1Then Job answered and said: 2How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words? 3These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me. 4And if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me. 5If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and adjudge my reproach against me, 6know then that God has bowed me, and has surrounded me with His net. 7Behold, I cry out concerning injustice, but I am not heard. I cry aloud, but there is no justice. 8He has fenced up my way, so that I cannot pass; and He has set darkness in my paths. 9He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. 10He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone; my hope He has uprooted like a tree. 11He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His enemies. 12His troops come together and build up their road against me; they encamp all around my tent. 13He has removed my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. 14My relatives have left, and my close friends have forgotten me. 15Those who dwell in my house, and my maidservants, count me as a stranger; I am a foreigner in their eyes. 16I have called my servant, but he does not answer; I implored him with my mouth. 17My breath is loathsome to my wife, and I must entreat the favor of children for the sake of my own body. 18Even young children despise me; I arise, and they speak against me. 19My circle of friends have abhorred me, and those whom I have loved have turned against me. 20My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 21Have pity on me! Have pity on me, O you my friends! For the hand of God has struck me! 22Why do you persecute me as the Mighty God does, and are not satisfied with my flesh? 23Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! 24That they were forever engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead! 25For I know that my Redeemer is alive, and He shall stand at the latter time upon the earth; 26and after my skin has been struck off from my flesh, I shall see God: 27Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not a stranger. O how my reins have been exhausted within me! 28If you should say, How shall we persecute him? since the root of the matter has been found in me, 29fear for yourselves because of the sword; for wrath brings the punishment of the sword; that you may know there is judgment.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 2 JOB'S REPLY TO BILDAD. (Job 19:1-29)
How long, &c.--retorting Bildad's words (
Job 18:2). Admitting the punishment to be deserved, is it kind thus ever to be harping on this to the sufferer? And yet even this they have not yet proved.
3 These--prefixed emphatically to numbers (
Gen 27:36).
ten--that is, often (
Gen 31:7).
make yourselves strange--rather, "stun me" [GESENIUS]. (See Margin for a different meaning [that is, "harden yourselves against me"]).
4 erred--The Hebrew expresses unconscious error. Job was unconscious of wilful sin.
remaineth--literally, "passeth the night." An image from harboring an unpleasant guest for the night. I bear the consequences.
5 magnify, &c.--Speak proudly (
Obad 1:12;
Ezek 35:13).
against me--emphatically repeated (
Ps 38:16).
plead . . . reproach--English Version makes this part of the protasis, "if" being understood, and the apodosis beginning at
Job 19:6. Better with UMBREIT, If ye would become great heroes against me in truth, ye must prove (evince) against me my guilt, or shame, which you assert. In the English Version "reproach" will mean Job's calamities, which they "pleaded" against him as a "reproach," or proof of guilt.
6 compassed . . . net--alluding to Bildad's words (
Job 18:8). Know, that it is not that I as a wicked man have been caught in my "own net"; it is God who has compassed me in His--why, I know not.
7 wrong--violence: brought on him by God.
no judgment--God will not remove my calamities, and so vindicate my just cause; and my friends will not do justice to my past character.
8 Image from a benighted traveller.
9 stripped . . . crown--image from a deposed king, deprived of his robes and crown; appropriate to Job, once an emir with all but royal dignity (
Lam 5:16;
Ps 89:39).
10 destroyed . . . on every side--"Shaken all round, so that I fall in the dust"; image from a tree uprooted by violent shaking from every side [UMBREIT]. The last clause accords with this (
Jer 1:10)
mine hope--as to this life (in opposition to Zophar,
Job 11:18); not as to the world to come (
Job 19:25;
Job 14:15).
removed--uprooted.
11 enemies-- (
Job 13:24;
Lam 2:5).
12 troops--Calamities advance together like hostile troops (
Job 10:17).
raise up . . . way--An army must cast up a way of access before it, in marching against a city (
Isa 40:3).
13 brethren--nearest kinsmen, as distinguished from "acquaintance." So "kinsfolk" and "familiar friends" (
Job 19:14) correspond in parallelism. The Arabic proverb is, "The brother, that is, the true friend, is only known in time of need."
estranged--literally, "turn away with disgust." Job again unconsciously uses language prefiguring the desertion of Jesus Christ (
Job 16:10;
Luke 23:49;
Ps 38:11).
15 They that dwell, &c.--rather, "sojourn": male servants, sojourning in his house. Mark the contrast. The stranger admitted to sojourn as a dependent treats the master as a stranger in his own house.
16 servant--born in my house (as distinguished from those sojourning in it), and so altogether belonging to the family. Yet even he disobeys my call.
mouth--that is, "calling aloud"; formerly a nod was enough. Now I no longer look for obedience, I try entreaty.
17 strange--His breath by elephantiasis had become so strongly altered and offensive, that his wife turned away as estranged from him (
Job 19:13;
Job 17:1).
children's . . . of mine own body--literally, "belly." But "loins" is what we should expect, not "belly" (womb), which applies to the woman. The "mine" forbids it being taken of his wife. Besides their children were dead. In
Job 3:10 the same words "my womb" mean, my mother's womb: therefore translate, "and I must entreat (as a suppliant) the children of my mother's womb"; that is, my own brothers--a heightening of force, as compared with last clause of
Job 19:16 [UMBREIT]. Not only must I entreat suppliantly my servant, but my own brothers (
Ps 69:8). Here too, he unconsciously foreshadows Jesus Christ (
John 7:5).
18 young children--So the Hebrew means (
Job 21:11). Reverence for age is a chief duty in the East. The word means "wicked" (
Job 16:11). So UMBREIT has it here, not so well.
I arose--Rather, supply "if," as Job was no more in a state to stand up. "If I stood up (arose), they would speak against (abuse) me" [UMBREIT].
19 inward--confidential; literally, "men of my secret"--to whom I entrusted my most intimate confidence.
20 Extreme meagerness. The bone seemed to stick in the skin, being seen through it, owing to the flesh drying up and falling away from the bone. The Margin, "as to my flesh," makes this sense clearer. The English Version, however, expresses the same: "And to my flesh," namely, which has fallen away from the bone, instead of firmly covering it.
skin of my teeth--proverbial. I have escaped with bare life; I am whole only with the skin of my teeth; that is, my gums alone are whole, the rest of the skin of my body is broken with sores (
Job 7:5;
Ps 102:5). Satan left Job his speech, in hope that he might therewith curse God.
21 When God had made him such a piteous spectacle, his friends should spare him the additional persecution of their cruel speeches.
22 as God--has persecuted me. Prefiguring Jesus Christ (
Ps 69:26). That God afflicts is no reason that man is to add to a sufferer's affliction (
Zech 1:15).
satisfied with my flesh--It is not enough that God afflicts my flesh literally (
Job 19:20), but you must "eat my flesh" metaphorically (
Ps 27:2); that is, utter the worst calumnies, as the phrase often means in Arabic.
23 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.
24 pen--graver.
lead--poured into the engraven characters, to make them better seen [UMBREIT]. Not on leaden plates; for it was "in the rock" that they were engraved. Perhaps it was the hammer that was of "lead," as sculptors find more delicate incisions are made by it, than by a harder hammer. FOSTER (One Primeval Language) has shown that the inscriptions on the rocks in Wady-Mokatta, along Israel's route through the desert, record the journeys of that people, as Cosmas Indicopleustes asserted, A.D. 535.
for ever--as long as the rock lasts.
25 redeemer--UMBREIT and others understand this and
Job 19:26, of God appearing as Job's avenger before his death, when his body would be wasted to a skeleton. But Job uniformly despairs of restoration and vindication of his cause in this life (
Job 17:15-
Job 17:16). One hope alone was left, which the Spirit revealed--a vindication in a future life: it would be no full vindication if his soul alone were to be happy without the body, as some explain (
Job 19:26) "out of the flesh." It was his body that had chiefly suffered: the resurrection of his body, therefore, alone could vindicate his cause: to see God with his own eyes, and in a renovated body (
Job 19:27), would disprove the imputation of guilt cast on him because of the sufferings of his present body. That this truth is not further dwelt on by Job, or noticed by his friends, only shows that it was with him a bright passing glimpse of Old Testament hope, rather than the steady light of Gospel assurance; with us this passage has a definite clearness, which it had not in his mind (see on
Job 21:30). The idea in "redeemer" with Job is Vindicator (
Job 16:19;
Num 35:27), redressing his wrongs; also including at least with us, and probably with him, the idea of the predicted Bruiser of the serpent's head. Tradition would inform him of the prediction. FOSTER shows that the fall by the serpent is represented perfectly on the temple of Osiris at Philć; and the resurrection on the tomb of the Egyptian Mycerinus, dating four thousand years back. Job's sacrifices imply sense of sin and need of atonement. Satan was the injurer of Job's body; Jesus Christ his Vindicator, the Living One who giveth life (
John 5:21,
John 5:26).
at the latter day--Rather, "the Last," the peculiar title of Jesus Christ, though Job may not have known the pregnancy of his own inspired words, and may have understood merely one that comes after (
1Cor 15:45;
Rev 1:17). Jesus Christ is the last. The day of Jesus Christ the last day (
John 6:39).
stand--rather, "arise": as God is said to "raise up" the Messiah (
Jer 23:5;
Deut 18:15).
earth--rather, "dust": often associated with the body crumbling away in it (
Job 7:21;
Job 17:16); therefore appropriately here. Above that very dust wherewith was mingled man's decaying body shall man's Vindicator arise. "Arise above the dust," strikingly expresses that fact that Jesus Christ arose first Himself above the dust, and then is to raise His people above it (
1Cor 15:20,
1Cor 15:23). The Spirit intended in Job's words more than Job fully understood (
1Pet 1:12). Though He seems, in forsaking me, to be as one dead, He now truly "liveth" in heaven; hereafter He shall appear also above the dust of earth. The Goel or vindicator of blood was the nearest kinsman of the slain. So Jesus Christ took our flesh, to be our kinsman. Man lost life by Satan the "murderer" (
John 8:44), here Job's persecutor (
Heb 2:14). Compare also as to redemption of the inheritance by the kinsman of the dead (
Ruth 4:3-
Ruth 4:5;
Eph 1:14).
26 Rather, though after my skin (is no more) this (body) is destroyed ("body" being omitted, because it was so wasted as not to deserve the name), yet from my flesh (from my renewed body, as the starting-point of vision,
Song 2:9, "looking out from the windows") "shall I see God." Next clause [
Job 19:27] proves bodily vision is meant, for it specifies "mine eyes" [ROSENMULLER, 2d ed.]. The Hebrew opposes "in my flesh." The "skin" was the first destroyed by elephantiasis, then the "body."
27 for myself--for my advantage, as my friend.
not another--Mine eyes shall behold Him, but no longer as one estranged from me, as now [BENGEL].
though--better omitted.
my reins--inward recesses of the heart.
be consumed within me--that is, pine with longing desire for that day (
Ps 84:2;
Ps 119:81). The Gentiles had but few revealed promises: how gracious that the few should have been so explicit (compare
Num 24:17;
Matt 2:2).
28 Rather, "ye will then (when the Vindicator cometh) say, Why," &c.
root . . . in me--The root of pious integrity, which was the matter at issue, whether it could be in one so afflicted, is found in me. UMBREIT, with many manuscripts and versions, reads "in him." "Or how found we in him ground of contention."
29 wrath--the passionate violence with which the friends persecuted Job.
bringeth, &c.--literally, "is sin of the of the sword"
that ye may know--Supply, "I say this."
judgment--inseparably connected with the coming of the Vindicator. The "wrath" of God at His appearing for the temporal vindication of Job against the friends (
Job 42:7) is a pledge of the eternal wrath at the final coming to glorify the saints and judge their enemies (
2Thess 1:6-10;
Isa 25:8).
