Job’s reply to Bildad
9
Then Job answered and said, 2 📚“Indeed I know this is true 📖. But how can a man be righteous before God 📖?
3 📚If he would dispute with him, he could not answer him one in a thousand.
4 📚He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?
5 📚He removes the mountains, and they do not know. He overturns them in his anger.
6 📚He shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble.
7 📚He commands the sun, and it does not rise, and he seals off the stars.
8 📚He alone spreads out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
9 📚He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.
10 📚He does great things past finding out, yes, and wonders without number.
11 📚Lo and behold, he goes by me, and I do not see him; and he passes on, but I do not perceive him.
12 📚See, if he takes away, who can hinder him? Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?’
13 📚If God does not withdraw his anger, the allies of the proud 📖 cower beneath him.
14 📚How much less shall I answer him, and choose out my words to reason with him?
15 📚Even if I were righteous, yet I would not answer him, but I would make supplication to my judge.
16 📚If I called, and he had answered me, yet I would not believe that he would listen to my voice.
17 📚For he breaks me with a tempest, and increases my wounds without cause.
18 📚He will not allow me to take my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
19 📚If I speak of strength, see, he is strong; and if I speak of judgment, who will set a time for me to plead?
20 📚If I justified myself, my own mouth would condemn me. If I say, ‘I am blameless’, it would prove me perverse.
9:3-20 If it comes to an argument with God, Job knows he has no hope of winning it. He knows himself to be too weak, too foolish, too reckless in speech, too unskilled in debate (vs 3,14-16,20). And he knows that God is the wise and powerful Creator of the universe, and can do what He pleases with His creation (vs 4-10). Job had learned some great truth about God. He looks at the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, and knows that creation is only the work of God’s hands. He knows too that there is only one true God. God, Job says in v 11, is in the universe as an invisible Spirit. Job knows also that in the affairs of men God is all-powerful (vs 12,13). Here Job probably means by this that God has taken away his children and there is nothing he or anyone else could do about it. “Bear”, etc – constellations.⚜
21 📚“Even if I were blameless, yet I would not know myself; I despise my life.
22 📚It is all one. Therefore I said, ‘He destroys the blameless and the wicked.
23 📚If the scourge suddenly kills, he laughs at the trial of the innocent.
24 📚The earth has been given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?’
9:21-24 The words of Job in these verses (and in Job 19:6) are the hardest he ever spoke about God. He reaches here the lowest point of his despair, his misunderstanding of God’s dealings with him. He pictures God as a cruel despot, a tyrant who acts in an arbitrary way without compassion, a God who makes no distinction between the righteous and the wicked.
But these words do not prove that Job was a wicked man. They show what unceasing pain and sorrow and the pressure of tormenting questions can do to even the best man on earth. A desperate man, in agony of body and mind, does not speak like an unfallen angel or an untroubled saint. But notice that even now Job does not deny God, does not fall into the folly and wickedness of atheism. Satan tempts people to atheism by arguments like these: the world is full of unjust suffering and disasters coming on the innocent; if there were a God He would not permit it. Satan’s way of reasoning with men is this:
(a) If God existed the innocent would not suffer.
(b) The fact is the innocent do suffer.
(c) Therefore God does not exist.
Satan himself does not believe this, but he persuades some people to believe it, and convinces them that this reasoning is sound. Job does not fall into that trap, but v 24 shows how puzzled he is by the problem of evil in the world. He asks why God doesn’t prevent it instead of seeming to side with it. Without the full revelation of God’s truth given in the Bible neither Job nor anyone else could understand much of God’s ways with men. Even those of us who know the whole Bible are sometimes much perplexed at what is going on in the world (but should never be in despair). We too, like Job, must walk by faith (2 Cor 5:7). We must look at unseen things, not things which are seen (2 Cor 4:18).⚜
25 📚Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good.
26 📚They pass away like swift ships, like the eagle hurrying to the prey.
27 📚If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint; I will put off my sad face, and comfort myself’,
28 📚I am afraid of all my pains. I know that you will not hold me innocent.
29 📚If I am wicked, then why should I labour in vain?
30 📚Even if I wash myself with snow water, and cleanse my hands with soap,
31 📚Yet you will plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes will abhor me.
9:27-31 He felt God condemned him without cause and accused him though he has led a clean life. He sees no way to forget his sufferings, clear himself from condemnation and be happy.⚜
32 📚For he is not a man like me that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.
33 📚Nor is there anyone to arbitrate between us, that he might lay his hand on both of us.
34 📚Let him remove his rod from me, and let not his fear terrify me.
35 Then I would speak, and not fear him. But it is not so with me.
9:32-35 Job felt a need for someone to bring him and God together, to settle the dispute, to cause God to take away His punishing rod. In a far greater measure than Job could imagine the Lord Jesus Christ meets this need. He is the only Mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5). He is the believer’s advocate in heaven (1 John 2:1). Through Him reconciliation has been made between God and man and direct access to God provided (2 Cor 5:18-19; Eph 2:17-18; Heb 10:19-22).⚜