him to foresee their issue. It was his purpose to bring into a focus the thoughts of men on the question of suffering, the great problem of his day; and some of the views expressed, particularly by Job, are those to which men were driven by the pressure of the time, or to which they rose out of the distress of their own hearts.
3. If, however, we must conclude that Job looked for this appearance of God on his behalf, and this vision of Him to his joy, not previous to his death, we must not attempt to fill up the outline which he has drawn. We must take care not to complete his sketch out of events that transpired long after his day, or out of beliefs, reposing on these events, that are now current among ourselves. The English Version has done so at the expense of the original. The great thought which filled Job’s imagination was the thought that God would appear to manifest his innocence and that he should see Him in peace and reconciliation. This thought was so intense that it almost realized itself. Job’s assurance of seeing God was so vivid that it virtually became a vision of God and he faints in the ecstasy of his faith. In such a condition of mind the preliminaries and the circumstances that would occur to a mind in a calmer state, or which immediately occur to us, do not obtrude themselves, and if we are rightly to conceive Job’s state of mind we must entirely exclude them. We should be wrong to say that he contemplates a purely spiritual vision of God, and further wrong to say that he contemplates being invested with a new body when he shall see God. Neither thought is present to his mind, which is entirely absorbed in the idea of seeing God. The ideas of Old Test, saints regarding the condition of man after death were too obscure to permit of any such formal and precise conception as that which we call a spiritual sight of God. Besides, as the kind of half-ecstasy under which Job here speaks has fallen on him when a living man, it is probable that, like all persons in such conditions, he carries over with him his present circumstances into his vision after death, and seems to himself to be such a man as he is now when he sees God; comp. ch. Job_19:25-26; Job_19:28-29.
4. The above remarks suggest what elements of truth lay in the traditional interpretation of this passage, in spite of its hardy treatment of the text. The christology of the Book is indirect. There are no express references to the Messiah, though several passages may seem unconscious prophecies of Him, as those that express Job’s desire to meet and see God as a man, ch. Job_9:32, Job_23:3 seq. Job’s Goel or redeemer is God. A distinction of Person’s in the Godhead was not present to his thoughts when he used this term; though the conception of God in the passage and many things said in it may find verification in God’s manifestation of Himself in His Son. The strange distinction which Job draws between God and God, God who persecutes him and God who is his Witness and Redeemer, is, of course, not a christological distinction, nor one that corresponds to any distinction in the Godhead made known to us by subsequent revelation. To suppose so would be a gross perversion not only of this Book but of the whole of Scripture. The distinction was one which Job’s ideas almost compelled him to draw. He believed that every event that occurred came immediately from God’s hand; and he believed that every event that befell a man reflected the disposition of God’s mind toward him: calamity indicated the anger and prosperity the favour of God. This second superstition is the source of all his perplexities; and the distinction which he draws between God and God is his effort to overcome it. God whom he appeals against is the rule and course of this world, the outer providence of God, to which Job can give no name but “God.” God to whom he appeals is the inner mind of God towards His servants, the moral ideal of the human heart. This is God his Witness and Redeemer. Job succeeded in drawing this distinction; but the reconciliation which the distinction demanded he was only partially successful in effecting. He could not reach the idea that God, the heart of God, might be towards him, while God—the outer course of the world—afflicted him. These two things could not be at the same time. But they might succeed one another. Hence his reconciliation is temporal: God will bring him unto death, but after his body is destroyed God shall appear to vindicate him and he shall see God.
The doctrine of Immortality in the Book is the same as that of other parts of the Old Testament. Immortality is the corollary of Religion. If there be religion, that is, if God be, there is immortality, not of the soul but of the whole personal being of man (Psa_16:9). This teaching of the whole Old Testament is expressed by our Lord with a surprising incisiveness in two sentences—“I am the God of Abraham. God is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
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.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (23) Oh that my words were now written!—Some understand…
(23) Oh that my words were now written!—Some understand this to refer to the words he is about to utter; by others they are interpreted generally. The former view is probably owing to the Christian acceptation given to them, and the consequently great importance attaching to them. Since, however, the three verses, Job_19:25-27, are manifestly more emphatic than any he has yet spoken, though they do not stand quite alone, there is no reason why it should not be especially these very words which he desires more than any others to have recorded. Perhaps the “now” = here shows this.
Oh that they were printed.—This points us to primitive time, when writing materials and the use of writing involved more or less of engraving, as, for instance, in later times was the case with tablets of wax.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Oh that my words were written! It is questioned…
Oh that my words were written! It is questioned what words of his Job is so anxious to have committed to writing those that precede the expression of the wish, or those that follow, or both. As there is nothing that is very remarkable in the preceding words, whereas the latter are among the most striking in the book, the general opinion has been that he refers to these last. It is now universally allowed, even by those whose date for Job is the most remote, that books were common long before his time, and so that he might naturally have been familiar with them. Writing is, of course, even anterior to books, and was certainly in use before B.C. 2000. The earliest writing was probably on stone or brick, and was perhaps in every case hieroglyphical. When writing on papyrus, or parchment, or the bark of trees, came into use, a cursive character soon superseded the hieroglyphical, though the latter continued In be employed for religious purposes, and for inscriptions on stone. Oh that they were printed in a book! rather, inscribed, or engraved. The impression of the characters below the surface of the writing material, as in the Babylonian and Assyrian clay-tablets, seems to be pointed at.
Vers. 23-29. Job to Bildad: 2. The inscription on the rock; of Job"s faith in a redeemer.
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I THE PREFACE TO THE INSCRIPTION; OR, THE FERVENT WISH OF A DYING MAN.
1. The culture of Jobs times. The origin of writing is lost in the mists of antiquity. The earliest known mode of writing was by means of a sharp-pointed instrument stylus, or engraving tool, made of iron or steel. The first materials used for writing on were leaves of trees, skins, linen cloths, metal or wax plates, stone columns or rocks. Egyptian papyrus rolls and cuneiform tablets, dating from periods antecedent to the times of Abraham, have been recovered by the labours of modern archaeologists. Numerous inscriptions of the kind alluded to by Job have been found by Oriental travellers in Arabia. On the smoothed surface of a solid rock at Hish Ghorab at Hadramut, in Southern Arabia, an inscription of ten lines exists, dating, according to some, from the times of the Adites, the most ancient inhabitants of Arabia Felix, Ad the tribe-father having flourished contemporaneously with the building of the Tower of Babel. The cliffs of the wady Mokatta, on the route of the Israelites, and in the vicinity of the Sinaitic mountains, contain many such inscriptions (on ancient stone inscriptions, see the Exposition). The knowledge of the art of writing at that early period confirms the belief, which other traces of primeval man also suggest, that humanity was not then a babe wrapt in swaddling-clothes, but a vigorous and intelligent adult, already far advanced in civilization.
2. The certainty of Jobs knowledge. What Job wished engraven on the rock was no mere probable conjecture, happy guess, philosophical speculation, or even secret aspiration, but a firm and certain personal conviction. If it be inquired how Job arrived at this immovable persuasion, it may be answered
(1) that the lofty ideas here articulated were perhaps already in the air when Job lived, in confirmation of which may be cited a line from the Adite inscription above referred to: "We proclaimed our belief in miracles, in the resurrection, in the return into the nostrils of the breath of life;
(2) that the superior capacity of Job, manifestly the seer of his time, standing head and shoulders above his contemporaries in respect of intellectual power and poetic genius as well as moral and spiritual intuition, enabled him to discern and formulate the thoughts after which common minds were only dimly groping;
(3) that the solemn proximity of Job to death, enabling him to realize the unseen with vividness, may have contributed to his extraordinary mental illumination on this occasion;
(4) that the insoluble enigma of Job"s own experience appeared to drive him towards the entertainment of such a lofty hope as is here expressed;
(5) that over and above all Job enjoyed the inward inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
3. The importance of Jobs words.
(1) The time when they were uttered. They were, to all intents and purposes, his last dying testimony. "Oh, but they say, the tongues of dying men Enforce attention, like deep harmony, etc. ("King Richard II," Ac 2. sc. 1.)
(2) The significance of the words themselves. They formed the last and loftiest utterance of Job"s religious consciousness, struggling to embody to itself in well-defined ideas, and to express for others in intelligible language, the great hope which had arisen in his soul, and by which he had been secretly sustained throughout his terrible conflict with bodily affliction, personal calumniation, spiritual apprehension, seeming Divine desertion. They set forth the ground on which he based his assured expectation of an ultimate complete vindication against the misrepresentations of his friends, the accusations of his own affrighted conscience, ay, the apparently hostile assaults of God himself.
(3) The value of the words to future times. Job had a clear presentiment that the truth he was about to utter would prove of value to all succeeding ages. Like a new star, it had shot out Upon the dark firmament of his soul; and he wished it inscribed in the most permanent form of ancient literature either engrossed in the state records, or chiselled upon the mountain rock, and filled in with lead to defy the ravages of time, that it might shine on for ever, like a bright particular star of hope, all through the night of time, irradiating the darkness of a sinful world, and cheering the hearts of dying men.
4. The fulfilment of Jobs prayer. In a sense, and to an extent undreamt of at the time, has the patriarch"s desire been granted. His words have been inscribed in the state records of the King of heaven. They have been engraved by the printing-press in a form more imperishable than could have been derived from the sculptors chisel. They have now been published in well-nigh every language under heaven. One of the latest to receive them was the modern Ethiopic or Abyssiaian, which possesses an affinity to the language which Job spoke. They will now be transmitted to the end of time,
II THE CONTENTS OF THE INSCRIPTION; OR, THE LOFTY FAITH OF A PROPHETIC SOUL. Up to this point five striking passages appear in the Book of Job. In the first (Job_9:32-35) Job expresses his ardent longing for a Daysman or Mediator who might lay his hand upon both him and God; in the second, (Job_13:15, Job_13:16) his confident expectation of acceptance with God, or the strong inward assurance of his salvation; in the third, (Job_14:13-15) his deeply seated hope of a resurrection-life beyond the grave and the Hadeau world; in the fourth, (Job_16:18-21) his belief in the existence of a heavenly Witness who recognized his sincerity, and his earnest prayer that God might become man"s Advocate against himself (God); the fifth, the present passage, seems to gather all the preceding up into one triumphant shout of faith in a living, personal, divinely human Goel, or Redeemer, who should appear in the end of time to vindicate and save Job, and all who, like him, should have died in the faith, by a bodily resurrection from the grave. Analyzed, Job"s proposed inscription should contain a declaration of the following sublime truths.
1. The existence of a personal Redeemer. The goel, in the Mosaic code, was the next of kin, whose duty it was to redeem a captive or enslaved relative; (Gen_14:14-16) to buy back his sold or otherwise alienated inheritance; (Lev_25:25, Lev_25:26) to avenge The death of a murdered kinsman; (Num_35:12) to marry his childless widow. (Deu_25:5) Obviously, the office of the goel, or vindicator, existed in pre-Mosaic times, and was doubtless derived from primeval tradition. It was in accordance with the natural instincts of humanity, and was probably sanctioned by God, both at the first and under the Mosaic institutions, to strengthen the ties of natural affection among mankind, and also, perhaps chiefly, to suggest the hope and foreshadow the advent of the already promised Kinsman Avenger. (Gen_3:15) Hence Jehovah, the Deliverer of Israel from Egyptian bondage, was styled their Goel. (Psa_19:14 Psa_78:35 Isa_41:14 Isa_43:14) Hence the heavenly Witness, to whom Job looked for deliverance from his troubles, vindication of his aspersed character, emancipation from the power of the grave, and protection against his unseen adversary, whether God or Satan, was styled by him his Goel. And so is Christ the believer"s Goel, who redeems him from guilt and condemnation, (Rom_3:24 Gal_3:13 Gal_4:5 Eph_1:7 Tit_2:14) delivers him from the fear of death, (Heb_2:14, 15 Rom_8:23) and shields him from the wrath to come. (1Th_1:10) Nay, of Christ, Job"s Redeemer was a type in respect of being
(1) a living Redeemer, i.e. a Redeemer who did not require to come into existence, but even then was, and would continue to be, even though Job himself should disappear amid the shadows of the tomb;
(2) a Divine Redeemer, being called here expressly "God" (ver. 26), as indeed Job"s language throughout, in the above-cited passages, assumes; and
(3) a human Redeemer, since he was not only to be a Daysman, (Job_9:33) but to appear or stand upon the earth (ver. 25), and be visible to the eye of flesh; all of which characteristics belong by preeminence to him who, while the Son of man, (Joh_1:51 Heb_2:14) was yet "the true God and the Eternal Life", (1Jn_5:20) "in whom was Life", (Joh_2:3) and who still claims to be "the First and the Last and the Living One" who "was dead," but is now "alive again for evermore". (Rev_1:18)
2. The advent of this heavenly Redeemer to the earth.
(1) Job"s language points unmistakably to a visible manifestation of this Divine-human Goel: "He shall stand," or "rise up i.e. to vindicate the cause of his people, the verb being that usually employed to designate the standing forth of a witness, (Deu_19:15 Psa_27:12) or the rising up of a helper or deliverer. (Psa_12:6 Psa_94:16 Isa_33:10)
(2) The scene of this interposition is said to be "on the earth;" literally, "upon the dust," meaning either of the ground or of the grave. As we cannot think Job believed himself to be the only individual in whose behalf the conquering Goal would arise, it is not to be supposed that he expected the apparition would take place exactly over his own particular tomb. Hence it is immaterial whether we supply "grave" or "ground." The phrase seems to point to a terrestrial appearance.
(3) The time of this epiphany is declared to be "in the latter days." The word means "the last one;" and the sense of the clause is that "he," the Goel, "shall arise upon the earth as the last one," as the great Survivor who stands forth when the human family has run its course, and pronounces the finally decisive word upon all time"s controversies. Or, the word may be taken adverbially, as signifying "at last," at length, at some future date (in which sense some propose to read the clause, "upon the dust," i.e. over my dust, when I am dead), and as intimating Job"s faith that in the last age (cf. the New Testament phrases, "the ends of the world" 1Co_10:11), "the, last time", (1Jn_2:18) for the whole period of the gospel dispensation) this Goel, or Kinsman Redeemer, should appear for the salvation of his people. Job"s language will thus include a reference to both the first and second advents of Christ, which, rightly viewed, are not disconnected events, but rather two related acts or scenes, the first and the last, in one great manifestation or epiphany of God"s eternal Son for the redemption of a lost world.
1. The saint"s return to an embodied existence on the earth beside his Redeemer. The phrase, "in my flesh literally, "from, or out of, my flesh shall I see God" (ver. 26), may mean no more than that after Job"s "skin" or body was destroyed, i.e. after he had passed into the Hadean world, he would enjoy a spiritual vision of God, and it may readily be granted that such a rendering accords with the prevailing tone and current of Job"s theology and Job"s mind, neither of which was familiar with the idea of a resurrection-life beyond the unseen world of disembodied spirits. But Job at this moment was raised above the ordinary level of his spiritual consciousness. As already (Job_14:13-15) he had had a glimpse, transient but real, of such a life, so here it returns upon him once again with equal suddenness, but greater brightness a glimpse of the happy land beyond the tomb, when, recalled to a physical existence on the earth, to which already his heavenly Goal had descended, looking out from his flesh he should see God; as if to emphasize which he adds, "Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another" (ver. 27) words which in themselves may not necessarily involve the resurrection of the body, but which, when taken in connection with the other considerations mentioned, tend not a little to confirm that interpretation. What Job only momentarily saw, and withal only dimly understood, has now been completely unveiled and expounded in the gospel, viz. the doctrine of a future resurrection.
2. The saint"s beatific vision of God in the person of his Kinsman Redeemer. Job expected to see God in the Hadean world, according to some; on the earth, in the flesh, according to the interpretation just given. Such a vision of God meant for Job exactly what it means for the Christian salvation, i.e. acceptance before God, protection by God, likeness to God, fellowship with God. In fullest measure such a vision of God will be enjoyed only in the resurrection-life. (Joh_14:3 Joh_17:24 Php_3:20 Heb_9:28 1Jn_3:2) In measure and degree only second to this will the saint behold God in the intermediate state. (Luk_23:43 Php_1:23) Even now, in a real though spiritual sense, such a vision is enjoyed by believers. (Mat_5:8)
3. The saint"s earnest longing for this future vision of his heavenly Friend. Job describes his reins, i.e. his heart, as pining away or languishing for the coming of this glorious apocalypse. Job"s friends had directed him to set his hopes on a return to temporal prosperity to health, wealth, friends; in return, Job informs them that his soul desired nothing so much as God and his salvation. So the pre-Christian saints longed for the first advent of the Saviour, e.g. Abraham, (Joh_8:56) Jacob, (Gen_49:18) David, (Psa_45:3, Psa_45:4) Simeon, (Luk_2:25) Anna. (Luk_2:38) So Christian believers anticipate his second coming. (Rom_8:23 Rev_22:17)
III THE APPENDIX TO THE INSCRIPTION; OR, THE EARNEST REMONSTRANCE OF A PERSECUTED SAINT. On two grounds Job dissuades his friends from attempting further to prove him guilty.
1. The wickedness of their conduct. Job"s language (ver. 28) points to the studied and systematic character of their attacks upon his integrity. "But ye say, How shall we persecute him, seeing that the root of the matter i.e. the ground or occasion of such persecution is in me?" Thinking they could discern in Job"s guilt ample justification for such invective and condemnation as they hurled against him, they wickedly exercised their ingenuity in devising means to punish him, or at least to make him feel their displeasure. Another rendering, "How shall we find o, round of persecution in him?" presents their behaviour in a light extremely odious, recalling the sleepless malignity of Daniel"s accusers. (Dan_6:4, Dan_6:5) To take "the root of the matter" as signifying the fundamental principles of piety is to make their conduct absolutely diabolic, and on a par with that of the scribes and Pharisees towards the Saviour. (Mat_12:14 Mat_22:15 Luk_11:54 Joh_8:6)
2. The danger of their conduct. It would inevitably involve them in retribution. "Be ye afraid of the sword" (ver. 29), the sword being a symbol of such judicial recompense, an overwhelming retribution, the absence of the article pointing to what is "boundless, endless, terrific (Delitzsch), a certain retribution, such crimes as have incurred the vengeance of the sword, literally, the expiations of the sword, ever being, or carrying along with them, wrath, i.e. the glow of the Divine anger, a prophetic retribution, foreshadowing a still more awful punishment in the future world, "that ye may know there is a judgment.
Learn:
1. The duty of thankfulness to God for the blessings of civilization, especially for the invention of printing.
2. The illuminating power of sorrow, especially to a child of God.
3. The immortality that belongs to great ideas, especially to such as come through inspiration.
4. The sustaining influence of a good hope, especially the hope of a Redeemer.
5. The value of Christ"s advents to the world, especially of his second advent in glory.
6. The greater light enjoyed by the gospel Church, especially since the resurrection of the Saviour.
Vers. 23-29. The Divine Vindicator.
Job awaits a final "judgment," of which he reminds his friends (ver. 29). At present he is the accused one; and all appearances go to condemn him. True, his "record is on high." He knows that he has held fast his integrity. But he looks forward to a final vindication. He would, therefore, have his words "written," "printed in a book," "graven with an iron pen and lead in the rook for ever." This is the final cry of the consciously upright one. It is the triumph of integrity over false accusation. He can wait for judgment. He has turned his tearful eyes to God, who has delivered him for a time to the ungodly, but who will appear for him yet in due time. It is here that Job makes the noble boast in confidence of a Divine justification. It is one of the grandest utterances of faith. It has become the watchword of hope to succeeding generations. The interpretations of the words have been various. Job may have uttered words the full meaning of which he did not himself wholly perceive. In the Vindicator of his honour he may not have seen the Redeemer of the race; or have guessed that the God in whose redemption he trusted would appear in human flesh to redeem the race from the accuser to redeem, not Item human condemnation merely, but from the Divine, just condemnation. We have the highest warrant for finding in "Moses and all the prophets," and "in all the Scriptures," references to "things concerning" the Christ. (Luk_24:27) The passage is an illustration of this progressive character of the revelation. Buried in the old Scriptures were "the things concerning" the Christ; but it was needful they should be "expounded." Even the prophets did not all know "what the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify." Thus unconsciously Job, with others, ministers to the faith of the world.
I In Job"s avenger, vindicator, or redeemer, is to be seen THE HIDDEN TYPE AND PROMISE OF THE UNIVERSAL REDEEMER. That for which one looked all may look. Not only the Vindicator of the innocent and the upright, but the "Justifier of the ungodly.
II In the redemption of Job"s honour may be hidden THE WORK OF HIM WHO SHALL BRING BACK THE FORFEITED HONOUR AND RIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN. As the Person, so the work of the Divine Redeemer is here foreshadowed. The next of kin, to whom "the right of redemption belongs," shall restore the alienated possession. He who shall appear for Job shall spear on behalf of the sinful world, shall make intercession for the transgressors, shall vindicate by his own substitutionary offering the "justification" of "the ungodly.
III In Job"s vision of the appearance of his vindicator at the latter day upon the earth is to be seen THE HIDDEN PROMISE OF THE FINAL APPEARANCE OF THE WORLD"S REDEEMER for judgment, vindication, and salvation of him who "shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
IV In Job"s assured final vision of God, after the destruction of his body, lies THE COMFORTING PROMISE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD; not in a frail body of flesh, liable to be torn, consumed, destroyed, but in "a spiritual body." So the Church in confident hope chants at the side of the tomb. Thus are the germs of the future and final revelation held in the earlier; thus is laid the ground for faith and thankfulness; thus is the suffering one cheered; thus shall patience and faith and untarnished integrity, though afflicted, be vindicated; and thus shall the faith of the justified ungodly find its vindication in him who is the Vindicator, the Saviour, the Redeemer of sinful, suffering man. R.G.
Written words.
Job is supposed to sigh for the very thing that the poet has done for him. His words are written, and they have acquired a permanence and a publicity of which the patriarch could have had no conception.
I THE DESIRE FOR WRITTEN WORDS. Job is about to set forth a great conviction. He thinks it so important that he would have it recorded in the state chronicle, even chiselled and leaded in the face of the rock, like some great historic inscription.
1. Conviction of truth. Job would not want a lie to be recorded against him for ever. It is natured to desire that the truth which we hold should be maintained.
2. Weight and importance. Many true words are but of limited and temporary interest. The ordinary talk of social intercourse certainly neither needs nor merits a permanent record. It is natural for it to disappear like the successive waves that break on the beach. But weighty words should endure. There are truths the discovery of which is a permanent boon to mankind. These truths should be carefully treasured and transmitted.
3. Craving for justice. Job is concerned with a personal feeling in his desire. If what he says makes no impression on his immediate circle, it may bring conviction to a wider area of less prejudiced persons, or to a later age.
II THE USE OF WRITTEN WORDS.
1. Distinctness. Job"s thought is clearly before us. The Scriptures afford a definite revelation. With written words we are not left to vague surmises. We do not only depend on the inward impulses of the Divine Spirit. The inner light may be very real and precious. But we are in danger of misinterpreting it if we neglect the written Word of the Bible.
2. Permanence. Job"s great thought of the future life has permanence by being recorded in Scripture. It is fearful to think how the Christian truth would in all probability have been perverted and lost among the shifting currents of tradition if there had been no "New Testament" in which to preserve it. Now we can go back to the very fountain of the gospel. We can leave all the errors of the ages and take our stand on the pure teaching of Christ and his apostles; or if, as is only reasonable, we believe that the course of Christian thought has contributed to the development of the understanding of truth, still we can test that development, and distinguish it from the degeneration that mocks it, by keeping close to the New Testament. So long as the written words of revelation are in our hands there is a grand security for purity of doctrine.
3. Publicity. Job desired that the great, new truth he was about to utter should go abroad. No doubt his first wish was that it might lead to the justification of his misunderstood character. But much larger consequences follow. When the voice of the prophet is silent, his written word speaks to the ages and spreads far and wide to multitudes that could never have been affected by his personal presence. The Bible is a means of making God"s truth widely known. That truth is not for an elect few of the initiated, but for mankind at large. Therefore it is our duty to do what we can to circulate the Divine Word. At the same time, let us not forget to pray for the enlightening Spirit to interpret this written Word to ourselves and to others; "for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life". W.F.A. (2Co_3:6)
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 Oh that my words were now written!
Job_19:23-24
Oh that my words were now written!
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Job longing for a permanent memorial
Jobs wish has been gratified; his memorial has found inscription on a tablet compared with which the granite rock is rubbish, and lead a withered leaf.
It has found entry in the Word of God, which liveth and endureth forever. No temple of fame like this. This dying desire of Job to find memorial is much too natural to be at all strange. Nothing is more common in death scenes than to find the departing one rally his failing strength, and eagerly utilise his last few breaths to give final charges that shall be religiously honoured, and with painfully wistful looks try to speak after vocal power is gone. Many and impressive are the lessons that here crowd into the mind.
1. Let us say what we have to say, and do what we have to do, in time, that during life we may so live that in the hour of death we may have only to die.
2. Let us be careful to say and do nothing in life which we shall long in death--alas! unavailingly--to unsay or undo.
3. Let us, above all, speak for God and the Gospel; for that, be assured, if we are conscious and in our right mind, will be what at death we shall be most eager to do, that every word might photograph itself on the everlasting rock, and speak in its living influence long years after we are dead. (J. Guthrie, D. D.)
Jobs wish for a permanent record
As one accustomed to the use 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 asses 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 accursed 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 Lema for succeeding generations to read. 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. (R. A. Watson, D. D.)
The Redeemer
The secular view is that Job is here expressing a confident hope of recovery from his leprosy, and of justification in the sight of men. The spiritual view is that Job is looking beyond death, and is expressing his belief either in the future life of the soul, or in the resurrection of the body. It is necessary to say a few words, first on the external evidence for the meaning of the passage, and then on the internal. Both seem to me to point decisively to its spiritual interpretation.
I. The external evidence is in its favour.
1. Job did not expect recovery at all, much less was he confident of it as a certain thing which could not fail to happen. What his expectation of life was we see from such words as these (Job_17:1): My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me; or these (Job_17:11; Job_17:15): My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart,. . .Where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it? Even if he wavered between hope and fear, he could not use such language as implies the utmost certainty.
2. The Septuagint translation (made by Jews who must, be supposed capable of understanding the Hebrew words, and made by them long before Jesus Christ brought immortality to light, and taught the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead) gives the spiritual sense of the passage: He shall raise up my body, after these present things have been destroyed.
3. The Jewish Targum on the passage (which must be free from all Christian bias) is also wholly in favour of the spiritual sense. I give its rendering by a great Hebrew scholar (Delitzsch, to which one of our most competent British Hebraists tells me he has nothing to add): I know that my Redeemer liveth, and hereafter His redemption will arise (become a reality) over the dust (into which I shall be dissolved); and after my skin is again made whole, this will happen, and from my flesh I shall again behold God.
II. The internal evidence is even more strongly in favour of the spiritual sense.
1. Observe the great solemnity with which the declaration is introduced (verse 23), and how inconsistent this is with the idea that Job refers to recovery from his leprosy, and desires to inscribe that fact on the rock for the teaching of posterity.
2. Mark next the perfect assurance of the writer, which is fully in accord with the strong conviction of spiritual faith, but is quite out of place with regard to a secular expectation.
3. The sublime and spiritual keynote of the whole passage seems thoroughly out of keeping with any feeling which ends in mere temporal blessing.
4. To see God, which is the burden of his confidence, is surely something more and deeper than the recovery of health. Not to dwell longer then on questions of interpretation, and avoiding minute verbal criticism, I give in substance the probable meaning of the passage, and pass on to consider the spiritual teaching which it implies in anticipation of the Gospel. It is to be regarded as a rock inscription. I know that my Goal liveth ever, and that He, as survivor, shall stand over my dust, and after this skin of mine is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; whom I shall see again; mine eyes shall see Him, and not another for me; for this also my reins do long.
I. Who and what is the Redeemer?
1. He is the Goel. The word has two meanings, and it has been disputed which is the correct one here. It means the avenger of blood, and it means the kinsman. Those who have adopted the secular view of the passage have contended that it must bear the former meaning only. But they have surely forgotten that the office of the avenger of blood could not be executed till after the death of the person to be avenged; and that this is one of the indications that not recovery, but something after death is looked forward to by Job. But if we ask what is the root-meaning, the original idea in the Goel, it surely is not difficult to determine. Did a man become kinsman to the murdered one because he was the avenger of his blood? Or did he not become the avenger because he was already the kinsman, and was therefore called on to avenge him? The latter is the truth; and hence kindred is the first idea of the Goel: bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Avenger is the next thought involved in the word: one seeking reparation for our death, and therefore protecting our life by the thought that his sword is behind it. And a third idea is that of deliverance and redemption, as of family property, by one whose right is to redeem. Job then is looking forward to such a kinsman--a kinsman in the largest sense, who, being the ideal, shall fulfil all the meanings of the institution; who shall be of the same blood; who shall protect and avenge that blood, after death, of which Job is to taste; and who shall also redeem for him the lost inheritance. Here, too, the dim finger of want and of hope points onward to Him who said of every doer of the will of God: The same is My brother and sister; our kinsman, according to the flesh.
2. The Redeemer or Goal is an everliving person. So the Septuagint aptly, renders the words, My Redeemer liveth. Job is thinking of and expecting his own death; but he has full confidence that after that there shall arise his kinsman and Redeemer. Yet is it certain that He too may not pass away through death? The reply of Jobs soul is, No; He cannot pass, for He lives forever. After my flesh is dust; after, perhaps, all flesh is dust, yet He, the survivor, shall stand over the earth. This is a kinsman whose years are throughout (and beyond) all generations!
3. Still further and more remarkably Jobs kinsman is Divine. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that He who is the redeeming kinsman of the 25th verse is also the God of the 26th. And the whole interest of the passage centres in this, that Jobs kinsman-Redeemer is a Divine person, who shall interpose on Jobs behalf hereafter, by revealing Himself after death!
II. What is the expected Redeemer to do? (J. E. Coming, D. D.)
Job finding comfort for himself
The words and efforts of Jobs comforters were not in vain. Sometimes in bodily inflammations a lenitive is the best treatment, and sometimes a counter-irritant. It is not very different in inflammations of the soul. In Jobs case, perhaps, mere condolence would have completed his despair. But when they accuse him of hypocrisy of the basest kind,--when they arraign him as being rejected of God, and lying under the special curse of the Almighty,--then his manhood gathers strength in endeavour to crush the great lie.
1. Jobs first step towards recovery was when he found his voice,--though only to curse the day of his birth. The friends who sat silently beside him did this for him. They revived him from the stupor of his grief. Sometimes a sense of pain, and an exhibition of impatience, is a sign of a favourable turn in serious disease; so is it in diseases of the soul. She must weep, or she will die, sings the poet of the widow, when home they brought her warrior dead. And so the stupor of despair is always one of the gravest signs. It is true that a terrific lamentation breaks forth from him (chap. 3.), unexampled in literature,--a model on which again and again our great dramatist has formed his representations of blank despair. Solomons despair in the Book of Ecclesiastes is the result of the cynical surfeit of luxury, which finds nothing in life sufficiently important for its regard. But this is the despair of agony and grief, natural and seemingly incurable. Still it marks a slight advance. It is a feeble symptom of returning vigour. Hearts break with silent, not with uttered, grief. Speech is a sort of safety valve.
2. Jobs second step towards comfort was praying for death (chaps. 6 and 7; specially Job_6:8-13). Some, ignorant of human nature, fancy comfort would be reached by a great leap; and had they from imagination drawn a picture of a Job finding consolation, their story would have consisted of a record of his despair, and of the visit of some gracious prophet declaring Gods fatherhood. Such is not the usual experience of men. First the blade; then the ear; then the full corn in the ear; so grace always grows. Accordingly, the next step towards comfort is, though a strange, a great one. To lament a sorrow in the ears of men was some relief, but it marks an advance of the grandest kind when the soul lifts it to the ears of God. Job will not admit the accusation of Eliphaz, but he will act on the suggestion to seek unto God and commit his cause to Him. He is strengthened by the general testimony of Eliphaz to the justice and mercy of God, while repelling his insinuation that God is punishing his crimes. And so poor Job raises his eye again to his God. It is not a proper prayer, it is much too despairing; it has but little faith, and it involves an accusation against the mercy of Gods providence. Blessed be His name, God lets us approach Him thus. He casts out none that come unto Him, even though they come with the presumptuous murmurings of an elder brother, or with the despairing agony of Job. Whatever you have to say, say it to Him. It is not the proper, but the sincere prayer God wants. And when a Job comes to Him, in his desolation asking only to die, the great Father looks through all the faults of woe and weariness, to pity only the great anguish of the soul. It is not to be overlooked that before the prayer ends, he can address God by one of His noblest names: O Thou Preserver of men (Job_7:20). Is it the first Bible name of God?
3. As a further step, Job longs for clearing of his character. At first he doubtless cared but little for this. If his character was crushed beneath the judgment of God, it was just one more victim; and in a world of such disorder--where only disappointment reigned--it would have been something beneath his care whether all his fellow men frowned or smiled upon him. But with returning help and grace he wants something more,--that the approval of God might rest on him (Job_9:32-35; Job_8:2). This longing for a settlement with God, to know why and wherefore he is afflicted, does it not mark some growing force within him? Only from Him, with whom they wrestled, did either Job or Jacob gather the strength by which they overcame. When Zophar assails him, with still more bitter consolation than the rest, he seems to stimulate Jobs faith still more. His faith grows strong enough to declare though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. I have ordered my cause; I know that I shall be justified. He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not stand before Him (Job_13:15; Job_13:18; Job_13:16). What a hope was even then reached that God would yet justify him--vindicating his character, owning the integrity of his purpose and the sincerity of his religion. The next stage we notice is--
4. We see, again, that Job prays for some blessedness in the other world. There is a wonderful distance between the prayer of Job_6:9 --O that it would please God to destroy me; and the prayer in Job_14:13 --O that Thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that Thou wouldest keep me secret, until Thy wrath be past, that Thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! The other world emereges into light. Death is not an end of this life merely; it is a gateway to another state of being--a place where God can remember a man, where He can call and be answered, where He can show the desire, the favour He has to the work of His hands. It is not yet the exultant hope he reaches, but still a hope exceeding precious. The soul feels itself strangely superior to disease and decay, and begins to speculate on what it will do when it shuffles off this mortal coil. A prophet-poet of the nineteenth century has sung--
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust,
Thou madest man he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die:
And Thou hast made him--Thou art just,
Three thousand years ago, through the same sort of baptism of grief, the patriarch was led to the same conclusions. The Sheol, the place of the dead which had seemed so void of life and being, became to his mind a sphere of Divine activities--O that Thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that Thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me. Thou shalt call and I will answer Thee. It is not evangelical divines alone that construe this as a dream of finding fellowship with God in the calm of an untroubled afterlife. Even M. Renan, in his translation, takes the same view. Someone says: The hope of eternal life is a flower growing on the edge of the abyss. Job found it there, and it was worth all his anguish to reach it. It is not yet a conviction. Doubt breaks in with the question--If a man die, can he live again? And the doubt is left there, faithfully registered. But felt and faced as the doubt is, the great dream reasserts itself and fastens on his imagination. So, through cloud and sunshine, over hilltops of vision, and through low valleys whose views are narrow, the soul goes on. At the outset death seemed desirable only because it seemed an absolute end. Now the great may-be that is the beginning of a better life, where Gods desire towards the work of His hands will be manifested, dawns on him. It will be lost--it will come back to him--it will seem too good news to be true. He has caught now a glimpse of it. In the next valley he will lose it, but it will never fade away again. Some people forget that each has to find his own creed. The creed cannot be manufactured. Others may give you truth; you must find the power of believing it. So the faiths of men are propagated by living seeds of truth falling on living hearts. But if there is something deeply suggestive in the beginning of his great dream, the hope does not stop there, but grows into assured confidence, for Job reaches an assured hope of immortality. You notice a strange increase of calmness in the mind of Job after Eliphaz and Bildad have spoken. Just in the degree in which his friends become angry he becomes calm. The anger even dies out of his replies, and instead of resenting their upbraiding he tenderly pleads for their sympathy. This calmness grew from his praying; his hoping that he still might reason out his cause with God, and that God would even take his part against Himself. He found a wonderful increase of it in the new thought that he might in the land of the dead walk with God. And thus subsiding into a simple faith, at last the great comfort reaches him of a sure and certain hope--of a blessed immortality. Few eyes that have not been washed with tears can look steadfastly into the world to come. Not as the world giveth does God give peace, but in a different way altogether,--by storm and grief and loss and calamity of direst kind. So He bringeth them to their desired haven. The prophets have been all men of sorrows. Sometimes a little unwisdom has been shown in pressing a dubious translation, and gathering from Jobs words a testimony to the resurrection of the body. Whether you should translate his words, In my flesh I shall see God; or, apart from my flesh I shall see God, is, indeed, quite immaterial. We shall probably be safest in taking Jobs words in their most general meaning, as details of future conditions were hardly to be expected. But taking his words in the lower sense which all interpreters admit they must carry; taking, say, the interpretation of M. Renan himself, what a wonderful hope they express.
1. That God will be his Deliverer, Protector of person and of character, Guardian and Deliverer in the world unseen.
2. That after death and divested of his body, he yet will find himself the subject of richest mercies.
3. His personal identity will be indestructibly maintained. He will not subside into the general life, but forever be a separate soul; he will see God for himself; his eyes shall behold his very self, unchanged, unite another.
4. And in this relieved and rescued, but unchanged personality, he will have the highest of all bliss--he will see God. And so Job found his dunghill become a land of Beulah--delectable mountains from which the city of God was seen. Faults of murmuring and impeachment of Gods dignity are still to be corrected, and his comfort is to be perfected by a restoration of earthly comforts.
Leaving them, we only note--
1. Gods Spirit is never idle where His providence is at work.
2. We are not following cunningly devised fables. In every age the best have been the surest of an immortality of bliss, and such faith is evidence. See we reach that heaven. (R. Glover.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Job States his Belief in Final Vindication
Job States his Belief in Final Vindication
v. 23. Oh, that my words were now written! those with which he protested his innocence. Oh, that they were printed in a book! inscribed in a writing-roll, to be kept for later generations as a record of his protest.
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v. 24. That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever! chiseled in the rock and the letters then filled with lead, as a witness to future generations. This hope, as Job knew, would not be fulfilled; he could not hope for a vindication of his righteousness before men. But he trusted in another fact, his faith was based upon another wonderful truth.
v. 25. For I know that my Redeemer liveth, he had that conviction of faith which he, for his own person, held, that his Avenger, his Vindicator, his Redeemer, was even then living, not only as the Possessor, but as the very Source, of all true life, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, literally, "for as the last He will arise on earth. " The time will come when the Redeemer will appear as the Advocate and Vindicator of those who put their trust in Him, as the Savior who leads to the beholding of God. When He, on the Last Day, will step on this earth, the many millions of bodies that have returned to the dust will feel the influence of His almighty power, arise from their graves, and join the Redeemer, to be led by Him into everlasting glory.
v. 26. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, literally, "and afterward will with my skin be surrounded this" (body). He is sure that there will be a glorious resurrection of the body on the Last Day, that the very skin which clothed him during his mortal life here on earth will again cover the flesh which has become subject to decay and corruption. Yet in my flesh shall I see God, literally, "Out of my flesh shall I behold God. " The body which, in the corruption of death, was stripped of its skin will once more be clothed with that covering, and then, from out of that same body, Job would see God. Job is so sure of this fact that he pictures the scene in concrete terms.
v. 27. Whom I shall see for myself, literally, "behold unto me," for my benefit, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, not a stranger. It is a beholding, a seeing, in the supernatural manner which is often connected with visions. It is a beholding of God in the bliss of eternal salvation. So great is Job’s longing for the wonderful revelation to which he is looking forward that he cries out: Though my reins be consumed within me, literally, "are consumed my reins in my abdomen," it is a consuming anxiousness which filled Job in the midst of his great tribulation; he was eating out his heart in longing for the last great day of salvation.
v. 28. But ye should say, Why persecute we him, if they should still insist upon pursuing him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me? If they still persisted in charging him with guilt, with harboring in his own heart the root of the calamities which had befallen him, they should beware.
v. 29. Be ye afraid of the sword, which the vengeance of God would bring upon them; for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, the crimes, the transgressions, of the sword are invariably overtaken by wrath, that ye may know there is a judgment, the slanderers and blasphemers will finally be laid low by the justice of the Lord, a statement which is full of consolation also in these last days of the world.
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 General Information:
General Information:
Job continues to speak to his three friends.
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Oh, that my words were now written down
This exclamation tells what Job wishes for. It can be stated in active form. AT: "I wish that someone would write down my words" (See: Exclamations and Active or Passive)
my words
"what I am saying"
Oh, that they were inscribed in a book
This exclamation tells what Job wishes for. It can be stated in active form. AT: "I wish that someone would write them in a book" (See: Exclamations and Active or Passive)
Oh, that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever
This exclamation tells what Job wishes for. It can be stated in active form. AT: "I wish that someone would use an iron pen and lead to carve them in the rock forever" (See: Exclamations and Active or Passive)
an iron pen
"an iron chisel." This was a tool used for writing. It was made of iron so that people could carve words in rock.
lead
Lead is a soft metal. We do not know how people used lead when carving rock. They may have filled the letters of the inscription with lead in order to make the inscription last longer.
translationWords
word
eternity
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 19:23 Job wanted his words . . . inscribed…
19:23 Job wanted his words . . . inscribed on a monument, not in a book; Job desired a permanent record of his claim to innocence in response to Bildad’s assertion that he would be forgotten (18:17).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.