Reflections on Job 27

 Job 27 (Contemporary English Version)

1. Job said:
2. I am desperate because God All-Powerful refuses to do what is right. As surely as God lives,
3. and while he gives me breath,
4. I will tell only the truth.
5. Until the day I die, I will refuse to do wrong by saying you are right,
6. because each day my conscience agrees that I am innocent.
7. I pray that my enemies will suffer no less than the wicked.
8. Such people are hopeless, and God All-Powerful will cut them down,
9. without listening when they beg for mercy.
10. And that is what God should do, because they don't like him or ever pray.
11. Now I will explain in detail what God All-Powerful does.
12. All of you have seen these things for yourselves. So you have no excuse.
13. Here is how God All-Powerful treats those who are wicked and brutal.
14. They may have many children, but most of them will go hungry or suffer a violent death.
15. Others will die of disease, and their widows won't be able to weep.
16. The wicked may collect riches and clothes in abundance as easily as clay.
17. But God's people will wear clothes taken from them and divide up their riches.
18. No homes built by the wicked will outlast a cocoon or a shack.
19. Those sinners may go to bed rich, but they will wake up poor.
20. Terror will strike at night like a flood or a storm.
21. Then a scorching wind will sweep them away
22. without showing mercy, as they try to escape.
23. At last, the wind will celebrate because they are gone.

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Job was steadfast in his insistence on his innocence. God, he said, had deprived him of justice, but he would maintain his integrity until he died. In the face of such loss and suffering it would be difficult to remain so steadfast in one's innocence. One is usually inclined either to become angry with God and blame Him or to accept their own guilt while remaining puzzled as to what they had done. Blaming God is the usual choice. Job did blame God, accusing Him of depriving him of justice, but unlike most who blame God, he did not turn away from God.

Following his insistence of his own innocence, Job turned to talking about the wicked. While he felt he was deprived of justice he still felt that justice reigned. He did not agree with his friends that the wicked were always swiftly dealt with. He still asserted, as he had before, that many of the wicked enjoyed a normal life, though some suffered in life as did anyone else. The difference, however, is that when they suffer in life they have no hope - no one to whom they can turn. The wicked do not delight in the Lord and so will not likely call out to Him when in distress. But even if they do, will they be heard?

Even for those who do not suffer during their lifetime, death will eventually come and they will have no hope in death. Though they may have heaped up riches in life and accumulated wealth, when they lie down in death it will be gone and they will see it no more. Their wealth will go to others. Their inheritance to their children will be destruction, nor will they be mourned when they is gone. The wicked person will not be missed. Death for them is a time of terror in which they are swept away into the night. They are picked up as by a fierce wind and are gone, blasted without mercy.

Job did not speak of the righteous, but what did he infer or not infer about them? First, he did not infer that the righteous do not suffer. This he could not do for he saw himself as righteous and he was clearly suffering. But he did infer that the righteous have hope. They could call out to God in times of trouble and God would help them through it. And he inferred that their was hope beyond death for the righteous. Though he did not say what they could expect in death he infers that it is not like the wicked who faces terror in death.