Job Replies: My Redeemer Lives
1 Job, complaining of his friends’ cruelty, showed there is misery enough in him to feed their cruelty. 21, 28 He craved pity. 23 He believeth the resurrection.
Job answered. Job answers Bildad’s second speech by protesting the unkindness of his friends, and by once more recounting his woes.
Job 19:2 “How long will you torment me and crush me with words?
Job is no stoic. He is not insensible to his friends’ attacks. On the contrary, their words sting him, torture him, wound his soul. Bildad’s attack has been the cruelest of all. Job’s reply indicates how deeply affected he really is. Bildad had asked how long it would be before Job would make an end of talking (ch. 18:2). Job counters by asking Bildad how long he will continue to hurt him.
Job 19:3 Ten times now you have reproached me; shamelessly you attack me.
Job 19:4 If it is true that I have gone astray, my error remains my concern alone.
Not necessarily an admission of moral guilt but an acknowledgment of human limitations. Job 19:5 If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my humiliation against me,
Exalt yourselves. That is, set yourselves up as censors and judges. Plead against me. The friends used Job’s calamity as evidence against him.
Job 19:6 then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me.
Not only was Job a victim of the misunderstanding of his friends; he felt that he was also the victim of God’s wrath. Bildad had made much of the snares, traps, and nets that are laid for the wicked (ch. 18:7–12). Bildad insinuated that Job had fallen into snares that he himself had laid. Job replies that the net in which he is entangled is from God.
Job 19:7 “Though I cry, ‘Violence!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.
From the first Job has cried out that he has been wronged (see Job 3:26; 6:29; 9:17, 22; 10:3; Jer. 20:8; Hab. 1:2). Yet, he has had no reply from God.
Job 19:8 He has blocked my way so I cannot pass; he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
This may be a figure taken from a traveler whose way is obstructed so that he cannot make progress. Job feels that he is thwarted. Job feels like a man who cannot see where he is going.
Job 19:9 He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.
Job 19:10 He tears me down on every side till I am gone; he uproots my hope like a tree.
Job seems to compare himself to a city, the walls of which are attacked on every side, and broken down. Removed like a tree. Job’s hope was to lead a tranquil and godly life, surrounded by his relatives and friends, until old age should come and he might descend in mature dignity to the grave. This hope had been torn up by the roots when his calamities came upon him.
Job 19:11 His anger burns against me; he counts me among his enemies.
Job does not say that he and God are enemies, but that God treats him as if he were His enemy, and Job cannot understand why.
Job 19:12 His troops advance in force; they build a siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent.
Job 19:12 His troops advance in force; they build a siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent.
Job returns to the simile of a besieged city and represents his assailants as raising embankments to hem him in or mounds from which to destroy his defences.
Job 19:13 “He has alienated my family from me; my acquaintances are completely estranged from me.
Whether Job refers to his literal brothers (ch. 42:11), or whether he used the term in a figurative sense to apply to intimate friends, or those of the same rank in life, is not clear. This verse is the first of a series of expressions describing his friends and relatives and their attitude toward him. In ch. 19:13–19 the following expressions occur: “brethren,” “acquaintance,” “kinsfolk,” “familiar friends,” “they that dwell in mine house,” “maids,” “servant,” “wife,” “children,” “inward friends,” “they whom I loved.”
Job 19:14 My relatives have gone away; my closest friends have forgotten me.
I am an alien. That is, they cease to treat me as the head of the family.
Job 19:15 My guests and my female servants count me a foreigner; they look on me as on a stranger.
Job 19:16 I summon my servant, but he does not answer, though I beg him with my own mouth.
Job had been accustomed to obedience on the part of his servants. Now they ignored him.
Job 19:17 My breath is offensive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family.
Throughout the book but one wife of Job is mentioned—a noteworthy fact, inasmuch as he most surely lived in an age when polygamy was common. By children Job is evidently referring to his brothers and sisters.
Job 19:18 Even the little boys scorn me; when I appear, they ridicule me.
Children are represented as withholding from Job the respect due to age.
Job 19:19 All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me.
The estrangement of close friends is one of the bitterest experiences of life.
Job 19:20 I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth.
A description of a state of severe emaciation, the result of his disease. The skin of my teeth. A proverbial expression indicating that Job had barely escaped. Disease had preyed upon him until he was wasted away.
Job 19:21 “Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.
This is one of the most touching appeals of the book. Job has shown how forsaken and alone he is. He has most eloquently portrayed his plight. Now he implores his friends for pity.
Job 19:22 Why do you pursue me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
Why have you persecuted me without giving any reason for it? Why have you accused me of crimes I did not commit? “Why are you always slandering me?” In Dan. 3:8 the word translated “accused” is literally, “ate fragments of.” The slanderer, the accuser, is figuratively pictured as devouring the flesh of his victim.
Job 19:23 “Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll,
This may refer to the words that immediately follow. This verse introduces one of the most important passages in the book.
Job 19:24 that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!
Job wishes his record to be cut deep into the rock with an iron chisel, and the chiseled-out groove to be filled with lead. This very practice is now known to have been followed in ancient times, as, for instance, with the Behistun inscription.
Job 19:25 I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
This is one of the most frequently quoted texts in the book. It represents a significant advance in Job’s progress from despair to confidence and hope. “From the depths of discouragement and despondency Job rose to the heights of implicit trust in the mercy and the saving power of God”
The Hebrew word translated “redeemer,” go’el, is rendered “avenger,” or “revenger” (Num. 35:12, 19, 21, 24, 25, 27), and kinsman, or near kinsman (Ruth 2:20; 3:9, 12; 4:1, 3, 6, 8, 14; see on Ruth 2:20). God is frequently called go’el in the sense that He vindicates the rights of men and ransoms those who have come under the dominion of another (Isa. 41:14; 43:14; 44:24; 47:4; etc.).
Job has already expressed his desire to have an “umpire” between him and God (ch. 9:32–35). In ch. 16:19 he has declared his conviction that his “witness is in heaven.” In v. 21 of the same chapter, he longs to have an advocate to plead his cause with God. In ch. 17:3 he calls upon God to be surety for him. Having recognized God as “umpire,” witness, advocate, surety, it is perfectly logical that he should arrive at the recognition of God as his redeemer.
This text represents one of the OT revelations of God as man’s redeemer, a profound truth that was fully revealed to men in the person and mission of Jesus Christ.
In the end. The meaning is that however long Job was to suffer, however protracted his calamities were, he had the utmost confidence that God would eventually vindicate him. The wording of vs. 25 and 26 indicates that the divine vindication would take place when God would “stand … upon the earth” and when Job would “see God.” This is an unmistakable glimpse of the resurrection.
Job 19:26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God;
In my flesh. This text presents several difficulties of translation. The Hebrew has neither the “worms” nor “body.” The different English versions show an interesting variation of renderings both in their texts and in their margins. The translation that is found in the margin of the RV (quoted in Ed 156) gives a fairly literal rendering of the Hebrew: “And after my skin hath been destroyed, this shall be, even from my flesh shall I see God.” Instead of “from my flesh” some translate “without my flesh” or “away from my flesh.” The difference arises from the possibility of assigning various definitions to the Hebrew preposition min rendered variously as “in” (KJV), “from” (RV), “without” (RSV).
Min has a number of meanings: (1) “from,” expressing removal, as “from the mount” (Ex. 19:14); (2) “away from,” with the idea of separation, as “without the knowledge of the congregation [literally, “from the eyes of the congregation”]”; (3) “out of,” as “out of the water” (Ex. 2:10); (4) a variety of other meanings, such as “off,” “on the side of,” “on,” “in consequence of,” “at,” “by.”
The context must decide the choice of meaning in each occurrence of the preposition. In the text under consideration, whatever rendering is accepted, there is an indication of a belief in a corporeal resurrection, or at least not a denial of it. Translations employing the phrase “in my flesh” or “from my flesh” set forth a plain statement of such a belief. Translations supporting the reading “without my flesh” or “away from my flesh” could possibly be viewed as presenting the thought that Job expected to see God in his resurrected body, not in his present body, a view essentially parallel to the statement of Paul in 1 Cor. 15:36–50. If this was the intent of Job’s statement, he is making the significant observation that someday he will be free from his disease-ridden, pain-racked body, and that in his glorious new body he will have the privilege of seeing God (see Phil. 3:21).
Job 19:27 I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; 27. I shall see. “The patriarch Job, looking down to the time of Christ’s second advent, said, ‘Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not a stranger’”
Job indicates that in the resurrection he will retain his personal identity. Job here seems to be expressing an earnest longing for the fulfillment of the glorious events of which he had just spoken.
Job 19:27 I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
Job 19:28 “If you say, ‘How we will hound him, since the root of the trouble lies in him,’
Job threatens his friends. In effect he says: “If, after what I have said, you continue bitter against me, and take counsel as to the best way of persecuting me, still assuming that I am at fault—be ye afraid” Job’s friends have pronounced repeated judgments on him. Now, with increased confidence, Job in turn threatens them with divine wrath and judgment.
Job 19:29 you should fear the sword yourselves; for wrath will bring punishment by the sword, and then you will know that there is judgment.”