Job’s Reply to Bildad: The Trouble-Maker: Job: The Wisdom of the Cross [Job 9,10]

[Pray]

Last week we looked at Bildad’s first speech and we ended with a question… is it possible to be right and wrong at the same time? At the end of the book of Job we find God confirming that Job has spoken right about God, yet Job will say many things that are obviously not right about God. Job has a heart that is right with God, but his perceptions are partial and flawed. So Job is wrong on many things he says, yet he says them from a heart that is right with God.

In chapters 9 and 10 Job responds to Bildad. Bildad has asserted in the strongest possible terms that God is absolutely and unfailingly fair. He never ever perverts justice (8:3); he will never reject a blameless person or bless wrongdoers (8:20). Although Eliphaz has (so far) not been as forthright as Bildad, he agrees. Innocent people never perish (4:7). Until that terrible day when his troubles began (1:13, 14) Job would have agreed with them both. This was the traditional, unquestioned worldview of them all. God is God, and God is fair.

To Job this axiom no longer seems at all self-evident. Indeed all the evidence suggests to Job that it is false. In this speech Job begins by identifying what matters to him most; he goes on to outline problem after problem with achieving his longing; then he considers possible alternative strategies before closing with a series of anguished questions for God.

What matters most to Job is a right relationship with God [Job 9:1-4]

Then Job answered and said:

“Truly I know that it is so:

But how can a man be in the right before God?

If one wished to contend with him,

one could not answer him once in a thousand times.

He is wise in heart and mighty in strength

—who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?” (vv. 1–4)

Job surprises us by agreeing with Bildad: “Truly I know that it is so” (v. 2a). In view of what follows, we cannot conclude that Job really agrees with Bildad. It seems that he is saying something like “Ah, yes, I know The System. I know—or I always thought I knew—that it was true. But …” and it is the “but” where the rub lies.

“But how can a man [that is, a mere human being] be in the right before God?” (v. 2b). To “be in the right” is not sinless perfection, but being able to stand before God. It is what we call justification, to “get right with God”, to have the legal status before God of a justified or acquitted person. Eliphaz, as the punch line of his eerie dream, hears a voice assuring him this cannot be: “Can mortal man be in the right before God?” (4:17). Of course not!

And yet—and we shall see this again and again in Job—it is this above all else for which Job longs. Job longs to stand justified before God more than he longs for his health, his wealth, or his family. Our deepest desires reveal the worship of our hearts. Job’s deepest desire is to stand before God. Idolaters long most deeply for what their idols promise, whether it be success, comfort, fame, satisfaction, whatever. But in his ragged desperation the deepest desire of Job’s heart is revealed—he longs for God.

The problem is that he can see no way in which this could ever be possible. “If one wished to contend [the word “contend” speaks the language of the courtroom, and I’ll use that picture of a courtroom often] with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times” (v. 3). This sheer impossibility of standing before God in court is the main burden of this speech.

It is impossible because God “is wise in heart” (that is, he has a deep wisdom) and “mighty in strength” (v. 4). God is too strong and too inscrutable for us to stand any chance against him in court. So, as Job asks, “who has hardened himself against him [that is, stood up against him], and succeeded [that is, survived]?” It cannot be done.

So in this speech Job is going to face up to the impossibility of ever achieving the deepest longing of his heart.

Job’s big problem is the Sovereignty of God [Job 9:5-24]

While Bildad begins his argument with the axiom of God’s justice and the assumed axiom of his sovereignty, Job builds his argument on divine sovereignty alone. If God is God, he asks, what can we learn?

He Causes Cosmic Disorder (9:5–10)

“he who removes mountains, and they know it not,

when he overturns them in his anger,

who shakes the earth out of its place,

and its pillars tremble;

who commands the sun, and it does not rise;

who seals up the stars;

who alone stretched out the heavens

and trampled the waves of the sea;”

In verses 5–10 Job pours out a cascade of powerful imagery, in which creation language is turned upside down. Verses 5, 6 speak about the “mountains” and “pillars” of the earth. Traditionally these speak of a solidity in creation that extends not only to the physical order of the cosmos but to its moral order.

When unjust judges govern, “all the foundations of the earth are shaken” (Psalm 82:1–5). When Hannah is rejoicing in God’s justice she sings, “The pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world” (1 Samuel 2:8). God says, “When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars” (Psalm 75:3). God “set the earth on its foundations,” celebrates Psalm 104, “so that it should never be moved” (Psalm 104:5).

But as far as Job can see, God is the one who, far from keeping the moral order of the universe in place, actually initiates the moral earthquake that replaces order with disorder. This is exactly what has happened in Job’s own life; a life of stability has been overturned. Cosmic disorder happens; so God must be the one who does it, if he is God. God is the Maker; but it seems to Job that he is a Maker of trouble, the Trouble-Maker.

In Job’s experience, light has been replaced by darkness. So he says (v. 7) that God has told the sun not to rise and the stars not to shine (sealing them up, as if he were putting them in an envelope and sealing it), in precise contradiction to his good commands in Genesis 1. This echoes Job’s lament in 3:4–9.

Yes, he is the sovereign Creator who “stretched out the heavens” (v. 8) and indeed who “trampled the waves of the sea” He made the constellations in the heavens (v. 9). He does “great things … marvelous things …” (v. 10). But among these things are evil, disordered things. He is powerful, but it is not clear to Job that he is good. So what hope can Job have of bringing such a wild, almost manic, disordered God into the order of a courtroom?

He Is Invisible and Elusive (9:11–13)

Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not;

he moves on, but I do not perceive him.

Behold, he snatches away; who can turn him back?

Who will say to him, “What are you doing?”

God will not turn back his anger;

beneath him bowed the helpers of Rahab. (vv. 11–13)

But there is another problem. God is invisible. And to be invisible means to be elusive; it gives the invisible one power over the visible ones (as in many science fiction novels and movies, from H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man onward). “He can pass me by, move on, come close to me, do me harm (snatching away my possessions and my children), and I can’t even see him. What chance have I to challenge such an elusive God? I am no match for him. Even ‘the helpers of Rahab,’ storybook monsters of evil, were no match for him. And what is more, he seems to be treating me as one of the evil ‘helpers of Rahab’; in the cosmic battle, he seems to think I am on the enemy’s side.”

He Is Too Strong for Me (9:14–20) (17&18 underlined)

How then can I answer him,

choosing my words with him?

Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him;

I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.

If I summoned him and he answered me,

I would not believe that he was listening to my voice.

For he crushes me with a tempest

and multiplies my wounds without cause;

he will not let me get my breath,

but fills me with bitterness.

If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty!

If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?

Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me;

though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse. (vv. 14–20)

Job vividly portrays the absurdity of even thinking he might win a court case—Job 5. God. It doesn’t matter that Job is actually “in the right” (v. 15), which he is, as we know from 1:1; 1:8; 2:3. In this chaotic courtroom, might is right. He can’t argue but can only beg for “mercy” (v. 15). “Even if God answered my subpoena [v. 16], I don’t think he would bother actually listening to me.

He would be more like a mugger or street fighter than a lawyer [vv. 17, 18]; he would knock the wind out of me so I had no ‘breath’ [or “spirit,” which is the same word] (v. 18). Indeed he would crush me ‘with a tempest’ (v. 17) [the storm from which God does eventually speak in 38:1 and 40:6, where the ESV translates the same word as “whirlwind”].” To be in court against God would be like trying to make a rational speech facing a hurricane. And he would do all this “without cause” (v. 17b), with no moral justification. We, the readers, know that God has indeed said to Satan that the enemy has incited God against Job “without reason” (2:3, same phrase). So this is true.

“I cannot face him because he is too strong [v. 19a] and cannot be summoned into court [v. 19b]. Even though I am in the right, in that terrible courtroom I would find myself admitting my guilt [v. 20a, “my own mouth would condemn me”], although my confession would be extracted under torture.”

He Is Unjust (9:21–24)

I am blameless; I regard not myself;

I loathe my life.

It is all one; therefore I say,

“He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.”

When disaster brings sudden death,

he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.

The earth is given into the hand of the wicked;

he covers the faces of its judges—

if it is not he, who then is it? (vv. 21–24)

The climax of Job’s problems is that the wild, chaotic, elusive, mighty God is not fair. “I am blameless,” says Job, and we know this is true (1:1, 8; 2:3). “I regard not myself” (v. 21) may mean “I am so distraught that I don’t even know what I’m saying. I am beside myself with confusion and grief.”

In verse 22 Job comes right out with a terrible accusation: “therefore I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’ ” This is in direct contradiction to what Bildad has so firmly asserted in chapter 8. Job is saying, “I am blameless, and yet he is destroying me.” If we could prove this of a human judge, we would call for his resignation. Job is effectively calling for the resignation of God. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” asked Abraham (Genesis 18:25). Job wishes it were true, but he is reaching the conclusion that it is not.

He goes on (v. 23) to suppose that when a disaster brings “sudden death” to both blameless and wicked people alike (disasters are no respecters of virtue), God actually “mocks at the calamity of the innocent.” There he is, laughing away in Heaven like some cruel tyrant.

“The earth is given into the hand of the wicked” (v. 24)—a statement as true today as then. There is injustice everywhere. People with power decide the destinies of others without power and do not judge justly. Their faces are covered; the idiom “covering the faces” speaks of distorting judgment, for example by bribes: “a bribe blinds the clear-sighted” (Exodus 23:8).

But when this happens, who is causing it? Answer according to Job: the sovereign God, for if something happens, he does it. “He covers the faces of its judges—if it is not he, who then is it?” (v. 24). This is a significant comment. Job knows there is something terribly wrong about saying that God actively brings injustice on earth. But if he is to hold on to the sovereignty of God, he cannot see what other conclusion he can reach. Who else can act sovereignly on earth?

It is a terrible thing that Job says, but we can see why he says it. From his viewpoint it is hard to see what else he can say. There is an honesty about him that is lacking in the comforters.

Three Possible ways out [Job 9:25-35]

My days are swifter than a runner;

they flee away; they see no good.

They go by like skiffs of reed,

like an eagle swooping on the prey. (vv. 25, 26)

The prime of Job’s life is running away from him, like an Olympic 100 meter runner (v. 25), like a paper-light boat made of papyrus skimming down a fast-flowing river (v. 26a), or like an eagle swooping with lightning speed on its prey (v. 26b). “Any second now my life will be gone.” There is an urgency in Job’s voice. “What am I to do?”

He comes up with three possible strategies.

#1) Move On and Cheer Up (9:27–29)

If I say, “I will forget my complaint,

I will put off my sad face, and be of good cheer,”

I become afraid of all my suffering,

for I know you will not hold me innocent.

I shall be condemned;

why then do I labor in vain? (vv. 27–29)

First, how about a bit of cheerful denial: “I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and be of good cheer” (v. 27). “Things have been bad. But I have moved through the stages of grieving, and now it is time to move on, cheer up, and look forward to a new day.” That would be an entirely reasonable, indeed healthy movement for human grief. All of us do that eventually after suffering loss. Why can Job not do that?

Because what he is suffering is not, at root, the loss of his possessions and his children; it is the judgment of God against sinners. If he pretends it is just human suffering, he will be in denial about the true nature of what he endures. “I become afraid of my suffering, for I know you will not hold me innocent. I shall be condemned …” (vv. 28, 29a). His suffering is deeper than a present-tense suffering. It is a present-tense suffering that is the harbinger of a future condemnation. So he concludes, “why then do I labor in vain?” (v. 29)—“why do I keep seeking to be in the right before God when there is no point and I am chasing after a dream that will never be realized?”

#2) Wash Myself (9:30, 31)

If I wash myself with snow

and cleanse my hands with lye,

yet you will plunge me into a pit,

and my own clothes will abhor me. (vv. 30, 31)

Second, Job considers the pointlessness of making renewed efforts to make sure he really is clean, examining his conscience afresh, searching his heart for any secret sins that he can confess. The penitent King David prays, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7). Job may be echoing that kind of thought. To “wash myself with snow” cannot be literal, for snow will not wash any better than water on its own (Job 9:30); it is presumably an idiom meaning “wash myself so that I am as white as snow.”

But Job is convinced that however clean he may be, God is determined to prove him dirty. “God is like some malicious enemy who will kidnap me after a shower and ‘plunge me into a pit,’ ” the disgusting smelly pit being an image of the underworld (v. 31; as in 17:14; 33:18). “God will so tar me with the stench of death that ‘my own clothes will abhor me’ (v. 31). It is not just that I will feel terrible in my smelly clothes—my clothes will feel terrible to be clothing me!” If we ask Job how he knows this, he would answer that his sufferings prove that this is what God is doing.

So he reaches out for his final hope.

#3) Find a Mediator (9:32–35)

For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him,

that we should come to trial together.

There is no arbiter between us,

who might lay his hand on us both.

Let him take his rod away from me,

and let not dread of him terrify me.

Then I would speak without fear of him,

for I am not so in myself. (vv. 32–35)

The root problem is that God “is not a man” (v. 32), not a mortal, not a human being. The problem is that he is the transcendent God. So there is no chance of a fair trial with equally-matched contestants. What Job really needs is an “arbiter” (v. 33), a mediator, someone “who might lay his hand on us both” to make sure they both keep the rules of the courtroom and justice is done (v. 33). We see at times Job working towards proper understanding.

Whether Job is lamenting the absence of a mediator or expressing a wish that there might be a mediator (niv, “If only there were someone to mediate between us” [v. 33]), this is a deep longing of his heart. “There is no mediator, as far as I can see, but how I wish that there were.” It is a “mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5) that Job so badly needs. Once Job has raised this question of a mediator, “it cannot simply be left. It is here a forlorn wish, and after the next passages he slips back into near despair. But each time the impossible hope becomes stronger” as he comes back to this hope in 16:21 and 19:23–27. Job’s yearning for reconciliation with God shines brightly in this hope.

Job longs for God to “take his rod [of punishment] away,” so that Job need no longer be terrified (v. 34) and will be able to “speak without fear of him” (v. 35a). At the moment he cannot do this.

Four Agonized questions for God [Job 10:1-22]

In chapter 10 Job asks four agonized questions to the God he longs to see.

Why Are You against Me? (10:1–3)

I loathe my life;

I will give free utterance to my complaint;

I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

I will say to God, Do not condemn me;

let me know why you contend against me.

Does it seem good to you to oppress,

to despise the work of your hands

and favor the designs of the wicked? (vv. 1–3)

Please “let me know why you contend against me” (v. 2b). “Why have you set yourself against me?” It seems clear to Job that God is against him, but he cannot understand why. In verse 3 he calls himself “the work of your hands”; he will develop this theme in verses 8–16.

Why Do You Watch Me? (10:4–7)

Have you eyes of flesh?

Do you see as man sees?

Are your days as the days of man,

or your years as a man’s years,

that you seek out my iniquity

and search for my sin,

although you know that I am not guilty,

and there is none to deliver out of your hand? (vv. 4–7)

At the end of chapter 7 Job has accused God of being a hostile surveillance watcher (7:17–21). He comes back to this now. Verses 4, 5 make the point that God is not human and doesn’t have eyes that only see the exterior (v. 4) and have limited time for action (v. 5). If God were human, then Job could understand how he might need to look carefully at Job to assess what kind of person he really is.

He could understand how a human might need to “seek out my iniquity and search for my sin” (v. 6). “But you are not human, and ‘you know’ perfectly well ‘that I am not guilty’; furthermore, you know that you have absolute power over me—‘there is none to deliver out of your hand’ [v. 7]. So it seems both unnecessary and unfair for you to treat me like this.”

Why Did You Create Me? (10:8–17)

Your hands fashioned and made me,

and now you have destroyed me altogether.

Remember that you have made me like clay;

and will you return me to the dust?

Did you not pour me out like milk

and curdle me like cheese?

You clothed me with skin and flesh,

and knit me together with bones and sinews.

You have granted me life and steadfast love,

and your care has preserved my spirit.

Yet these things you hid in your heart;

I know that this was your purpose.

If I sin, you watch me

and do not acquit me of my iniquity.

If I am guilty, woe to me!

If I am in the right, I cannot lift up my head,

for I am filled with disgrace

and look on my affliction.

And were my head lifted up, you would hunt me like a lion

and again work wonders against me.

You renew your witnesses against me

and increase your vexation toward me;

you bring fresh troops against me. (vv. 8–17)

In verses 8–17 Job comes back to being “the work of your hands” (v. 3). It is at the same time a beautiful and a pathetic passage. In verses 8, 9 he pictures the hands of God (the personal intimate action of God) carefully putting him together, as he did with Adam (Genesis 2:7), God taking incoherent disconnected matter (“dust”) and organizing it into a living organism of wonderful complexity. “What is the point of making me,” asks Job, “if you only did it to ‘destroy me altogether’ (v. 8), to ‘return me to the dust’ (v. 9)?”

Verses 10, 11 are a vivid and moving poetic picture of the creative action of God. “clothed … with skin and flesh” (v. 11) on the outside and “knit … together with bones and muscles” on the inside. What a wonderful creative act is each conception and birth!

Verse 12 presses this further. Not only did God knit Job together, but further “You have granted me life and steadfast love [chesed],” and his providential “care has preserved my spirit.” All this was in the past. But not now. “Now,” says Job in the bitterness of his soul, “I realize why you did all this [“this was your purpose,” v. 13b]. All this time you gave the appearance of a loving Creator, but ‘you hid in your heart’ [v. 13b] the cruel intentions that are now being worked out in my life.

Now ‘you watch me’ [v. 14], you deem me guilty, and you will not forgive. You are an implacable foe. ‘If I am guilty, woe to me!’ [v. 15a]. But I am not. I am in the right. I am a genuine believer. But still ‘I cannot lift up my head’ [v. 15b] with dignity, for my suffering tells the world that I am a guilty sinner. ‘I am filled with disgrace’ [v. 15c] for all to see. And I have no hope of escape. Even if, by some miracle I were to lift up my head, you would hunt me down and crush me again [v. 16].”

Verse 17 is the climax. God does three things. First, he renews his witnesses against Job (v. 17a). Every suffering is a testimony to the wisdom of the watching world that Job is a sinner. Every fresh disaster says, “This man is under the judgment of God.” Second, he increases his “vexation” (that is to say, his anger) against Job (v. 17b). Far from being slow to anger, God is quick to anger and impossible to please in his anger. Third, he brings wave upon wave of “fresh troops” against Job (v. 17c). Like a siege army sweeping through a breach in Job’s skin or wall, God pours in trouble upon trouble.

Why Don’t You Kill Me? (10:18–22)

Why did you bring me out from the womb?

Would that I had died before any eye had seen me

and were as though I had not been,

carried from the womb to the grave.

Are not my days few?

Then cease, and leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer

before I go—and I shall not return—

to the land of darkness and deep shadow,

the land of gloom like thick darkness,

like deep shadow without any order,

where light is as thick darkness. (vv. 18–22)

So Job comes back to his lament of chapter 3 and asks, “Why don’t you just kill me? Why did I have to be born and be born alive? Why could I not have been stillborn? Then at least I could be still and at peace. Just leave me alone for a moment’s peace [v. 20], for very soon I shall go ‘to the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order, where light is as thick as darkness’ [vv. 21, 22].” Job piles up anti-creation themes. His world has been disordered by God, and he feels himself heading to a land “without any order” (v. 22). But life on earth is so terrible that he feels he can hardly get there quickly enough.

And yet deep in his heart the question “why?” is addressed to the God who seems such a monster. And in that question and that address there lies hope. Whatever Job says, the fact that he says it to God and says it with such vehemence suggests that he knows he has not reached the end of his quest for meaning. There is in Job the inner energy of faith, the mark of a real believer. Job may be wrong in his perception of God and of the reality of his situation, but he is deeply right in his heart and the direction of his turning and his yearning. Thank God for that.

Thank God He doesn’t hold our wrong perceptions against us, haven’t you had a wrong perception about God at times, especially in difficult times? Don’t we sometimes dismiss God as just not caring about injustice in the world?

Perhaps we’ve had the same mindset as Job at times in thinking the only way to get past grief and hurt is to move on and cheer up. We see Job wrestling with the question why? And as we wrestle with the question why bad things happen, my prayer is we begin to look as Job started to here in looking for a mediator.

Looking for a mediator who can put his hand on both God and man, a mediator who can satisfy the justice God demands, a mediator who understands what it is to be a human being…praise God there is a mediator between God and man..the Lord Christ Jesus. A mediator who did put his hands on God and man, who did satisfy the justice of God, who does understand what it is to be human...The innocent one who died in place of the guilty ones and rose again conquering sin and death, who ascended and is at the right hand of the Father doing what??? Being the mediator between God and man.

Have you turned to the mediator? The Lord Jesus Christ.