Reflections on Job 19

 Job 19 (Contemporary English Version)

1. Job said:
2. How long will you torture me with your words?
3. Isn't ten times enough for you to accuse me? Aren't you ashamed?
4. Even if I have sinned, you haven't been harmed.
5. You boast of your goodness, claiming I am suffering because I am guilty.
6. But God is the one at fault for finding fault with me.
7. Though I pray to be rescued from this torment, no whisper of justice answers me.
8. God has me trapped with a wall of darkness
9. and stripped of respect.
10. God rips me apart, uproots my hopes,
11. and attacks with fierce anger, as though I were his enemy.
12. His entire army advances, then surrounds my tent.
13. God has turned relatives and friends against me,
14. and I am forgotten.
15. My guests and my servants consider me a stranger,
16. and when I call my servants, they pay no attention.
17. My breath disgusts my wife; everyone in my family turns away.
18. Young children can't stand me, and when I come near, they make fun.
19. My best friends and loved ones have turned from me.
20. I am skin and bones-- just barely alive.
21. My friends, I beg you for pity! God has made me his target.
22. Hasn't he already done enough? Why do you join the attack?
23. I wish that my words could be written down
24. or chiseled into rock.
25. I know that my Savior lives, and at the end he will stand on this earth.
26. My flesh may be destroyed, yet from this body I will see God.
27. Yes, I will see him for myself, and I long for that moment.
28. My friends, you think up ways to blame and torment me, saying I brought it on myself.
29. But watch out for the judgment, when God will punish you!

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Job reached a low point at which point he was more pleading than argumentative. How long would his friends continue to torment him, he asked. If he was guilty of sin, as they asserted, it involved God and not them. He wanted them to understand, though, that it was God who had wronged him and not he who had wronged God. So why couldn't they just leave it between Job and God?

To convince his friends to have mercy on him, Job laid out his plight. His losses were the point of this whole conversation, so enumerating them was not necessary. What Job wanted them to understand was that God was ignoring him and obviously angry with him, regarding him as an enemy. After all, Job had cried out to Him, but there was no justice. In addition to his lack of comfort from God, God had removed from him any human comfort - brothers, acquaintances, relatives, friends, and servants - all treated him as a foreigner. Even his wife found him repulsive. Wasn't it enough that God's hand had struck him? Did his friends also have to persecute him?

But then, at this lowest point, Job voiced his faith and hope with as much conviction as he had that God had wronged him. He knew, without a doubt, that when his body was destroyed in death that God was his "living Redeemer," and that he would "see God in my flesh." And when Job saw Him, He would not be a stranger to him. Thinking about it made his heart long for it.

Job was not only convinced that God was just "a" living Redeemer, but that He was "my" living Redeemer and that he would see Him in the flesh and not be a stranger to Him. Despite his feeling that God had wronged him and considered him an enemy, Job was just as convinced that in death God would be his Redeemer and friend.

As a parting word in this speech to his friends, Job warned them that if they continued to assert that his sin had caused his problems, it would be they who should worry about punishment by the sword. Bildad had stated that this was the outcome for the wicked, and Job evidently considered their continued assertion of his sin to be wicked.