Job Replies: There Is No Arbiter
Job 9:1 Then Job replied:
1 Job, acknowledging God’s justice, showed there is no contending with him. 22 Man’s innocence is not to be condemned by afflictions.
Job Replies: There Is No Arbiter
Job 9:1 Then Job replied:
Job answered. Chapters 9 and 10 record Job’s third speech, in which he acknowledges the omnipotence of God, and, by contrast, his own impotence. Then he launches into another melancholy complaint regarding his afflictions.
Job 9:2 “Indeed, I know that this is true. But how can mere mortals prove their innocence before God?
Job acknowledges the correctness of Bildad’s arguments. How should man be just? Job’s problem is not the justice of God; that he acknowledges. He wants to know how he, a man, can be just before God. His circumstances incriminate him as guilty, while his conscience bears witness to his innocence.
Job’s question has been completely answered only in the revelation of the plan of salvation. Through the provisions of the plan, it is possible for God to “be just, and the justifier of him which believes in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
Job 9:3 Though they wished to dispute with him, they could not answer him one time out of a thousand.
Man is no equal for God. He cannot answer His questions or His charges.
Job 9:4 His wisdom is profound, his power is vast. Who has resisted him and come out unscathed?
Job 9:5 He moves mountains without their knowing it and overturns them in his anger.
The human being looks at mountains as symbols of immense size and stability, yet God can remove them and turn them upside down.
Job 9:6 He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble.
Doubtless a reference to earthquakes (1 Kings 19:11; see Ps. 104:32; Zech. 14:4, 5; Matt. 24:7).
Pillars. A poetic description of earthquakes. It is not necessary to find a literal explanation for the “pillars.”
Job 9:7 He speaks to the sun and it does not shine; he seals off the light of the stars. 7. Commandeth the sun.
God is represented as having absolute power over nature. The Scriptures frequently mention natural phenomena as a display of the power of God (see Ex. 10:21; Eze. 32:7; Joel 2:31; Matt. 24:29; Rev. 6:12; 16:10).
Job 9:8 He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.
The figure extols the omnipotence of God by calling attention to His handiwork. Waves of the sea. Literally, “heights of the sea.” God is pictured as one who has power to subdue the proud might of the waves.
Job 9:9 He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.
Job 9:10 He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted.
Almost verbatim that of ch. 5:9, where Eliphaz spoke. Eliphaz sees in the wonders of God’s creation an expression of God’s goodness, whereas Job seems to see only the power of God. Possibly these words were common in the mouths of religious men in ancient times.
Job 9:11 When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him.
A sharp line divides the visible and invisible worlds; and this line is rarely crossed. Job possibly reflects upon the claim of Eliphaz to have had a physical consciousness of the visitation of a spirit (ch. 4:15, 16), and asserts that it is otherwise with him—the spirit world passes by him, and he receives no light, no illumination, no miraculous direction from it.
Job 9:12 If he snatches away, who can stop him? Who can say to him, ‘What are you doing?’
When calamities struck Job, his response was, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (ch. 1:21). This was a response of trust. The passing of time and the impact of unremitting pain have weakened Job’s spirit. Trust has given way to a feeling of helplessness. Instead of recognizing God’s wisdom and love, he sees his own weakness. Often sudden tragedy does not break the human spirit like persistent, monotonous suffering.
Job 9:13 God does not restrain his anger; even the cohorts of Rahab cowered at his feet.
Some believe that Rahab was an ancient designation of a great power of evil. If so, Job here seems to say that God holds in subjection not only men but also beings much more powerful than man, as Rahab and his helpers. Since Rahab means pride, it would be a suitable designation of Lucifer, and “the helpers,” a designation of the beings who followed Lucifer (see Isa. 14:12–14; Rev. 12:7–9).
Job, by his speeches, however, indicates that he had but a limited knowledge of the great controversy between God and Satan.
Job 9:14 “How then can I dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him?
Verses 14–16 suggest the language of a court of law. Job acknowledges his inability to present a successful
Job 9:15 Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy.
Job 9:15 Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy.
Job recognizes the sovereignty of God. Even though he is certain of his innocence, he still appeals for mercy as he approaches his Judge.
Job 9:16 Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing.
Job is saying, If I had challenged God to a controversy, and He had granted it, and bidden me to plead my cause at His bar, yet could I not suppose that He really meant it, and would allow me boldly to stand before Him and freely to challenge His doings. Such condescension seems inconceivable to Job.
Job 9:17 He would crush me with a storm and multiply my wounds for no reason.
In vs. 17–21 Job tries to imagine what would happen if he should challenge God, and God should respond to his challenge. He pictures God as acting toward him, not as a judge, determining matters by rule of law, but as a sovereign, determining them by His own will. Job seems to lose sight of the fact that supreme sovereignty is not inconsistent with supreme love and rectitude.
Job attributes to God that which was clearly the work and scheme of Satan (ch. 2:3). See on Ps. 38:3; 39:9.
Job 9:18 He would not let me catch my breath but would overwhelm me with misery.
God’s judgments are described as so constant and unremitting that Job cannot even “catch his breath.”
Job 9:19 If it is a matter of strength, he is mighty! And if it is a matter of justice, who can challenge him?
Job has no question about God’s power. His sense of that power was more highly developed than his appreciation of God’s goodness.
Job 9:20 Even if I were innocent, my mouth would condemn me; if I were blameless, it would pronounce me guilty.
The creature had no chance when opposed to the Ruler of the universe.
Job 9:21 “Although I am blameless, I have no concern for myself; I despise my own life.
The thought seems to be that Job maintained his innocence, but he could not understand himself or his circumstances, and his conflict was so great that he despised his life.
Job 9:22 It is all the same; that is why I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.
‘That is, all are alike in God’s sight. There is no difference between the cases of the righteous and those of the wicked. Job is about to make a bold assertion. Job is convinced that nothing can be argued certainly about the character of a man from the divine dealings with him. God allows the righteous and the wicked to be swept away together.
Job 9:23 When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent.
Job is probably referring to war, plague, or pestilence. If one of these be let loose upon men, it slays without discrimination. In such case, God does not always interpose to save the righteous.
An audacious, irreverent, and bitter remark that some have tried to defend on the basis that it is a rhetorical statement, but the defence seems inadequate. It is obviously one of those statements of which he later repented in “dust and ashes” (ch. 42:6).
Job 9:24 When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it is not he, then who is it?
If not. The clause may be translated, “If not, then who is it?” In this passage Job reflects, perhaps, the deepest discouragement and the darkest distrust observable in any of his speeches. He argues that the established condition of things in human society must be ascribed to God; there is no one else to whom it can be ascribed.
Job 9:25 “My days are swifter than a runner; they fly away without a glimpse of joy.
By three figures Job illustrates the rapidity with which his life is rushing to its end. A post. A fast-running messenger or courier.
Job 9:26 They skim past like boats of papyrus, like eagles swooping down on their prey.
Ships constructed for lightness and speed, but not substantial.
The eagle. Job had pointed to that which was swiftest on land, that which was swiftest in the water, and now he points to that which was swiftest in the air. He compares these things to the speed with which his life is approaching its destination.
Job 9:27 If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will change my expression, and smile,’
He suggests an endeavor to brace up and find happiness despite his afflictions, but holds such attempts vain.
Job 9:28 I still dread all my sufferings, for I know you will not hold me innocent.
Job’s suffering was augmented by his fear that God would condemn him. Frustration, doubt, fear, preyed upon Job perhaps as much as his physical pain.
Job 9:29 Since I am already found guilty, why should I struggle in vain?
A defeatist attitude was haunting Job’s thinking. Like many other sufferers, he was saying, in substance, “What’s the use!”
Job 9:30 Even if I washed myself with soap and my hands with cleansing powder,
My hands. The clause reads literally, “make my hands clean with lye [potash].”
Job 9:31 you would plunge me into a slime pit so that even my clothes would detest me. It matters not, Job says, how clean and pure I endeavor to make myself, God will plunge me again into the filthy mire. Job’s clothes are personified, and represented as abhorring him.
Job 9:32 “He is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court.
Job sees no hope of coming to an understanding with God, because of the gulf between them. God is infinite, and Job is painfully conscious of his own finite, mortal existence.
Job 9:33 If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together,
In his argument with God, Job feels that there is no one to whom he can look as an arbiter. On one of two conditions only, he thinks, could the contest be more even between himself and God: (1) If God, divesting Himself of all His divine attributes, became man, and (2) if some umpire, or arbiter, could be found to decide the contest.
Neither condition, however, did Job think possible. The gospel provides a fulfillment of both conditions. “The I AM is the Daysman between God and humanity, laying His hand upon both” Not that we need to conceive of Jesus as settling an argument between man and God, but He is the One who represents God to man, the One through whom man can understand and approach God. See Heb. 2:17, 18.
Job 9:34 someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more.
It has been suggested that this may refer to some ancient ceremony in which, for some cause, the umpire, or arbiter, laid his hands upon both the parties in a legal dispute. It may mean that the umpire had the power of control over both parties, that it was his office to restrain them within proper limits, to check any improper expressions, and to see that the argument was fairly conducted on both sides.
This figure could, of course, not be applied to God as one of the parties, though in Job’s concept the application was valid.
Job 9:35 Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot