Job 19

Job’s Sixth Speech: A Response to Bildad

1 Then Job answered and said,

2 "{How long} will you torment me and crush me with words?

3 These ten times you have disgraced me; you are not ashamed [that] you have attacked me.

4 And what is more, [if] I have truly erred, my error remains with me.

5 If indeed you must magnify yourselves against me, and you must let my disgrace argue against me,

6 know then that God has wronged me and has surrounded me [with] his net.

7 "Look, I cry out, 'Violence!' but I am not answered; I cry out, but there is no justice.

8 He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass; and he has set darkness upon my paths.

9 He has taken my glory from me, and he has removed the crown of my head.

10 He has broken me down all around, and I am gone. And he has uprooted my hope like a tree,

11 and he has kindled his wrath against me, and {he has counted me as one of his foes}.

12 His troops have come together and have thrown up their rampart against me and have encamped around my tent.

13 "He has removed my kinsfolk from me, and my acquaintances have only turned aside from me.

14 My relatives have failed, and my close friends have forgotten me.

15 The sojourners in my house and my slave women count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

16 I call to my servant, but he does not answer; I must {personally} plead with him.

17 My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to {my own family}.

18 Little boys also despise me; [when] I rise, then they talk against me.

19 All {my intimate friends} abhor me, and these [whom] I have loved have turned against me.

20 My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

21 "Pity me, pity me, you my friends, for God's hand has touched me.

22 Why do you pursue me like God? And are not satisfied with my flesh?

23 "{O that} my words could be written down! {O that they could be inscribed in a scroll}!

24 [That] with a pen of iron and [with] lead they might be engraved on a rock forever!

25 But I myself know [that] my redeemer [is] alive, and [at the] last he will stand up upon {the earth}.

26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, but from my flesh I will see God,

27 whom {I will see for myself}, and [whom] my eyes will see and not a stranger. {My heart faints within me}.

28 "If you say, 'How will we persecute him?' And 'The root of the trouble is found' in me,

29 be afraid for yourselves {because of the sword}, for wrath [brings] punishment by [the] sword, so that you may know that [there is] judgment."

Job 19 Commentary

Chapter 19

Job complains of unkind usage. (1-7) God was the Author of his afflictions. (8-22) Job's belief in the resurrection. (23-29)

Verses 1-7 Job's friends blamed him as a wicked man, because he was so afflicted; here he describes their unkindness, showing that what they condemned was capable of excuse. Harsh language from friends, greatly adds to the weight of afflictions: yet it is best not to lay it to heart, lest we harbour resentment. Rather let us look to Him who endured the contradiction of sinners against himself, and was treated with far more cruelty than Job was, or we can be.

Verses 8-22 How doleful are Job's complaints! What is the fire of hell but the wrath of God! Seared consciences will feel it hereafter, but do not fear it now: enlightened consciences fear it now, but shall not feel it hereafter. It is a very common mistake to think that those whom God afflicts he treats as his enemies. Every creature is that to us which God makes it to be; yet this does not excuse Job's relations and friends. How uncertain is the friendship of men! but if God be our Friend, he will not fail us in time of need. What little reason we have to indulge the body, which, after all our care, is consumed by diseases it has in itself. Job recommends himself to the compassion of his friends, and justly blames their harshness. It is very distressing to one who loves God, to be bereaved at once of outward comfort and of inward consolation; yet if this, and more, come upon a believer, it does not weaken the proof of his being a child of God and heir of glory.

Verses 23-29 The Spirit of God, at this time, seems to have powerfully wrought on the mind of Job. Here he witnessed a good confession; declared the soundness of his faith, and the assurance of his hope. Here is much of Christ and heaven; and he that said such things are these, declared plainly that he sought the better country, that is, the heavenly. Job was taught of God to believe in a living Redeemer; to look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come; he comforted himself with the expectation of these. Job was assured, that this Redeemer of sinners from the yoke of Satan and the condemnation of sin, was his Redeemer, and expected salvation through him; and that he was a living Redeemer, though not yet come in the flesh; and that at the last day he would appear as the Judge of the world, to raise the dead, and complete the redemption of his people. With what pleasure holy Job enlarges upon this! May these faithful sayings be engraved by the Holy Spirit upon our hearts. We are all concerned to see that the root of the matter be in us. A living, quickening, commanding principle of grace in the heart, is the root of the matter; as necessary to our religion as the root of the tree, to which it owes both its fixedness and its fruitfulness. Job and his friends differed concerning the methods of Providence, but they agreed in the root of the matter, the belief of another world.

Footnotes

• [a]. Hebrew "And"
• [b]. Literally "Until when"
• [c]. Plural
• [d]. Hebrew "my soul," or "my self"
• [e]. Plural
• [f]. Plural
• [g]. Plural
• [h]. Or "astonished"
• [i]. Plural
• [j]. Plural
• [k]. Or "and"
• [l]. Hebrew "and"
• [m]. Hebrew "and"
• [n]. Or "from"
• [o]. Literally "he has counted me for him as his foes"
• [p]. Or "siege works"; compare NRSV
• [q]. Or "completely"
• [r]. Or "of"
• [s]. Hebrew "and"
• [t]. Literally "with my mouth"
• [u]. Literally "to the children of my womb"
• [v]. Hebrew "and"
• [w]. Literally "the men of the circle of my confidants"
• [x]. Collective singular
• [y]. Plural
• [z]. Literally "Who then shall give and"
• [aa]. Literally "Who shall give in the scroll and they could be inscribed"
• [ab]. Hebrew "And"
• [ac]. Emphatic personal pronoun
• [ad]. Literally "dust"
• [ae]. Hebrew "and"
• [af]. Or "without"
• [ag]. Literally "I myself will see for myself"; emphatic personal pronoun as subject to the singular verb
• [ah]. Or "another"
• [ai]. Literally "My kidneys fail in my lap"; see NRSV
• [aj]. Plural
• [ak]. Or " 'The root of the trouble is found' in him"
• [al]. Literally "from the faces of [the] sword"
• [am]. Literally "of"

Chapter Summary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 19

This chapter contains Job's reply to Bildad's second speech, in which he complains of the ill usage of his friends, of their continuing to vex him, and to beat, and bruise, and break him in pieces with their hard words, and to reproach him, and carry it strange to him, Job 19:1-3; which he thought was very cruel, since, if he was mistaken, the mistake lay with himself, Job 19:4; and if they were determined to go on at this rate, he would have them observe, that his afflictions were of God, and therefore should take care to what they imputed them, since he could not get the reasons of them, or his cause to be heard, though he vehemently and importunately sought it, Job 19:5-7; and then gives an enumeration of the several particulars of his distress, all which he ascribes to God, Job 19:8-12; and he enlarges upon that part of his unhappy case, respecting the alienation of his nearest relations, most intimate acquaintance and friends, from him, and their contempt of him, and the like treatment he met with from his servants, and even young children, Job 19:13-19; all which, with other troubles, had such an effect upon him as to reduce him to a mere skeleton, and which he mentions to move the pity of these his friends, now conversing with him, Job 19:20-22; and yet after all, and in the midst of it, and which was his great support under his trials, he expresses his strong faith in his living Redeemer, who should appear on the earth in the latter day, and be his Saviour, and in the resurrection of the dead through him, which he believed he should share in, and in all the happiness consequent on it; and he wishes this confession of his faith might be written and engraven, and be preserved on a rock for ever for the good of posterity, Job 19:23-27; and closes the chapter with an expostulation with his friends, dissuading them from persecuting him any longer, since there was no reason for it in himself, and it might be attended with bad consequences to them, Job 19:28,29.