Job’s Second Reply to Bildad: Is God for Me or against Me? Job: The Wisdom of the Cross [Job 19]

{Pray}

AS WE HAVE LISTENED TO JOB, we have seen some paradoxical marks of a true worshipper.

One of these is that he experiences deeply the pain of seeing a world he knows ought to be righteous but has become deeply unfair.

Another is that in spite of this pain he does not become ultimately cynical but longs passionately for the God who is running this troubled world.

These two marks together, paradoxical as they are, issue in a life deeply marked by pain and by prayer. At the heart of the pain is the tension between the “god” who seems to be running this world and the God we hope and trust is actually doing so. The character of the one seems so puzzlingly at odds with the perfection of the other.

In a way the deepest question Job faces is, is God for me or against me? Ultimately nothing else matters. If God be for me, on my side, then ultimately nothing and no one can do me lasting harm, and I will come through it as more than a conqueror (Psalm 56:9; Romans 8:31–39). But if God is against me, then my despair is well grounded in objective reality. This question lies beneath the question “Why?” that echoes in the book of Job (from 3:20, 23 onward) and on through the history of believers in pain.

Glenn Chambers was a young Christian from New York. He had a lifelong dream of serving God in Ecuador. At last the opportunity came, and he was at the airport about to depart. Just before he left, he searched for a scrap of paper to write his mother a farewell note. All he could find was a scrap from a magazine, which happened to have an advertisement with the question “Why?” printed in large type. So he scribbled his farewell note around it, put it in an envelope, and mailed it. That night his airplane crashed into a mountain in Colombia, and he was killed. When his mother opened the letter a couple of days later, that question shouted at her from the page: Why? Why did my son die?

It is such a common question, but such a real one. “Why did she die?” asks a widower. “We had such plans for our retirement, and now I have nothing, and I am so alone.”

“Why did he get Alzheimer’s?” asks the elderly wife. “From now on it will just be an agonizing weary, oh-so-gradual bereavement. Why did that have to happen? Why do I have to watch him whom I love fade away into absurdity and confusion?”

“Why did I get into this job,” asks another troubled Christian, “that is working out so badly, so full of frustration?”

“Why was my childhood so difficult?” asks another.

“Why did my parents split up, leaving such a long shadow of pain and insecurity in me? Why did that have to happen, so that I live with the consequences every day?”

“Why was my son born handicapped,” asks a weary mother, “so that all those childhood years were shot through with exhaustion and the bittersweet pain of caring for one who will never fulfill the potential of other babies? Why?”

Or to put all these questions another way, what was going on in Heaven to make this happen? Whose purpose was it, if there is a purpose? By whose doing, by whose agency did this thing happen? Whose hand did this? Or to put it most sharply, is God for me or against me? What kind of God does what he did to Job, trapping a believer in a prison of suffering, loneliness, pain, and misery?

You see, says the Christian, I read in the Bible that God loves me, that he cares about me, that he is for me. But if I’m honest it doesn’t seem like that. There are times when it feels like God is against me. Perhaps he is.

Of all Job’s laments, chapter 19 focuses most sharply on this crucial question. It leads us to the heart of the book.

The problem with the question, is God for me or against me? is that we all know the Sunday school answer. We know the answer we are supposed to give. Of course God is for us if we are in Christ (Romans 8:31–39). It is the answer we long to give. And yet …

Job is too honest just to let that routine answer trip off his tongue or to settle for the answer he is meant to give. He says, “I can’t say that without being totally unreal.”

Context

Bildad has just given an accurate and spine-chilling description of the fate of the wicked. He has implicitly invited Job to see how this matches up with his own experience and to draw the conclusion of The System that he himself, Job, must be deeply wicked.

Job is well able to do that. In some ways much of this next speech echoes that of Bildad. But the punch line does not!

Job says three main things here.

God Attacks Me as a Sinner (vv. 1–12)

First, Job freely admits that the way God is treating him is the way God treats God’s enemies.

Then Job answered and said:

“How long will you torment me

and break me in pieces with words?

These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;

are you not ashamed to wrong me?

And even if it be true that I have erred,

my error remains with myself.

If indeed you magnify yourselves against me

and make my disgrace an argument against me,

know then that God has put me in the wrong

and closed his net about me.” (vv. 1–6)

Job begins, as he has done before, by rebuking his friends. By their “words,” the arguments of The System, they have broken him and tormented him (v. 2). This is strong language. To “torment,” afflict, or inflict is what God did to Israel in the exile:

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

Look and see

if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,

which was brought upon me,

which the LORD inflicted

on the day of his fierce anger. (Lamentations 1:12)

It is their “words” or arguments that have caused this grief to Job. We might have thought his bankruptcy, bereavement, and broken health would be enough. But the deepest pain is their accusation that his sufferings prove that God is against him. It is this that drives an arrow right into his heart.

They have “cast reproach” on him and wronged him by saying this, and they have done it repeatedly, “ten times” (v. 3). Job is not claiming sinless perfection (v. 4): he may have “erred,” but he has a clear conscience and no awareness of unforgiven sin such as might have caused his sufferings. They see themselves as morally better than Job and see his “disgrace” as proof of his guilt and hence “an argument against” him (v. 5).

But they need to understand that while they are right to imply that God is the author of Job’s woes, “God has put [him] in the wrong” (v. 6). The verb “put … in the wrong” means here to pervert justice, exactly what Bildad has denied that God does (8:3).

Job is suffering the fate of sinners. Bildad can speak eloquent about that fate in theory, but Job can describe it from the inside, from his own agonizing experience. Here is Hell from the inside.

Behold, I cry out, “Violence!” but I am not answered;

I call for help, but there is no justice.

He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,

and he has set darkness upon my paths.

He has stripped from me my glory

and taken the crown from my head.

He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,

and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.

He has kindled his wrath against me

and counts me as his adversary.

His troops come on together;

they have cast up their siege ramp against me

and encamp around my tent. (vv. 7–12)

In verse 7 Job is like a man being mugged in the street. He cries out “Violence!” but no one answers or helps. And the mugger is God! God ought to be the one who comes to the help of the afflicted. But he is the mugger, and “there is no justice.”

The dominant image in verses 8–12 is that of being trapped like a city under siege. He blocks all escapes and shrouds Job’s paths in “darkness” (v. 8). Like a king in a besieged city, Job is stripped of his “glory” and “crown,” his capacity to rule as a man in the image of God (v. 9). The walls of his life are broken down on every side (v. 10a). Job has said that a cut-down tree has hope of growing again (14:7–9), but when God has attacked him, he has pulled him up by the roots so there is no hope for him (19:10b). God’s attitude is hot and personal, his “wrath” has been kindled like a furnace against Job, and he counts Job “as his adversary” (v. 11). “I thought I was God’s friend,” says Job, “but God clearly thinks differently.”

The climax is the massive overkill of verse 12. “His troops,” all the armies of the Lord of hosts, “come on together”; they set up “their siege ramp.” We can imagine this huge army setting up its armaments on all sides. But whom are they attacking? It is so pathetic: Job is on his own in his “tent,” a picture of fragility and weakness. “What threat can I possibly be to God? It is as if I go for a night’s camping on my own. I wake, peep out of the tent, and all around me are tanks and gun emplacements; overhead is the entire United States Air Force—all bent on attacking little old me.”

It is a terrible thing to have one’s life invaded and broken down and to have no possible means of escape. Later in the Bible story the inhabitants of Jerusalem experienced this more than once, by the Assyrians (that siege was lifted) and by the Babylonians (it ended in the sacking of the city). Job’s whole life feels like that. It is the fate of sinners.

The second thing Job says is...

God Cruelly Isolates Me as a Sinner (vv. 13–20)

It is not enough that God has attacked him. God has also isolated him cruelly so that he has no human companionship, no fellowship, and no helper who can take his side. He is utterly alone.

He has put my brothers far from me,

and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.

My relatives have failed me,

my close friends have forgotten me.

The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;

I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;

I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.

My breath is strange to my wife,

and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.

Even young children despise me;

when I rise they talk against me.

All my intimate friends abhor me,

and those whom I loved have turned against me.

My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,

and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. (vv. 13–20)

This is a terrible portrayal of the miserable loneliness of Hell. All the people whom Job had felt he could rely on have abandoned him. It is not just that he has discovered his Facebook friends to be shallow (that would be no surprise); those closest to him, those bound to him with ties of loyal friendship and love, have all failed him (vv. 13, 14). They have removed him from the equivalent of their Christmas card lists or their party invitations, for he is a public disgrace and as good as dead. They would as soon be associated with him as they would with a convicted criminal on death row.

In his own home he used to be honored master of the house. Now his former guests and his servants treat him like a dead man (v. 15). Verse 16 paints a pathetic picture of this great man calling to his servant. In the old days the moment the bell rang, the man would have scurried to Job’s room and stood respectfully, awaiting his orders. Now he ignores Job, even though Job pleads with him for help. What a cruel reversal!

Job’s ostracism extends even to his intimate family. His breath is repulsive to his wife and brothers, who cannot stand to have him near them (v. 17). When little children come home from school, they poke fun at him (v. 18). Even his closest friends have turned against him (v. 19); in the experience of betrayal.

Job knows what it is to be attacked by God as a sinner, to be abandoned by all human help and devoid of all human love. Bildad has implied that this is what is happening to Job, and Job agrees. The difference is that Bildad assumes Job deserves it, and Job knows he does not. Bildad cannot cope with the idea of the innocent suffering, for it would challenge The System. Job is grappling honestly with the paradox of innocent suffering. What he now says is the logical and faith-inspired hope that arises from his clear conscience. We need to trace his inspired reasoning carefully. Though it seems God be against me...

And Yet God Will Be My Redeemer to Vindicate Me (vv. 21–29)

Job begins with a diagnosis, out of which arises a wish; this wish develops into a confident hope, which in turn is followed by a warning.

A Diagnosis: The Hand of God Has Touched Me (vv. 21, 22)

Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,

for the hand of God has touched me!

Why do you, like God, pursue me?

Why are you not satisfied with my flesh? (vv. 21, 22)

In this renewed rebuke of his “friends” (friends who are false friends), Job reasserts his diagnosis: “the hand of God has touched me!” (v. 21). To the question, is God for me or against me? there can be only one answer thus far: “Clearly he is against me. He regards me as his enemy and treats me as such, tearing viciously at my life and isolating me from all solace.”

But we ought to pause a moment and consider Job’s diagnosis. In verse 21 Job said, “The hand of God has touched me!” Is this true? Let us look back at something we know but Job doesn’t. Is it true that the hand of God has struck him? Look back at 1:11, 12 where Satan says to the Lord, “Stretch out your hand and touch all that he has.…” Does the Lord stretch out his hand against Job? No, he doesn’t.

In verse 12 we read, “And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your hand.’ ” Again in 2:5, 6 Satan asks the Lord to “stretch out your hand …”; but the Lord replies, “Behold, he is in your hand.” The hands and fingers that destroyed Job’s possessions and killed Job’s children and wrecked Job’s health were the hands of Satan, not the hands of God. Yes, it was the hand of Satan acting with the permission of the Lord and within the strict constraints given by the Lord; but it was Satan’s hand and not God’s that actually did these terrible things.

So whose are the monstrous hands that have attacked Job and ripped at him and isolated him and made his life a misery? Answer: the hands of the enemy, Satan—acting with the permission of God and constrained by the strict limits given by God.

This is a very important insight. Satan is fond of disguise; he “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Again and again in the book of Job Satan masquerades as the Lord and persuades Job that it is directly the Lord who has turned against him. As when the Roman soldiers blindfolded Jesus and hit him—“Who is it that struck you?” they asked (Luke 22:64)—Job cannot see whose hand is striking him.

We know this. But Job doesn’t, and his friends certainly don’t. They have no place in their theology for Satan. Their world is a simple slot-machine world, with one slot-machine maker who has set the rules: put in a coin of goodness and out pops a can of blessing; put in a coin of badness and out clunks a portion of poison.

Their God is not the Creator and Sustainer, but the clockmaker who sets the machine running and then just leaves it to run (an idea that was later shared by the eighteenth-century Deists). The idea that there might be real forces of evil in this world, forces with real personality and real influence, has no place in their thinking.

Although Job, like his friends, does not know what has happened in Heaven in chapters 1, 2, he is now beginning to wonder whose hand is behind his suffering. We have seen that in 9:24 he asks in perplexity, “If it is not [the Lord], then who is it?” Who treats his world so unfairly? These things are happening; God is in control; so presumably they are God’s doing. If it is not God doing them, who is it?

Although most of Job’s laments are just that—laments—somehow Job as a real believer cannot let go of the hope that ultimately the monster god is not the true God who has the last word. We find this longing hinted at in 9:33–35: “There is no arbiter between [me and God], who might lay his hand on us both …” (or possibly, “Would that there were an arbiter …”), the sense is that he wishes there were an arbiter, a just judge who would see that justice is done, as it were a God above the monster god.

In 16:18–21 we see this longing grow stronger: “O earth, cover not my blood” (v. 18); that is to say, “May my innocence and the unfairness of it all never be forgotten” (the idea being like the blood of righteous Abel in Genesis 4:10). May it not be that an innocent man is quietly buried and forgotten. “Let my cry [that is, my cry for justice] find no resting place. Even now, behold my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high” (16:18, 19). Somehow Job glimpses that there will be justice in the end, that a real believer will finally be vindicated and seen to be a real believer.

So we come to perhaps the pinnacle of Job’s faith in the darkness.

A Wish—for Vindication (vv. 23, 24)

Oh that my words were written!

Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

Oh that with an iron pen and lead

they were engraved in the rock forever! (vv. 23–24)

Abandoned by all human helpers, Job yet longs to be proved to be in the right with God. He is still very glum. He has been fighting to prove his innocence. But it’s a losing battle. He’s pretty sure he’s going to die. And he knows (v. 22b) that when he dies, his friends will not be satisfied with his death. They will malign his reputation forever. Under the banner heading “RIP (not),” they will put on his gravestone, “Here lies Job, who was a sinner with secret sins he refused to confess; he has paid the penalty for his sins at last, and the justice of God has been vindicated by his death. May he not rest in peace.”

So with the repeated cry “Oh, that …” he longs for his vindication to be written in a way that will survive his death. The issue is between “my words” (v. 23a) and their “words,” with which they are breaking him in pieces (v. 2). Underneath, the contest is about the final verdict on his life. Their “words” say he is an unforgiven sinner paying the penalty for his sin; his “words” say he is a genuine believer who trusted God for forgiveness and walked with him. The “words” that win will determine Job’s destiny; this is why they matter so deeply.

There is a desperate crescendo here as he longs that his words may be recorded “in a book” (v. 23; or scroll), and then, as if he knows how impermanent a book can be, “with an iron pen and lead … engraved in the rock” (that is, on a stela) so that they will last “forever” (v. 24). Job’s life is evanescent, like a cloud (7:9), or a lake (14:11, 12), worse than even a cut-down tree (14:7–10). A rock has the metaphorical solidity of God himself (e.g., Deuteronomy 32:4). He yearns for a permanent vindication. (It is a lovely irony that we are still reading his words in his book so many centuries later!)

A Confident Hope—of Vindication by a Redeemer (vv. 25–27)

And yet. And yet. The longing for an eternal vindication (“forever”) needs more even than an inscription on rock (v. 24). The steady erosion of the elements renders even that impermanent. So Job now makes the wonderful jump from a yearning (“Oh, that …”) to a faith-filled hope (“I know …”).

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been thus destroyed,

yet in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see for myself,

and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me! (vv. 25–27)

What does Job “know” (v. 25)? By faith he knows three wonderful truths: he has a living Redeemer, this Redeemer will stand upon the earth, and Job will see him with his own eyes.

First, he has a living Redeemer. The in the OT “Redeemer” (go‘el) was someone tied to you by covenant, usually a relative, whose calling was to stand for you when you were wronged (v. 25). If you were murdered, he saw to it that your murderer was punished; if your share in the promised land was under threat, he safeguarded it; if your widow was childless, he gave her a child.

In every way he stood for you when you could not stand for yourself; he is your “Vindicator” and “Champion”. One of the most beautiful illustrations of this principle is in the book of Ruth, where Boaz acts as Naomi and Ruth’s kinsman-redeemer, caring for them in their widowhood and becoming for Ruth the husband she needs. Job is confident he has a Redeemer who “lives” (v. 25), meaning “lives forever” in contrast with the impermanence even of an inscription on stone.

This Redeemer can be none other than God himself, the living God who often in the Old Testament stands as the Redeemer of his people. Many modern commentators reject this conclusion because they “find intolerable the logic … that God will help Job against God.” But their alternatives—perhaps that Job’s “Redeemer” is his words, which he is confident will survive his death, or a sympathetic member of the heavenly council—are pathetically inadequate by comparison. This Redeemer must “live” in an absolute sense, and he must be able to stand for Job as an equal before God, who is Job’s accuser. No one less eternal than God or of lower status than God will suffice.

This is not logical, by the sort of logic that the religious or philosophical systems can manage, but it is ultimately true. It is one of the deep ways in which the book of Job, like the whole Old Testament, ultimately does not make sense without Christ and without God, who is the Trinity.

The sufferings of Job are a type and foreshadowing of the sufferings of Christ, in whom God is for us. As the reformer Martin Luther put it, with his wonderful grasp of gospel paradox, God “loved us even as he hated us.” It is not only that the believer is simul iustus et peccator (at the same time a justified man and a sinner); God is simul Iudex et Redemptor (at the same time Judge and Redeemer).

Second, Job knows by faith that this Redeemer will “at the last … stand upon the earth,” literally “upon the dust,” which may be a reference to Job’s grave (v. 25). “Better than a fading tombstone inscribed with my vindication, there will be an eternally living vindicator standing on my grave, attesting my genuineness and right relationship with God.” In this context the word “stand” refers to a witness standing in court to bear testimony.

Third, Job knows that in the end he will see this Redeemer-God with his own eyes (vv. 26, 27). Although there is some uncertainty in translation, it seems that Job expects this to happen after his death (“after my skin has been thus destroyed” [v. 26]). As he has longed, he will indeed be hidden in Sheol and then summoned in resurrection to meet his God (14:13–17). Far from death tearing off his “skin” and marching him off to “the king of terrors,” as Bildad has asserted (18:13, 14), Job will be escorted to meet his God face-to-face.

To stand before God carries with it the meaning of having right relationship with God finally recognized and being vindicated. At the end of Psalm 17 David cries out, “As for me, I shall be vindicated and will see your face” (Psalm 17:15a NIV). This anticipatory, faith-fueled confidence of Job anticipates his words “now my eye sees you” after God’s final speech (Job 42:5).

It is all very personal, from the emphatic “I know” (v. 25) to the “whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (v. 27). Job’s faith makes this future reality so vivid that it is almost as if he is already experiencing this longed-for vision of God. “My heart faints within me!” (v. 27). “Heart” is literally “bowels” or “kidneys,” the seat of the emotions. We sometimes speak of having butterflies in our stomach; this was more like elephants. The deepest longing of Job’s heart is to stand before the God he loves and worships, and he believes that he will. He is a prophet, and the Spirit of Christ within him searches and inquires about what person and time is being indicated by these longings (1 Peter 1:10–12).

So Job says in effect, “I will not finally believe that the monster god is the God who made this world. I know that the God I have always feared and loved is related to me by covenant—I belong to him and his family and his people—and in the end, even if it is after my death, I will see him, and he will vindicate me so that it will be publicly seen that I have been a real believer with a clear conscience.”

This is an extraordinary insight of faith. Even though Job then goes back into further chapters of lament, Christians read these words and rightly say, “Job spoke more truly than he realized!” There is a sovereign Redeemer who lives and who will one day vindicate every believer and declare him or her justified from all sin.

The true God is the Father who sent his Son into the world to be the innocent one who dies for sinners; and the true God is the Son who so loved us that he gave himself for us. So indeed every believer can say, “God is for me in Christ; and no power or death or demon in the present or the future can separate me from his love in Christ” (cf. Romans 8:31–39).

How can we be sure of this? Because there was once one who was attacked with all vicious terrors of God, a blameless man who experienced a terrible death he did not deserve and whom the Redeemer God vindicated publicly on the third day when he raised him from the dead.

George Frederick Handel’s librettist was absolutely right when he set Job 19:25, 26 alongside the words “Now is Christ risen from the dead …” in that great melody in The Messiah. It is precisely the bodily resurrection of Christ that gives us the assurance that Job’s confidence was not wishful make-believe but sure and certain hope. The Father stood upon Christ’s tomb and acted as his Redeemer, to vindicate him by resurrection. This same God will stand upon the grave of every man or woman in Christ, to act as our Redeemer. And on the last day we will stand justified and vindicated before him by grace. Amen!

A Warning—to Those Who Do Not Believe in Grace (vv. 28, 29)

But we must not miss the final warning. Right at the end Job turns back to his friends to warn them.

If you say, “How we will pursue him!”

and, “The root of the matter is found in him,”

be afraid of the sword,

for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,

that you may know there is a judgment. (vv. 28, 29)

They are saying they will “pursue” Job (v. 28). He has accused them of this in verse 22, and he comes back to it now. They pursue him because they believe the cause of his sufferings is his sin; this is what “the root of the matter is found in him” means (v. 28). They will not believe that his suffering can be innocent and even redemptive. There is no place in their system either for undeserved suffering or undeserved grace. Therefore they stand in great danger, for those who align themselves with “the accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10) have hanging over them a “sword” they are under the wrath of God (Ephesians 2:3), and the day will come when they will “know there is a judgment” (Job 19:29).

The final word of this magnificent speech is not Job’s awestruck confidence in his justification and resurrection; it is his warning to his friends in danger. There is nothing more important for them than to come to know the reality of undeserved suffering, for this will point them to the cross of Christ and thus to the undeserved grace without which they can have no hope.

Each of us who suffers or who cares for another who suffers ask, “Why has this happened? Why did this happen to me or to her or to him?” And we ask, perhaps in some desperation, “Is God for me or against me?” It sometimes feels as though God is a monster set on making our lives miserable, so that you or I or one for whom we care feels alone and deeply hurt.

As we hear Job’s faith in these words, we can bring our pain to the Lord Jesus Christ. Even though our life may be ebbing away and our wick is burning low, we too may say, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has thus been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (vv. 25–27).