13
📚“Look, my eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it.2 📚What you know, I also know. I am not inferior to you.
3 📚Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God.
4 📚But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value.
5 📚Oh, that you would altogether keep silent! That would be your wisdom.
13:1-5 Job did not speak like this because he was proud and boastful. His meaning is this: “My friends, what you and I know very well is not enough to solve the problem of why awful disasters have come upon me. Stop pretending that your wisdom can give all the answers. You are like worthless doctors bringing false remedies. If you can’t say something more sensible than you have so far, then please keep quiet. I will try to get an answer from God alone”. The lies they made up (v 4) were the accusation of wickedness they made against him.⚜
6 📚Listen now to my reasoning, and hear the pleas of my lips.
7 📚Will you speak wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for him?
8 📚Will you show partiality toward his person? Will you argue for God?
9 📚Would it be good if he searched you out? Or will you mock him like one man mocks another?
10 📚He will surely rebuke you, if you secretly show partiality.
11 📚Will his excellence not make you afraid? And his dread fall on you?
12 📚Your old sayings are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay.
13:6-12 The friends seem to think they were God’s advocates to speak for Him. If this is true, Job asks, why is it necessary for them to bring false accusations against him? They are examining Job to find any faults he may have. What if God examined them in the same way? Have they no fear of the God they have been speaking so easily about? The fact is, Job could see they thought themselves better than he was. Their inmost conviction may have been something like this: “God has punished Job terribly for his sins; God has not punished us like that – indeed we are experiencing His blessings. Job must be a bad man, and we are good men, or at least not nearly as bad as he is”.
Self-righteousness is very hard to discover in one’s self, and it is very hard for others to deal with. It is one of the most difficult of sins to tear from the human heart.⚜
13 📚“Keep silent! Leave me alone, so that I can speak, and let come on me what may!
14 📚Why do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hand?
15 📚Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him; but I will defend my ways before him.
16 📚And he will be my salvation; for a hypocrite 📖 does not come before him.
17 📚Listen carefully to my speech, and hear my declaration with your ears.
18 📚See now, I have prepared my case. I know that I will be vindicated.
19 📚Who is the one who will argue the case with me? For now, if I hold my tongue, I will die.
13:13-19 Job is determined to speak out even if God should kill him for it. He still has hope in God that he will eventually be proved innocent. He is eager to defend himself before God and says that this very desire shows he is not a hypocrite or an evil man.⚜
20 📚“Only do not do two things to me, then I will not hide myself from you:
21 📚Withdraw your hand far from me, and let not the dread of you make me afraid.
22 📚Then call, and I will answer; or let me speak, and you answer me.
13:20-22 Again Job stops speaking to his friends and addresses God (see Job 10:2). He wants very much to meet face to face with God. He is sure he can prove his innocence. But he is filled with pain, perplexity, grief, and fear. Because of this he feels that even if he got the chance to defend himself, he would not be able to do it well. So he makes these requests.⚜
23 📚How many are my iniquities and sins? Cause me to know my transgression and my sin.
13:22-23 In Job’s eyes he has been condemned without knowing what the charges against him are. He thinks God has become his enemy and has punished him severely (vs 26-28), and is looking for further reasons to afflict him. He wants his day in God’s court to hear all the accusations against him.⚜
24 📚Why do you hide your face, and count me as your enemy?
25 📚Will you terrify a leaf driven to and fro? And will you pursue dry stubble?
26 📚For you write bitter things against me, and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.
13:26 Job is sure that he has done nothing as an adult to deserve the awful disasters which have come. Searching for a reason for them he thinks it must be some sins or other he had done as a young man. But, as we know from the first two chapters of this book, in this he was mistaken. His sufferings had no connection whatever with punishment for any of his sins. However, it was right for him to review his life to see if there was any reason in him for his troubles. We should do the same thing when troubles come to us. Possibly they have come because of some sin we have committed, and if so we should know it and confess it and get forgiveness for it (Ps 77:5-6; 119:59; 139:23-24; Lam 3:40; 1 Cor 11:31).⚜
27 📚You also put my feet in the stocks, and closely watch all my paths. You put a mark on the heels of my feet.
28 📚“And man is consumed like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth eaten.