27
📚And Job continued his discourse and said, 27:1 Job may have paused here so that Zophar could take his turn to speak. Zophar said nothing, so Job continued. The Hebrew word translated “discourse” or “parable” in some English versions, as a verb means to speak using poetic language or proverbs or parables.⚜
2 📚“As God lives, who has taken justice away from me, the Almighty, who has brought bitterness to my soul,
27:2 The only time in the book Job speaks with an oath. He thinks God has denied him justice and has Himself caused his sufferings. However, notice that he does not deny God or give up faith in Him.⚜
3 📚As long as my life 📖 is in me, and the breath 📖 of God is in my nostrils,
4 📚My lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will not utter deceit.
5 📚Far be it from me to admit that you are right. I will not put away my integrity from me until I die.
6 📚I will hold fast my righteousness, and not let it go. My heart will not reproach me as long as I live.
27:4-6 Job is determined to state things as he believes they are. He will not try to deceive his friends to win the argument. He will not admit he is guilty of some terrible sin when he knows he is not. Even if falsely admitting it would win back his friends and God’s favor he would not do it.⚜
27:6 He knows he has lived a life of uprightness and integrity and he fully intends to go on the same way. He has lost property, family, health, the respect of his friends, and God’s fellowship. One thing he is determined not to lose – his integrity. He will not start lying, deceiving, or acting wickedly. He is saying, “Though everything has gone, though I am shattered by God and despised by men, I will continue to be honest. Though I stand utterly alone and am reduced to poverty and loathsome disease, though the world mocks me, friends misunderstand me, and heaven frowns on me, I will go on being true and upright. My integrity at least I am resolved never to lose”.
May God give us such men today – men who would rather lose their lives than lose their integrity! No wonder God spoke of Job as He did in Job 2:3. See also Ezek 14:14.⚜
7 📚“May my enemy be like the wicked, and he who attacks me like the unrighteous.
8 📚For what is the hope of the hypocrite 📖, even though he gains much, if God takes away his life?
9 📚Will God hear his cry when trouble comes on him?
10 📚Will he have delight in the Almighty? Will he always call on God?
11 📚“I will teach you about the hand of God. I will not conceal how it is with the Almighty.
12 📚Look, all of you have seen this. Why then is your talk so empty?
13 📚“This is what a wicked man will get from God, and the inheritance oppressors will receive from the Almighty:
14 📚If his children increase in number, it is for the sword, and his offspring will not have enough bread.
15 📚Those who are left to him will be buried in death, and his widow will not weep.
16 📚Though he heaps up silver like dust, and accumulates garments as abundant as clay,
17 📚He may accumulate them, but the righteous will wear them, and the innocent will divide the silver.
18 📚The house he builds is as fragile as a moth, as a booth the watchman makes.
19 📚The rich man will lie down, but not again. He opens his eyes, and he is no more.
20 📚Terrors overtake him like a flood; a tempest snatches him away in the night.
21 📚The east wind carries him away, and he is gone; the storm sweeps him from his place.
22 📚It hurls itself against him and does not spare. He makes every attempt to flee from its power.
23 📚It scornfully claps its hands at him, and hisses him out of his place.
27:11-23 Until now Job had maintained that often evil men prosper and live to a ripe old age, and that God’s judgment does not always come on them in this world (Job 21:7-13, 30-33; 24:2-12). Job now seems concerned that his friends have misunderstood him. Have they thought he was defending the wicked? Did they think he was teaching that wickedness pays and so it is better to be wicked than righteous? See how Eliphaz accuses him in Job 15:4.
In this chapter Job would set the record straight and try to correct any false impressions he may have created in his friends’ minds. Maybe he realized that he had insisted too strongly on one side of the argument. This often happens when men argue and their emotions are stirred up. Now in vs 13-23 Job fully admits that the wicked are not immune to punishment in this world. Job’s language in these verses is almost like that of his friends when they described the fate of the wicked. He seems now to take their side of the argument. But actually he is a long way from doing so.
Remember their doctrine is this: God always rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked on earth; He does not send calamities on the righteous, nor allow the wicked to escape. For the sake of argument Job is willing to admit the second of these ideas, but not the first. He will agree that disasters come on the wicked, but not that they do not come on the righteous. In agreeing with his friends’ position on the fate of the wicked Job may have been inconsistent. And it may strike the reader of his words that he agreed with them too strongly. (Job could never, it seems, state anything in lukewarm language. For every idea that he expressed he used very strong terms.) But surely one thing at least resulted from these words – his friends could no longer accuse him of defending the wicked or of thinking it didn’t matter whether a person was wicked or righteous.⚜