Job responds to Bildad's harsh criticism by questioning how long his friends will continue to mistreat him with their words. He describes how they have vexed his soul, broken him with their words, reproached him, estranged themselves from him, magnified themselves against him, and used his affliction as an argument against his integrity rather than helping him find comfort in his righteousness. Scholars provide various interpretations for the meaning of the Hebrew phrase "you gaze at me" based on comparisons to similar Arabic words, with most agreeing it refers to treating someone indignantly or unfairly.

1. JOB 19 COMME TARY
EDITED BY GLE PEASE
Job
1 Then Job replied:
GILL, "Then Job answered and said. Having heard Bildad out, without
giving him any interruption; and when he had finished his oration, he rose
up in his own defence, and put in his answer as follows.
HE RY 1-2, "Job's friends had passed a very severe censure upon him as a
wicked man because he was so grievously afflicted; now here he tells them
how ill he took it to be so censured. Bildad had twice begun with a How long
(Job_8:2, Job_18:2), and therefore Job, being now to answer him
particularly, begins with a How long too, Job_19:2. What is not liked is
commonly thought long; but Job had more reason to think those long who
assaulted him than they had to think him long who only vindicated himself.
Better cause may be shown for defending ourselves, if we have right on our
side, than for offending our brethren, though we have right on our side.
Now observe here,
I. How he describes their unkindness to him and what account he gives of
it. 1. They vexed his soul, and that is more grievous than the vexation of the
bones, Psa_6:2, Psa_6:3. They were his friends; they came to comfort him,
pretended to counsel him for the best; but with a great deal of gravity, and
affectation of wisdom and piety, they set themselves to rob him of the only
comfort he had now left him in a good God, a good conscience, and a good
name; and this vexed him to his heart. 2. They broke him in pieces with
words, and those were surely hard and very cruel words that would break a
man to pieces: they grieved him, and so broke him; and therefore there will
be a reckoning hereafter for all the hard speeches spoken against Christ and
his people, Jud_1:15. 3. They reproached him, (Job_19:3), gave him a bad
character and laid to his charge things that he knew not. To an ingenuous
mind reproach is a cutting thing. 4. They made themselves strange to him,
were shy of him now that he was in his troubles, and seemed as if they did
not know him (Job_2:12), were not free with him as they used to be when he
was in his prosperity. Those are governed by the spirit of the world, and not
by any principles of true honour or love, who make themselves strange to
their friends, or God's friends, when they are in trouble. A friend loves at all
times. 5. They not only estranged themselves from him, but magnified
themselves against him (Job_19:5), not only looked shy of him, but looked

2. big upon him, and insulted over him, magnifying themselves to depress
him. It is a mean thing, it is a base thing, thus to trample upon those that are
down. 6. They pleaded against him his reproach, that is, they made use of
his affliction as an argument against him to prove him a wicked man. They
should have pleaded for him his integrity, and helped him to take the
comfort of that under his affliction, and so have pleaded that against his
reproach (as St. Paul, 2Co_1:12); but, instead of that, they pleaded his
reproach against his integrity, which was not only unkind, but very unjust;
for where shall we find an honest man if reproach may be admitted for a
plea against him?
K&D, "This controversy is torture to Job's spirit; enduring in himself
unutterable agony, both bodily and spiritually, and in addition stretched
upon the rack by the three friends with their united strength, he begins his
answer with a well-justified quousque tandem. ‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּג‬‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּג‬‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּג‬‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּג‬ (Norzi: ‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּוג‬‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּוג‬‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּוג‬‫יוּן‬ ְ‫ּוג‬ ) is fut.
energicum from ‫ה‬ ָ‫הוּג‬‫ה‬ ָ‫הוּג‬‫ה‬ ָ‫הוּג‬‫ה‬ ָ‫הוּג‬ (‫ה‬ ָ‫ג‬ ָ‫י‬‫ה‬ ָ‫ג‬ ָ‫י‬‫ה‬ ָ‫ג‬ ָ‫י‬‫ה‬ ָ‫ג‬ ָ‫,)י‬ with the retention of the third radical., Ges. §75,
rem. 16. And in ‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫אוּנ‬ ְⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫אוּנ‬ ְⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫אוּנ‬ ְⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫אוּנ‬ ְⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬ (Norzi: ‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫וּנ‬ⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫וּנ‬ⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫וּנ‬ⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ַ‫וּנ‬ⅴ ַ‫ד‬ ְ‫וּת‬ with quiescent Aleph) the suff. is
attached to the ûn of the fut. energicum, Ges. §60, rem. 3; the connecting
vowel is a, and the suff. is ani, without epenthesis, not anni or aneni, Ges. §
58, 5. In Job_19:3 Job establishes his How long? Ten times is not to be taken
strictly (Saad.), but it is a round number; ten, from being the number of the
fingers on the human hand, is the number of human possibility, and from
its position at the end of the row of numbers (in the decimal system) is the
number of that which is perfected (vid., Genesis, S. 640f.); as not only the
Sanskrit daçan is traceable to the radical notion “to seize, embrace,” but
also the Semitic ‫עשר‬‫עשר‬‫עשר‬‫עשר‬ is traceable to the radical notion “to bind, gather
together” (cogn. ‫קשׁר‬‫קשׁר‬‫קשׁר‬‫.)קשׁר‬ They have already exhausted what is possible in
reproaches, they have done their utmost. Renan, in accordance with the
Hebr. expression, transl.: Voilà (‫ה‬ֶ‫ז‬‫ה‬ֶ‫ז‬‫ה‬ֶ‫ז‬‫ה‬ֶ‫,ז‬ as e.g., Gen_27:36) la dixième fois que
vous m'insultez. The ᅏᅏᅏᅏπ. γεγρ.π. γεγρ.π. γεγρ.π. γεγρ. ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ is connected by the Targ. with ‫יר‬ ִⅴ ִ‫ה‬‫יר‬ ִⅴ ִ‫ה‬‫יר‬ ִⅴ ִ‫ה‬‫יר‬ ִⅴ ִ‫ה‬ (of
respect of persons = partiality), by the Syr. with ‫א‬ ָ‫ר‬ ְⅴ‫א‬ ָ‫ר‬ ְⅴ‫א‬ ָ‫ר‬ ְⅴ‫א‬ ָ‫ר‬ ְⅴ (to pain, of crêvecoeur),
by Raschi and Parchon with ‫ר‬ ַⅴִ‫נ‬‫ר‬ ַⅴִ‫נ‬‫ר‬ ַⅴִ‫נ‬‫ר‬ ַⅴִ‫נ‬ (to mistake) or ‫ר‬ ֵⅴַ‫נ‬ ְ‫ת‬ ִ‫ה‬‫ר‬ ֵⅴַ‫נ‬ ְ‫ת‬ ִ‫ה‬‫ר‬ ֵⅴַ‫נ‬ ְ‫ת‬ ִ‫ה‬‫ר‬ ֵⅴַ‫נ‬ ְ‫ת‬ ִ‫ה‬ (to alienate one's self),
by Saadia (vid., Ewald's Beitr. S. 99) with ‫ר‬ ַ‫כ‬ ָ‫ע‬‫ר‬ ַ‫כ‬ ָ‫ע‬‫ר‬ ַ‫כ‬ ָ‫ע‬‫ר‬ ַ‫כ‬ ָ‫ע‬ (to dim, grieve);
(Note: Reiske interprets according to the Arabic ‛kr‛kr‛kr‛kr, denso et turbido
agmine cum impetu ruitis in me.)
he, however, compares the Arab. hkrhkrhkrhkr, stupere (which he erroneously regards
as differing only in sound from Arab. qhrqhrqhrqhr, to overpower, oppress); and
Abulwalid (vid., Rödiger in Thes. p. 84 suppl.) explains Arab. thkrûthkrûthkrûthkrûn mnn mnn mnn mn-nnnnıııı, ye
gaze at me, since at the same time he mentions as possible that ‫הכר‬‫הכר‬‫הכר‬‫הכר‬ may be =
Arab. khrkhrkhrkhr, to treat indignantly, insultingly (which is only a different shade in

3. sound of Arab. hkrhkrhkrhkr,
(Note: In Sur. 93, 9 (oppress not the orphan), the reading Arab. tkhrtkhrtkhrtkhr is
found alternating with Arab. tqhrtqhrtqhrtqhr.)
and therefore refers to Saadia's interpretation). David Kimchi interprets
according to Abulwalid, ‫לו‬ ‫תתמהו‬‫לו‬ ‫תתמהו‬‫לו‬ ‫תתמהו‬‫לו‬ ‫;תתמהו‬ he however remarks at the same time, that
his father Jos. Kimchi interprets after the Arab. ‫הכר‬‫הכר‬‫הכר‬‫,הכר‬ which also signifies
“shamelessness,” ‫לי‬ ‫פניכם‬ ‫תעיזו‬‫לי‬ ‫פניכם‬ ‫תעיזו‬‫לי‬ ‫פניכם‬ ‫תעיזו‬‫לי‬ ‫פניכם‬ ‫.תעיזו‬ Since the idea of dark wild looks is connected
with Arab. hkrhkrhkrhkr, he has undoubtedly this verb in his mind, not that compared
by Ewald (who translates, “ye are devoid of feeling towards me”), and
especially Arab. hkrhkrhkrhkr, to deal unfairly, used of usurious trade in corn (which
may also have been thought of by the lxx ᅚπίκεισθέᅚπίκεισθέᅚπίκεισθέᅚπίκεισθέ µοιµοιµοιµοι, and Jerome
opprimentes), which signifies as intrans. to be obstinate about anything,
pertinacious. Gesenius also, Thes. p. 84, suppl., suggests whether ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ח‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ח‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ח‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ח‬ ַ may
not perhaps be the reading. But the comparison with Arab. hkrhkrhkrhkr is certainly
safer, and gives a perfectly satisfactory meaning, only ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫רוּ‬ ְⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ must not be
regarded as fut. Kal (as ‫ּם‬‫ל‬ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫י‬‫ּם‬‫ל‬ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫י‬‫ּם‬‫ל‬ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫י‬‫ּם‬‫ל‬ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫,י‬ Psa_74:6, according to the received text), but
as fut. Hiph. for ‫ירוּ‬ ִⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫ירוּ‬ ִⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫ירוּ‬ ִⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ‫ירוּ‬ ִⅴ ְ‫ה‬ ַ , according to Ges. §53, rem. 4, 5, after which
Schultens transl.: quod me ad stuporem redigatis. The connection of the
two verbs in Job_19:3 is to be judged of according to Ges. §142, 3, a: ye
shamelessly cause me astonishment (by the assurance of your accusations).
One need not hesitate because it is ‫תהכרו־לי‬‫תהכרו־לי‬‫תהכרו־לי‬‫תהכרו־לי‬ instead of ‫תהכרוני‬‫תהכרוני‬‫תהכרוני‬‫;תהכרוני‬ this indication
of the obj. by ְ‫ל‬ְ‫ל‬ְ‫ל‬ְ‫,ל‬ which is become a rule in Arabic with the inf. and part.)
whence e.g., it would here be muhkerina limuhkerina limuhkerina limuhkerina li), and is still more extended in
Aramaic, is also frequent in Hebrew (e.g., Isa_53:11; Psa_116:16; Psa_129:3,
and 2Ch_32:17, cheereep, after which Olsh. proposes to read ‫תחרפו־לי‬‫תחרפו־לי‬‫תחרפו־לי‬‫תחרפו־לי‬ in the
passage before us).
Much depends upon the correct perception of the structure of the clauses
in Job_19:4. The rendering, e.g., of Olshausen, gained by taking the two
halves of the verse as independent clauses, “yea certainly I have erred, I am
fully conscious of my error,” puts a confession into Job's mouth, which is at
present neither mature nor valid. Hirz., Hahn, Schlottm., rightly take Job_
19:4 as a hypothetical antecedent clause (comp. Job_7:20; Job_11:18): and
if I have really erred (‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ‫ף־‬ፍ‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ‫ף־‬ፍ‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ‫ף־‬ፍ‫ם‬ָ‫נ‬ ְ‫מ‬ፎ‫ף־‬ፍ, as Job_34:12, yea truly; Gen_18:13, and if I
should really), my error remains with me, i.e., I shall have to expiate it,
without your having on this account any right to take upon yourselves the
office of God and to treat me uncharitably; or what still better corresponds
with ‫ין‬ ִ‫ל‬ ָ‫ין‬ ִ‫ל‬ ָ‫ין‬ ִ‫ל‬ ָ‫ין‬ ִ‫ל‬ ָ ‫י‬ ִ ִ‫א‬‫י‬ ִ ִ‫א‬‫י‬ ִ ִ‫א‬‫י‬ ִ ִ‫:א‬ my transgression remains with me, without being
communicated to another, i.e., without having any influence over you or
others to lead you astray or involve you in participation of the guilt. Job_
19:6 stands in a similar relation to Job_19:5. Hirz., Ew., and Hahn take Job_

4. 19:5 as a double question: “or will ye really boast against me, and prove to
me my fault?” Schlottm., on the contrary, takes ‫ם‬ ִ‫א‬‫ם‬ ִ‫א‬‫ם‬ ִ‫א‬‫ם‬ ִ‫א‬ conditionally, and begins
the conclusion with Job_19:5: “if ye will really look proudly down upon me,
it rests with you at least, to prove to me by valid reasons, the contempt
which ye attach to me.” But by both of these interpretations, especially by
the latter, Job_19:6 comes in abruptly. Even ‫ּו‬‫פ‬ ֵ‫א‬‫ּו‬‫פ‬ ֵ‫א‬‫ּו‬‫פ‬ ֵ‫א‬‫ּו‬‫פ‬ ֵ‫א‬ (written thus in three other
passages besides this) indicates in Job_19:5 the conditional antecedent
clause (comp. Job_9:24; Job_24:25) of the expressive γνራγνራγνራγνራστεστεστεστε οᆗοᆗοᆗοᆗνννν (δήδήδήδή): if ye
really boast yourselves against me (vid., Psa_55:13., comp. Psa_35:26; Psa_
38:17), and prove upon me, i.e., in a way of punishment (as ye think), my
shame, i.e., the sins which put me to shame (not: the right of shame, which
has come upon me on account of my sins, an interpretation which the
conclusion does not justify), therefore: if ye really continue (which is
implied by the futt.) to do this, then know, etc. If they really maintain that
he is suffering on account of flagrant sins, he meets them on the ground of
this assumption with the assertion that God has wronged him (‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ ָ‫ת‬ְ‫וּ‬ ִ‫ע‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ ָ‫ת‬ְ‫וּ‬ ִ‫ע‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ ָ‫ת‬ְ‫וּ‬ ִ‫ע‬‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ ָ‫ת‬ְ‫וּ‬ ִ‫ע‬ short for
‫י‬ ִ‫ט‬ ָ ְ‫שׁ‬ ִ‫מ‬ ‫ת‬ֵ‫וּ‬ ִ‫ע‬‫י‬ ִ‫ט‬ ָ ְ‫שׁ‬ ִ‫מ‬ ‫ת‬ֵ‫וּ‬ ִ‫ע‬‫י‬ ִ‫ט‬ ָ ְ‫שׁ‬ ִ‫מ‬ ‫ת‬ֵ‫וּ‬ ִ‫ע‬‫י‬ ִ‫ט‬ ָ ְ‫שׁ‬ ִ‫מ‬ ‫ת‬ֵ‫וּ‬ ִ‫,ע‬ Job_8:3; Job_34:12, as Lam_3:36), and has cast His net (‫ּו‬‫ד‬‫צוּ‬ ְ‫מ‬‫ּו‬‫ד‬‫צוּ‬ ְ‫מ‬‫ּו‬‫ד‬‫צוּ‬ ְ‫מ‬‫ּו‬‫ד‬‫צוּ‬ ְ‫,מ‬ with
the change of the ô of ‫ּוד‬‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּוד‬‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּוד‬‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּוד‬‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬ from ‫צוּד‬‫צוּד‬‫צוּד‬‫,צוּד‬ to search, hunt, into the deeper û in
inflexion, as ‫י‬ ִ‫נוּס‬ ְ‫מ‬‫י‬ ִ‫נוּס‬ ְ‫מ‬‫י‬ ִ‫נוּס‬ ְ‫מ‬‫י‬ ִ‫נוּס‬ ְ‫מ‬ from ‫ּוס‬‫נ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּוס‬‫נ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּוס‬‫נ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּוס‬‫נ‬ ָ‫,מ‬ ָ‫ך‬ ֶ‫צוּר‬ ְ‫מ‬ָ‫ך‬ ֶ‫צוּר‬ ְ‫מ‬ָ‫ך‬ ֶ‫צוּר‬ ְ‫מ‬ָ‫ך‬ ֶ‫צוּר‬ ְ‫,מ‬ Eze_4:8, from ‫ּור‬‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּור‬‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּור‬‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬‫ּור‬‫צ‬ ָ‫)מ‬ over him, together with
his right and his freedom, so that he is indeed obliged to endure
punishment. In other words: if his suffering is really not to be regarded
otherwise than as the punishment of sin, as they would uncharitably and
censoriously persuade him, it urges on his self-consciousness, which rebels
against it, to the conclusion which he hurls into their face as one which they
themselves have provoked.
BENSON, ". Then Job answered and said — “Tired with the little regard paid
by the three friends to his defence, and finding them still insisting on their
general maxims, Job desires them calmly to consider his case; to reflect that
his failings, whatever they were, had not been at all prejudicial to them; but
if, on the strength of their general principle, they thought themselves
warranted from his sufferings to infer his guilt, he desires them to take
notice that this was God’s particular infliction, Job 19:2-7; that he insisted
on his innocence, and desired nothing but to bring his cause to an issue,
which was, as yet, denied him, Job 19:8-20; that God’s inflictions were
indeed very grievous; and, to excite their compassion, he makes here a very
moving description of them; but tells them that should be a reason why they
should pity him, and not add to the load by their unkind suspicions and
cruel treatment, Job 19:21-22; that he was so far from retracting his plea,
that he was desirous it should remain for ever on record, Job 19:23-24. —
Heath. For he was assured a day was coming in which all his afflictions
would be fully recompensed, and in which they would wish that they had
treated him in a more friendly manner; though he questioned whether that
would suffice to avert God’s judgments from them.” — Dodd.

5. Bill Long, "The Redeemer
Job 19 is Job's first speech that ends on an upbeat or assertive note. Earlier he
concluded his thoughts with lines such as "trouble comes" (3:26); "I shall lie in the
earth" (7:21); "land of gloom" (10:22); "mourn only for themselves" (14:21); and
"go the way from which I shall not return (16:22)." This time he concludes with a
vigorous warning to the friends. The sword, which they think brings judgment on
Job will bring it on them (19:28-29). What is to account for this change? The fact
that in Job 19 he will "discover" a Redeemer. Finally he has someone who not only
will speak for him but also will act in his behalf. Hope's gradualism is rewarded.
ow that he has a Vindicator or Redeemer (Hebrew "goel"), he knows his affairs
will be set right.*
STRAHA , "Bildad's ruthless speech has the effect of raising Job's menta
suffering to the point of anguish, for it leaves him haunted with
the feeling that in God's wide universe he has not a single friend.
In the first part of a chapter of enthralling interest he depicts
his tragic isolation. His would-be comforters have all but
crushed him beneath the weight of their reproaches. God has
denied him justice, stripped him of his glory, relentlessly
persecuted him, and wounded him unto death. His brethren,
his kinsfolk, his familiar friends, his servants, his wife, and even
little children all whom he has loved have turned against
him. But under the pressure of these intolerable thoughts his
mind is so far from sinking into the lethargy of despair, that it
is aroused to the utmost possible activity, and achieves its
noblest triumphs. The crisis of his spiritual history has come.
Some way of escape from his misery, some light in the darkness,
some truth to live by, he must find, or perish. Aghast at the
thought of God's persistent hostility, he clutches for a moment
at the forlorn hope that his friends may after all be moved to
pity him in his extremity, and, forgetting all his indignation at
their past cruelty, he humbles himself to supplicate their com-
passion for one who is smitten by the hand of God. But he
sees no pity in the faces of men who have learned to persecute
him like God. He reads there the unjust and unalterable
verdict of his contemporaries, and in a revulsion from it he
suddenly anticipates and eagerly hails the juster judgment
of the future, when men shall have larger minds and kinder
hearts. Could he but leave an indelible record of his innocence
for all coming generations to read, his honour would yet be
retrieved. But what is the hope of posthumous fame, even if he
could be sure of it, to the man who is now stricken and afflicted,
whom nothing can console but the friendship of God ? It is in
this extremity that his faith performs its greatest miracle, forging
for him a creed which is in a sense the creation of his own spirit,

6. the emanation of his own character, but at the same time a
revelation from the heart of God. He believes that he is about
to die, meeting, to all appearance, a sinner's doom, but he
knows in his own conscience that he will die innocent ; and at
the thought of his innocence there is a swift and mighty
resurgence of his faith in the Over-God the true God who is
his Witness and his Voucher (i6 19 ), a faith which now mounts
into the full assurance that after his death God will publicly
appear among men as his Vindicator, and that he will have the
rapture of being recalled to hear his innocence proclaimed and
to see the face of his Redeemer. At the thought of such a
consummation he faints as if his reins were consumed within
him.
COFFMA , "K OW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH; A D THAT HE SHALL
STA D AT THE LATTER DAY UPO THE EARTH
There are just two parts of this marvelous chapter:
(1) In Job 19:1-22, Job described his pitiful condition, accepting all of it as being, for
some unknown and mysterious reason, the will of God, pleading for mercy from his
friends who refused to extend it, and bewailing the abhorrence and persecution
heaped upon him by the whole society in which he lived. His kinsmen, his friends,
his family, his servants, and his acquaintances - all alike, despised and rejected him,
brutally heedless of his cries for understanding and pity. There is no sadder section
of the Word of God than this.
(2) And then (Job 19:23-29), rising to the very pinnacle of Divine Inspiration, above
the wretchedness of his mortal pain and sorrow, he thundered the sublime words
that have blessed humanity throughout the ages of multiple Dispensations of the
Grace of God!
I K OW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH; A D THAT
HE SHALL STA D AT THE LATTER
DAY UPO THE EARTH
These sacred words adorn and glorify that incredibly beautiful soprano solo from
George Frederick Handel's oratorio, The Messiah, honored by the standing ovation
led by Queen Victoria at its initial presentation. Where is the man who can hear it
without tears of emotion and joy?
BI 1-29, "Then Job answered and said.
Complaints and confidences
I. Job bitterly complaining.

7. 1. He complains of the conduct of his friends, and especially their want of
sympathy.
(1) They exasperated him with their words.
(2) With their persistent hostility.
(3) With their callousness.
(4) With their assumed superiority.
Nothing tends more to aggravate a man’s suffering than the heartless and
wordy talk of those who controvert his opinions in the hour of his distress.
2. He complains of the conduct of his God. God had “overthrown and
confounded him”: had “refused him a hearing and hedged up his way.”
He complains that he was utterly “deprived of his honours and his
hope.” God had even treated him as “an enemy, and sent troops of
calamities to overwhelm him.” God had put “all society against him.”
These complainings reveal—
(1) a most lamentable condition of existence;
(2) considerable imperfections in moral character.
II. Job firmly confiding. He still held on to his faith in God as the vindicator
of his character.
1. His confidence arose from faith in a Divine vindicator.
2. A vindicator who would one day appear on the earth.
3. Whom he would personally see for himself,
4. Who would so thoroughly clear him that his accusers would be filled
with self-accusation. “But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing
the root of the matter is found in me?” (Homilist.)
COKE, "Job complains of his friends' cruelty, pathetically laments his
sufferings, and implores their pity: he appeals to God, and expresses his
faith and hope in a future resurrection.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 19:1. Then Job answered and said— Disgusted by the little regard
paid by the three friends to his defence, and finding them still insisting
on their general maxims, Job desires them calmly to consider his case; to
reflect that his failings, whatever they were, had not been at all
prejudicial to them; but if, on the strength of their general principle,
they thought themselves warranted from his sufferings to infer his guilt,
he desires them to take notice that this was God's particular infliction:
Job 19:2-7 that he insisted on his integrity, and desired nothing but to
bring his cause to an issue, which was as yet denied him: Job 19:8-20

8. that God's inflictions were indeed very grievous; and, to excite their
compassion, he gives here a very moving description of them; but tells
them, that that should be a reason why they should pity him, and not add
to the load by their unkind suspicions and cruel treatment: Job 19:21-22
that he was so far from retracting his plea, that he was desirous it should
remain for ever on record: Job 19:23-24. Heath. For he was assured that
a day was coming, in which all his afflictions would be fully
recompensed, and in which they would wish that they had treated him in
a more friendly manner; though he questioned whether that would
suffice to avert God's judgments from them.
EBC, ""MY REDEEMER LIVETH"
Job 19:1-29
Job SPEAKS
WITH simple strong art sustained by exuberant eloquence the author
has now thrown his hero upon our sympathies, blending a strain of
expectancy with tender emotion. In shame and pain, sick almost to
death, baffled in his attempts to overcome the seeming indifference of
Heaven, the sufferer lies broken and dejected. Bildad’s last address
describing the fate of the godless man has been deliberately planned to
strike at Job under cover of a general statement of the method of
retribution. The pictures of one seized by the "firstborn of death," of the
lightless and desolate habitation, the withered branches and decaying
remembrance of the wicked, are plainly designed to reflect Job’s present
state and forecast his coming doom. At first the effect is almost
overwhelming. The judgment of men is turned backward and like the
forces of nature and providence has become relentless. The united
pressure on a mind weakened by the body’s malady goes far to induce
despair. Meanwhile the sufferer must endure the burden not only of his
personal calamities and the alienation of all human friendships, but also
of a false opinion with which he has to grapple as much for the sake of
mankind as for his own. He represents the seekers after the true God
and true religion in an age of darkness, aware of doubts other men do
not admit, labouring after a hope of which the world feels no need. The
immeasurable weight this lays on the soul is to many unknown. Some
few there are, as Carlyle says, and Job appears one of them, who "have to
realise a worship for themselves, or live unworshipping. In dim
forecastings, wrestles within them the ‘Divine Idea of the World,’ yet will
nowhere visibly reveal itself. The Godlike has vanished from the world;
and they, by the strong cry of their soul’s agony, like true wonder
workers, must again evoke its presence. The doom of the Old has long
been pronounced, and irrevocable; the Old has passed away; but, alas,
the New appears not in its stead, the Time is still in pangs of travail with

9. the New. Man has walked by the light of conflagrations and amid the
sound of falling cities; and now there is darkness, and tong watching till
it be morning. The voice of the faithful can but exclaim: ‘As yet struggles
the twelfth hour of the night: birds of darkness are on the wing, spectres
uproar, the dead. walk, the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt
cause the day to dawn.'"
As in the twelfth hour of the night, the voices of men sounding hollow
and strange to him, the author of the Book of Job found himself. Current
ideas about God would have stifled his thought if he had not realised his
danger and the world’s danger and thrown himself forward, breaking
through, even with defiance and passion, to make a way for reason to the
daylight of God. Limiting and darkening statements he took up as they
were presented to him over and over again; he tracked them to their
sources in ignorance, pedantry, hardness of temper. He insisted that the
one thing for a man is resolute clearness of mind, openness to the
teaching of God, to the correction of the Almighty, to that truth of the
whole world which alone corresponds to faith. Believing that the
ultimate satisfying object of faith will disclose itself at last to every pure
seeker, each in his degree, he began his quest and courageously pursued
it, never allowing hope to wander where reason dared not follow,
checking himself on the very brink of alluring speculation by a deliberate
reconnaissance of the facts of life and the limitations of knowledge.
Nowhere more clearly than in this speech of Job does the courageous
truthfulness of the author show itself. He seems to find his oracle, and
then with a sigh return to the path of sober reality because as yet
verification of the sublime idea is beyond his power. The vision appears
and is fixed in a vivid picture-marking the highest flight of his
inspiration-that those who follow may have it before them, to be
examined, tried, perhaps approved in the long run. But for himself, or at
any rate for his hero, one who has to find his faith through the natural
world and its revelations of Divine faithfulness, the bounds within which
absolute certainty existed for the human mind at that time are accepted
unflinchingly. The hope remains; but assurance is sought on a lower
level, where the Divine order visible in the universe sheds light on the
moral life of man.
That inspiration should thus work within bounds, conscious of itself, yet
restrained by human ignorance, may be questioned. The apprehension
of transcendent truth not yet proved by argument, the authoritative
statement of such truth for the guidance and confirmation of faith,
lastly, complete independence of ordinary criticism-are not these the
functions and qualities of inspiration? And yet, here, the inspired man,
with insight fresh and marvellous, declines to allow his hero or any
thinker repose in the very hope which is the chief fruit of his inspiration,
leaving it as something thrown out, requiring to be tested and verified;
and meanwhile he takes his stand as a prophet on those nearer, in a
sense more common, yet withal sustaining principles that are within the
range of the ordinary mind. Such we shall find to be the explanation of

10. the speeches of the Almighty and their absolute silence regarding the
future redemption. Such also may be said to be the reason of the
epilogue, apparently so inconsistent with the scope of the poem. On firm
ground the writer takes his stand-ground which no thinker of his time
could declare to be hollow. The thorough saneness of his mind, shown in
this final decision, gives all the more life to the flashes of prediction and
the Divine intuitions which leap out of the dark sky hanging low over the
suffering man.
The speech of Bildad in chapter 18, under cover of an account of
invariable law, was really a dream of special providence. He believed
that the Divine King, who, as Christ teaches, "maketh His sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust," really
singles out the wicked for peculiar treatment corresponding to their
iniquity. It is in one sense the sign of vigorous faith to attribute action of
this kind to God, and Job himself in his repeated appeals to the unseen
Vindicator shows the same conception of providence. Should not one
intent on righteousness break through the barriers of ordinary law when
doubt is cast on His equity and care? Pardonable to Job, whose case is
altogether exceptional, the notion is one the author sees it necessary to
hold in check. There is no Theophany of the kind Job desires. On the
contrary his very craving for special intervention adds to his anxiety.
Because it is not granted he affirms that God has perverted his right; and
when at last the voice of the Almighty is heard, it is to recall the doubter
from his personal desires to the contemplation of the vast universe as
revealing a wide and wise fidelity. This undernote of the author’s
purpose, while it serves to guide us in the interpretation of Job’s
complaints, is not allowed to rise into the dominant. Yet it rebukes those
who think the great Divine laws have not been framed to meet their case,
who rest their faith not on what God does always and is in Himself, but
on what they believe He does sometimes and especially for them. The
thoughts of the Lord are very deep. Our lives float upon them like skiffs
upon an unfathomable ocean of power and fatherly care.
Of the treatment he receives from men Job complains, yet not because
they are the means of his overthrow.
How long will ye vex my soul
And crush me utterly with sayings?
These ten times have ye reproached me;
Ye are not ashamed that ye condemn me.

11. And be it verily that I have erred,
Mine error remaineth to myself.
Will ye, indeed, exult against me
And reproach me with my disgrace?
Know now that God hath wronged me
And compassed me about with His net.
Why should his friends be so persistent in charging him with offence? He
has not wronged them. If he has erred, he himself is the sufferer. It is not
for them to take part against him. Their exultation is of a kind they have
no right to indulge, for they have not brought him to the misery in which
he lies. Bildad spoke of the snare in which the wicked is caught. His tone
in that passage could not have been more complacent if he himself
claimed the honour of bringing retribution on the godless. But it is God,
says Job, who hath compassed me with His net.
"Behold, of wrong I cry, but I am not heard;
I cry for help, but there is no judgment."
Day after day, night after night, pains and fears increase: death draws
nearer. He cannot move out of the net of misery. As one neglected,
outlawed, he has to bear his inexplicable doom, his way fenced in so that
he cannot pass, darkness thrown over his world by the hand of God.
Plunging thus anew into a statement of his hopeless condition as one
discrowned, dishonoured, a broken man, the speaker has in view all
along the hard human judgment which numbers him with the godless.
He would melt the hearts of his relentless critics by pleading that their
enmity is out of place. If the Almighty is his enemy and has brought him
near to the dust of death, why should men persecute him as God? Might
they not have pity? There is indeed resentment against providence in his
mind; but the anxious craving for human sympathy reacts on his
language and makes it far less fierce and bitter than in previous

12. speeches. Grief rather than revolt is now his mood.
He hath stripped me of my glory
And taken my crown from my head.
He hath broken me down on every side,
Uprooted my hope like a tree.
He hath also kindled his wrath against me
And counted me among His adversaries.
His troops come on together
And cast up their way against me
And encamp around my tent.
So far the Divine indignation has gone. Will his friends not think of it?
Will they not look upon him with less of hardness and contempt though
he may have sinned? A man in a hostile universe, a feeble man, stricken
with disease unable to help himself, the heavens frowning upon him-why
should they harden their hearts?
And yet, see how his brethren have dealt with him! Mark how those who
were his friends stand apart, Eliphaz and the rest, behind them others
who once claimed kinship with him. How do they look? Their faces are
clouded. They must be on God’s side against Job. Yea, God Himself has
moved them to this.
He hath put my brethren far from me,
And my confidants are wholly estranged from me.
My kinsfolk have failed

13. And my familiar friends have forgotten me.
They that dwell in my house and my maids count me for a stranger,
I am an alien in their sight.
I call my servant and he gives me no answer,
I must entreat him with my mouth.
My breath is offensive to my wife,
And my ill savour to the sons of my body.
Even young children despise me;
If I would arise, they speak against me.
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,
And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
The picture is one of abject humiliation. He is rejected by all who once
loved him, forced to entreat his servants, become offensive to his wife
and grandsons, jeered at even by children, of the place. The case appears
to us unnatural and shows the almost fiendish hardness of the Oriental
world: that is to say, if the account is not coloured for dramatic
purposes. The intention is to represent the extremity of Job’s
wretchedness, the lowest depth to which he is reduced. The fire of his
spirit is almost quenched by shame and desolation. He shows the days of
his misery in the strongest shadow in order to compel, if possible, the
sympathy so persistently withheld.
"Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends,
For the hand of God hath touched me.

14. Why do ye persecute me as God,
And are not satisfied with my flesh?"
Now we understand the purpose of the long description of his pain, both
that which God has inflicted and that caused by the alienation and
contempt of men. Into his soul the prediction of Bildad has entered, that
he will share the fate of the wicked whose memory perishes from the
earth, whose name is driven from light into darkness and chased out of
the world. Is it to be so with him? That were indeed a final disaster. To
bring his friends to some sense of what all this means to him-this is what
he struggles after. It is not even the pity of it that is the chief point,
although through that he seeks to gain his end. But if God is not to
interpose, if his last hour is coming without a sign of heaven’s relenting,
he would at least have men stand beside him, take his words to heart,
believe them possibly true, hand down for his memorial the claim he has
made of integrity. Surely, surely he shall not be thought of by the next
generation as Job the proud, defiant evildoer laid low by the judgments
of an offended God-brought to shame as one who deserved to be counted
amongst the offscourings of the earth. It is enough that God has
persecuted him, that God is slaying him-let not men take it upon them to
do so to the last. Before he dies let one at least say, Job, my friend,
perhaps you are sincere, perhaps you are misjudged.
Urgent is the appeal. It is in vain. Not a hand is stretched out, not one
grim face relaxes. The man has made his last attempt. He is now like a
pressed animal between the hunter and the chasm. And why is the
author so rigorous in his picture of the friends? It is made to all
appearance quite inhuman, and cannot be so without design. By means
of this inhumanity Job is flung once for all upon his need of God from
whom he had almost turned away to man. The poet knows that not in
man is the help of the soul, that not in the sympathy of man, not in the
remembrance of man, not in the care or even love of man as a passing
tenant of earth can the labouring heart put its confidence. From the
human judgment Job turned to God at first. From the Divine silence he
had well nigh turned back to human pity. He finds what other sufferers
have found, that the silence is allowed to extend beneath him, between
him and his fellows, in order that he may finally and effectually direct
his hope and faith above himself, above the creaturely race, to Him from
whom all came, in whose will and love alone the spirit of man has its life,
its hope. Yes, God is bringing home to Himself the man whom He has
approved for approval. The way is strange to the feet of Job, as it often is
to the weary half-blinded pilgrim. But it is the one way to fulfil and
transcend our longings. Neither corporate sympathy nor posthumous
immortality can ever stand to a thinking soul instead of the true firm
judgment of its life that waits within the knowledge of God. If He is not
for us, the epitaphs and memoirs of time avail nothing. Man’s place is in

15. the eternal order or he does indeed cry out of wrong and is not heard.
From men to the written book, from men to the graven rock, more
enduring, more public than the book-will this provide what is still
unfound?
"Oh that now my words were written,
That they were inscribed in a book;
That with an iron stylus and with lead
They were graven in the rock forever."
As one accustomed to the uses of wealth Job speaks. He thinks first of a
parchment in which his story and his claim may be carefully written and
preserved. But he sees at once how perishable that would be and passes
to a form of memorial such as great men employed. He imagines a cliff in
the desert with a monumental inscription bearing that once he, the
Emeer of Uz, lived and suffered, was thrown from prosperity, was
accused by men, was worn by disease, but died maintaining that all this
befell him unjustly, that he had done no wrong to God or man. It would
stand there in the way of the caravans of Tema for succeeding
generations to read. It would stand there till the ages had run their
course. Kings represent on rocks their wars and triumphs. As one of
royal dignity Job would use the same means of continuing his protest
and his name.
Yet, so far as his life is concerned, what good, -the story spread
northward to Damascus, but he, Job, lost in Sheol? His protest is against
forms of death: his claim is for life. There is no life in the sculptured
stone. Baffled again he halts midway. His foot on a crumbling point,
there must be yet one spring for safety and refuge.
Who has not felt, looking at the records of the past, inscriptions on
tablets, rocks and temples, the wistful throb of antiquity in those anxious
legacies of a world of men too well aware of man’s forgetfulness?
"Whoever alters the work of my hand," says the conqueror called
Sargon, "destroys my constructions, pulls down the walls which I have
raised"-may Asshur, Nineb, Raman and "the great gods who dwell there
pluck his name and seed from the land and let him sit bound at the feet
of his foe." Invocation of the gods in this manner was the only resource
of him who in that far past feared oblivion and knew that there was need

16. to fear. But to a higher God, in words of broken eloquence, Job is made
to commit his cause, seeing beyond the perishable world the
imperishable remembrance of the Almighty. So a Hebrew poet breathed
into the wandering air of the desert that brave hope which afterwards,
far beyond his thought, was in Israel to be fulfilled. Had he been exiled
from Galilee? In Galilee was to be heard the voice that told of
immortality and redemption.
We must go back in the book to find the beginning of the hope now
seized. Already Job has been looking forth beyond the region of this little
life. What has he seen?
First and always, Eloah. That name and what it represents do not fail
him. He has had terrible experiences, and all of them must have been
appointed by Eloah. But the name is venerable still, and despite all
difficulties he clings to the idea that righteousness goes with power and
wisdom. The power bewilders-the wisdom plans inconceivable things-
but beyond there is righteousness.
Next. He has seen a gleam of light across the darkness of the grave,
through the gloom of the underworld. A man going down thither, his
body to moulder into dust, his spirit to wander a shadow in a prison of
shadows, -may not remain there. God is almighty-He has the key of
Sheol-a star has shown for a little, giving hope that out of the
underworld life may be recovered. It is seen that Eloah, the Maker, must
have a desire to the work of His hands. What does that not mean?
Again. It has been borne upon his mind that the record of a good life
abides and is with the All-seeing. What is done cannot be undone. The
wasting of the flesh cannot waste that Divine knowledge. The eternal
history cannot be effaced. Spiritual life is lived before Eloah who guards
the right of a man. Men scorn Job, but with tears he has prayed to Eloah
to right his cause, and that prayer cannot be in vain.
A just prayer cannot be in vain because God is ever just. From this point
thought mounts upward. Eloah forever faithful-Eloah able to open the
gate of Sheol-not angry forever-Eloah keeping the tablet of every life,
indifferent to no point of right, -these are the steps of progress in Job’s
thought and hope. And these are the gain of his trial. In his prosperous
time none of these things had been before him. He had known the joy of
God but not the secret, the peace, not the righteousness. Yet he is not
aware how much he has gained. He is coming half unconsciously to an
inheritance prepared for him in wisdom and in love by Eloah in whom he
trusts. A man needs for life more than he himself can either sow or
ripen.

17. And now, hear Job. Whether the rock shall be graven or not he cannot
tell. Does it matter? He sees far beyond that inscribed cliff in the desert.
He sees what alone can satisfy the spirit that has learned to live.
"‘Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."
Not dimly this great truth flashes through the web of broken ejaculation,
panting thought.
"But I know it: my Redeemer liveth;
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And after my skin they destroy, even this,
And without my flesh shall I see Eloah,
Whom I shall see FOR ME,
And mine eyes shall behold and not the stranger-
My reins are consumed in my bosom."
The Goel or Redeemer pledged to him by eternal justice is yet to arise, a
living Remembrancer and Vindicator from all wrong and dishonour. On
the dust that covers death He will arise when the day comes. The
diseases that prey on the perishing body shall have done their work. In
the grave the flesh shall have passed into decay; but the spirit that has
borne shall behold Him. Not for the passing stranger shall be the
vindication, but for Job himself. All that has been so confounding shall
be explained, for the Most High is the Goel; He has the care of His
suffering servant in His own hand and will not fail to issue it in clear
satisfying judgment.

18. For the inspired writer of these words, declaring the faith which had
sprung up within him; for us also who desire to share his faith and to be
assured of the future vindication, three barriers stand in the way, and
these have successively to be passed.
First is the difficulty of believing that the Most High need trouble
Himself to disentangle all the rights from the wrongs in human life. Is
humanity of such importance in the universe? God is very high; human
affairs may be of little consequence to His eternal majesty. Is not this
earth on which we dwell one of the smaller of the planets that revolve
about the sun? Is not our sun one amongst a myriad, many of them far
transcending it in size and splendour? Can we demand or even feel
hopeful that the Eternal Lord shall adjust the disordered equities of our
little state and appear for the right which has been obscured in the small
affairs of time? A century is long to us; but our ages are "moments in the
being of the eternal silence." Can it matter to the universe moving
through perpetual cycles of evolution, new races and phases of
creaturely life arising and running their course-can it matter that one
race should pass away having simply contributed its struggle and desire
to the far-off result? Conceivably, in the design of a wise and good
Creator, this might be a destiny for a race of beings to subserve. How do
we know it is not ours?
This difficulty has grown. It stands now in the way of all religion, even of
the Christian faith. God is among the immensities and eternities;
evolution breaks in wave after wave; we are but one. How can we assure
our hearts that the inexterminable longing for equity shall have
fulfilment?
Next there is the difficulty which belongs to the individual life. To enjoy
the hope, feel the certainty to which Job reached forth, you or I must
make the bold assumption that our personal controversies are of eternal
importance. One is obscure; his life has moved in a very narrow circle.
He has done little, he knows little. His sorrows have been keen, but they
are brief and limited. He has been held down, scorned, afflicted. But
after all why should God care? To adjust the affairs of nations, to bring
out the world’s history in righteousness may be God’s concern. But
suppose a man lives bravely, bears patiently, preserves his life from evil,
though he have to suffer and even go down in darkness, may not the end
of the righteous King be gained by the weight his life casts into the scale
of faith and virtue? Should not the man be satisfied with this result of his
energy and took for nothing more? Does eternal righteousness demand
anything more on behalf of a man? Included in this is the question
whether the disputes between men, the small ignorances, egotisms,
clashing of wills, need a final assize. Are they not trifling and transient?
Can we affirm that in these is involved an element of justice which it

19. concerns our Maker to establish before the worlds?
The third barrier is not less than the others to modern thought. How is
our life to be preserved or revived, so that personally and consciously we
shall have our share in the clearing up of the human story and be
gladdened by the "Well done, good and faithful servant" of the Judge?
That verdict is entirely personal; but how may the faithful servant live to
hear it? Death appears inexorable. Despite the resurrection of Christ,
despite the words He has spoken, "I am the resurrection and the life,"
even to Christians the vision is often clouded, the survival of
consciousness hard to believe in. How did the author of Job pass this
barrier-in thought, or in hope? Are we content to pass it in hope?
I answer all these questions together. And the answer lies in the very
existence of the idea of justice, our knowledge of justice, our desire for it,
the fragmentariness of our history till right has been done to us by
others, by us to others, by man to God, and God to man-the full right,
whatever that may involve.
Whence came our sense of justice? We can only say, From Him who
made us. He gave us such a nature as cannot be satisfied nor find rest till
an ideal of justice, that is of acted truth, is framed in our human life and
everything possible done to realise it. Upon this acted truth all depends,
and till it is reached we are in suspense. Deep in the mind of man lies
that need. Yet it is always a hunger. More and more it unsettles him,
keeps him in unrest, turning from scheme to scheme of ethic and society.
He is ever making compromises, waiting for evolutions; but nature
knows no compromises and gives him no clue save in present fact. Is it
possible that He who made us will not overpass our poor best, will not
sweep aside the shifts and evasions current in our imperfect economy?
The passion for righteousness comes from him; it is a ray of Himself. The
soul of the good man craving perfect holiness and toiling for it in
himself, in others, can it be greater than God, more strenuous, more
subtle than the Divine evolution that gave him birth, the Divine Father of
his spirit? Impossible in thought, impossible in fact.
No. Justice there is in every matter. Surely science has taught us very
little if it has not banished the notion that the small means the
unimportant, that minute things are of no moment in evolution. For
many years past science has been constructing for us the great argument
of universal physical fidelity, universal weaving of the small details into
the vast evolutionary design. The micoscopist, the biologist, the chemist,
thee astronomer, each and all are engaged in building up this argument,
forcing the confession that the universe is one of inconceivably small
things ordered throughout by law. Finish and care would seem to be
given everywhere to minutiae as though, that being done, the great
would certainly evolve. Further, science even when dealing with material

20. things emphasises the importance of mind. The truthfulness of nature at
any point in the physical range is a truthfulness of the Overnature to the
mind of man, a correlation established between physical and spiritual
existence. Wherever order and care are brought into view there is an
exaltation of the human reason which perceives and relates. All would be
thrown into confusion if the fidelity recognised by the mind did not
extend to the mind itself, if the sanity and development of the mind were
not included in the order of the universe. For the psychological student
this is established, and the working of evolutionary law is being traced in
the obscure phenomena of consciousness, subconsciousness, and habit.
Is it of importance that each of the gases shall have laws of diffusion and
combination, shall act according to those laws, unvaryingly affecting
vegetable and animal life? Unless those laws wrought in constancy or
equity at every moment all would be confusion. Is it of importance that
the bird, using its wings, shall be able to soar into the atmosphere; that
the wings adapted for flight shall find an atmosphere in which their
exercise produces movement? Here again is an equity which enters into
the very constitution of the cosmos, which must be a form of the one
supreme law of the cosmos. Once more, is it of importance that the
thinker shall find sequences and relations, when once established, a
sound basis for prediction and discovery, that he shall be able to trust
himself on lines of research and feel certain that, at every point, for the
instrument of inquiry there is answering verity? Without this
correspondence man would have no real place in evolution, he would
flutter an aimless unrelated sensitiveness through a storm of physical
incidents.
Advance to the most important facts of mind, the moral ideas which
enter into every department of thought, the inductions through which
we find our place in another range than the physical. Does the fidelity
already traced now cease? Is man at this point beyond the law of
faithfulness, beyond the invariable correlation of environment with
faculty? Does he now come to a region which he cannot choose but enter,
where, however, the cosmos fails him, the beating wing cannot rise, the
inquiring mind reaches no verity, and the consciousness does flutter an
inexplicable thing through dreams and illusions? A man has it in his
nature to seek justice. Peace for him there is none unless he does what is
right and can believe that right will be done. With this high conviction in
his mind he is opposed, as in this Book of Job, by false men, overthrown
by calamity, covered with harsh judgment. Death approaches and he has
to pass away from a world that seems to have failed him. Shall he never
see his right nor God’s righteousness? Shall he never come to his own as
a man of good will and high resolve? Has he been true to a cosmos which
after all is treacherous, to a rule of virtue which has no authority and no
issue? He believes in a Lord of infinite justice and truth; that his life,
small as it is, cannot be apart from the pervading law of equity. Is that
his dream? Then any moment the whole system of the universe may
collapse like a bubble blown upon a marsh.

21. Now let us clearly understand the point and value of the argument. It is
not that a man who has served God here and suffered here must have a
joyful immortality. What man is faithful enough to make such a claim?
But the principle is that God must vindicate His righteousness in dealing
with the man He has made, the man He has called to trust Him. It
matters not who the man is, how obscure his life has been, he has this
claim on God, that to him the eternal righteousness ought to be made
clear. Job cries for his own justification; but the doubt about God
involved in the slur cast upon his own integrity is what rankles in his
heart; from that he rises in triumphant protest and daring hope. He
must live till God clears up the matter. If he dies he must revive to have it
all made clear. And observe, if it were only that ignorant men cast doubt
on providence, the resurrection and personal redemption of the believer
would not be necessary. God is not responsible for the foolish things men
say, and we could not look for resurrection because our fellow creatures
misrepresent God. But Job feels that God Himself has caused the
perplexity. God sent the flash of lightning, the storm, the dreadful
disease; it is God who by many strange things in human experience
seems to give cause for doubt. From God in nature, God in disease, God
in the earthquake and the thunderstorm, God whose way is in the sea
and His path in the mighty waters-from this God, Job cries in hope, in
moral conviction, to God the Vindicator, the eternally righteous One,
Author of nature and Friend of man.
This life may terminate before the full revelation of is made; it leave the
good in darkness and the evil flaunting in pride; the believer may go
down in shame and the atheist have the last word. Therefore a future life
with judgment in full must vindicate our Creator; and every personality
involved in the problems of time must go forward to the opening of the
seals and the fulfilment of the things that are written in the volumes of
God. This evolution being for the earlier stage and discipline of life, it
works out nothing, completes nothing. What it does is to furnish the
awaking spirit with material of thought, opportunity for endeavour, the
elements of life; with trial, temptation, stimulus, and restraint. No one
who lives to any purpose or thinks with any sincerity can miss in the
course of his life one hour at least in which he shares the tragical contest
and adds the cry of his own soul to that of Job, his own hope to that of
ages that are gone, straining to see the Goel who undertakes for every
servant of God.
"I know it: my Redeemer liveth,
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And without my flesh I shall see Eloah."

22. By slow cycles of change the vast scheme of Divine providence draws
toward a glorious consummation. The believer waits for it, seeing One
who has gone before him and will come after him, the Alpha and Omega
of all life. The fulness of time will at length arrive, the time fore,
ordained by God, foretold by Christ, when the throne shall be set, the
judgment shall be given, and the aeons of manifestation shall begin.
And who in that day shall be the sons of God? Which of us can say that he
knows himself worthy of immortality? How imperfect is the noblest
human life, how often it falls away into the folly and evil of the world! We
need one to deliver us from the imperfection that gives to all we are and
do the character of evanescence, to set us free from our entanglements
and bring us into liberty. We are poor erring creatures. Only if there is a
Divine purpose of grace that extends to the unworthy and the frail, only
if there is redemption for the earthly, only if a Divine Saviour has
undertaken to justify our existence as moral beings, can we look
hopefully into the future. Job looked for a Redeemer who would bring to
light a righteousness he claimed to possess. But our Redeemer must be
able to awaken in us the love of a righteousness we alone could never see
and to clothe us in a holiness we could never of ourselves attain. The
problem of justice in human life will be solved because our race has a
Redeemer whose judgment when it falls will fall in tenderest mercy, who
bore our injustice for our sakes and will vindicate for us that
transcendent righteousness which is forever one with love.
PARKER, "Job"s Reply to the Second Speech of Bildad
Job 19
The patriarch touched the reality of the case when he described the
speeches which had been addressed to him as "words," saying, "How
long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?" ( Job 19:2.)
Words are different in their meaning according to the difference of the
tone in which they are uttered. Every speaker should be heard in his own
personality, and hardly any one who has not heard him should be
entrusted with the pronunciation of his words. You may take the
meaning out of a letter of love; you may turn the Bible itself into a mere
gathering up of words: the heart is the reader, and the heart is the
listener; he who listens only with his bodily ear cannot pay attention; the
heart must be on the alert, the spirit must be alive. Has not the Church
too long dealt in the useless medicine of words? Has not the Church
indeed often been the victim of phrases that are now obsolete? Is it not
time to adopt the language of the current day and to serve up the wine of
the Gospel in goblets which people prefer? The wine will be the same,

23. and the bread from the heart of Christ charged with the elements of
immortal health. Why insist upon always adopting the same words and
being bound by the same formularies? Why not rather consider the
reality and vitality of the case, and subordinate everything to the
supreme purpose of bringing men back from ways forbidden, and setting
their wandering feet in roads that lie upwards toward the sky? But Job
might have pitied the men if they had confessed that they were uttering
only words. A speaker draws to himself our confidence when he assures
us that he would do better if he could. The moment the speaker says, I
am aware that I cannot go the whole distance covered by this necessity,
but I will tell you all I know; I will offer you the advantage of my own
experience; if you care to accept such brotherly sympathy and guidance,
I shall be thankful; but I am well aware that when all my words have
been uttered there lies beyond a pain I cannot touch, a necessity I cannot
satisfy,—to such a man we listen, we repay him with our gratitude,
because we know he would have done more if he could, that he only
ceased because he was conscious he had nothing more to deliver by way
of helpful message. But Job"s friends were not so; they spoke out all
their words as if they were all the words that could be spoken; hence Job
reproves them thus:—"Ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves
strange to me" ( Job 19:3). If you blushed with shame, I could forgive
you; if you halted or faltered in your poor message, I should pity you,
and believe you up to a given point; but ye are proud, self-conscious,
loaded with vanity, and ye stand before me as if ye were the men, and
wisdom would die with you. The Church ought to be ashamed when it
separates itself from the necessities of the world. The Church must not
be allowed to luxuriate and philosophise and poetise and dream as if it
were doing God"s holy service. The world is a dying world, and all
messages delivered to it must be accommodated to its weakness, or must
be measured out in their energy according to the pressure of the
exigency. But the Church has separated itself from the world; made itself
strange to the world; has adopted a language of its own; might indeed
have a dictionary peculiarly belonging to itself;—all this is mischievous,
all this is anti-Christian: the Church should speak the language of the
whole world, and should breathe a spirit which all men can understand.
Sad beyond all sadness is it that the Church has made a profession of the
great word Theology! Sad that men should be examined in Epictetus,
when they ought to be examined in the condition of the next slum!
Unpardonable that men should be qualified in the classics, and know
nothing about the state of the men, women, and children dying around
the very environs of the Church. If the one should be done the other
should not be left undone. It was said of Daniel O"Connell, the great
agitator and the great leader, "Other orators studied rhetoric, Daniel
O"Connell studied man." That is what the Church must do; then the
Church will no longer make itself strange to the people, but it will sit
down beside them, and talk about the debt that cannot be paid, the
illness that is hard to bear, the prodigal son who is far away, and will
converse upon all the heartbreak that makes up life"s daily tragedy: who
then will be so welcome to the family circle as the minister of Christ, the
gentle, gracious, genial, tender soul, the outgoing of whose breath is like
the outgoing of a benediction? We do not want men to stand apart from

24. us and talk at us; the world needs men who understand it, and will come
down to it, or go up to it; who will confess all that is good, really or
apparently, in it, and then begin the mighty and redeeming work which
is associated with the name of Christ. In this way the Church will reclaim
a great deal of property. When men say they are Agnostics, the Church
will say, So am I. The Church is the very place for Agnostics—for men
who know nothing, but who are perfectly willing to know all that can be
known. A man who calls himself an Agnostic and shuts all the windows,
and bars all the doors, and lives in the darkness he creates, is not an
Agnostic—he is a fool. We know nothing, but we want to know so much;
we are very ignorant, but we put out our hand like a prayer; we can
answer few questions, and oftentimes the answer is as great a mystery as
the original enigma: still, we grope, and inquire, and hope, for at any
moment all heaven may come down to rest with us, and give us peace.
We cannot, therefore, allow the Agnostics to form themselves into a
body, peculiar and distinct from the Christian Church; we claim them
all, in so far as they are reverent, self-renouncing, and docile. When men
say they are Secularists, the Church should say, So am I. You cannot go
off on that ground. In short, we give the enemy all his points, and then
demolish him as an antagonist. The great heaven of truth lies beyond all
the prickly fences which men have planted, and in which they take an
unspeakable and unwholesome pride.
Now Job will talk another language. He has found that there is a great
gulf between him and his friends; they are friends no longer in the
deepest sense of the word. He is my friend who knows my soul, and can
say to me with sweet frankness, You are wrong; stop that; turn round.
Or, otherwise, You are right; stand to it; play the man; be courageous; do
not be laughed down or talked down. The time will come when
friendship will be redefined; then he will be the true friend who knows
most of the soul, the thought, the purpose, and the right way of doing
things, the royal road to life and joy.
What, then, is Job"s new position? He assumes it in the sixth
verse:—"Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed
me with his net." Now he will be a better man. He has turned away from
human comforters: he has ventured to pronounce the right word, that
word being God,—as if he said, Now I know who made this wound; God
made it: now I understand who has taken away all my children and all
my property; God has taken them: I should have said so theoretically,
Job might have continued, But now I know it experimentally; when the
first blow fell upon me, I said, "The Lord hath taken away," but I did not
know that truth then as I know it now,—then I uttered it as part of a
creed, but now I declare it as the sum-total of my faith. Thus Job was
driven back upon the truth by the emptiness of human interpretation. So
many men have been driven to God by incompetent teachers; the needy
souls have listened to the word that was spoken, and they have said, No:
that is not it, that is mere composition; that is mere make-up of words
and phrases; the speaker seemed to be afraid of his subject, and did not

25. tell all that was in him in the common open speech of the time: now I
must go to God face to face, and make the whole of my experience known
to him, and we must talk it out together in awful solitude.
See from Job"s description, beginning at the seventh verse and going
onward, what God can do to Prayer of Manasseh , or permit to be done.
"He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass:" yet the road seems open
enough. That is the difficulty. We say to some men, Why do you not go
forward? And they reply, My way is fenced up so that I cannot pass; and
we ridicule the idea; we say, There is no fence: what mania is this, what
foolish delusion? the road is wide open, pass on! But every man sees his
own road as no other man can see it. Every traveller on life"s perilous
journey sees lights, images, fences, boundaries, which no other traveller
can see in just the same way. Is not God doing this in reality? Our answer
must be a decided affirmative. We know there are things we cannot do,
and yet there seems to be absolutely no obstruction in the way of our
doing them. What is this which makes a man unable to reach just one
inch farther? Is there some one at the end of his arm taunting him,
saying, Reach higher: you ought to be able to do so? Is there some sprite
that laughs at our limitation? There, however, is the fact of the
boundary. We come to a given point, and say, Why not go ten points
higher? That the sea has been asking in every rolling billow which
ventured on the shore, and the answer was: "Hitherto shalt thou come,
but no farther." Who is it that speaks that limiting word? What voice is it
that says, I have set the boundaries, and no man may trespass them?
This we could dismiss as a theory if we could get rid of it as a fact. Then
again: "He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my
head." Can a man not keep on the diadem by laying his hands upon it?
No. You cannot bind the diadem to your brow when God has meant to
take it off, and leave you bereaved of every aureole and halo, and sign of
glory. Then again: "He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone."
Is not that true of life? We are not able to do the things we wished to do,
and we cannot tell why. We are not always conscious of this loss; of
personal power: "Grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he
knoweth not;" decay comes on imperceptibly; we are destroyed on every
side: we used to speak authoritatively, and now we have to make
requests; the royal voice has gone down into a whisper that cannot be
heard; the power that never tired is now unconscious of energy. What is
this? Call it "law of nature." You have not explained the mystery. What is
"law"? What is "nature"? Why not rather face the fact that after a given
point in life we go down? Why not say, It is with life as with the clock—
once twelve is struck, the rest is after noon? Truly it is a law. If it came
and went and varied its operations, we should call it a whim, a play of
haphazard, a variety of fortune; but it comes so subtly, proceeds so
steadily, moves so silently and majestically, and has everything its own
way. They who wish to be content with the word "law," are content to live
upon ice; they who say, "This is the law of the living God," feed upon the
bread of life. Then again: "I called my servant, and he gave me no
answer; I entreated him with my mouth:" I am thrown down into
contempt; my words come back again upon me. Yet man thought he

26. could be as God. There is a mounting time in life, an upgoing time, when
we say, All the rest is ascension. But suddenly we find that the rest is
going down, passing along the other part of the circle. We cannot go
beyond a certain point. To-day those are masters who yesterday were
servants; tomorrow they will be servants who today are masters. This is
how God keeps society in some measure sweet. There is a self-adjusting
power in society. Aristocracies come for a day when they come aright,
and no man is an aristocrat today because his father was one yesterday.
The Son of man shall come, and men will be valued for what they are,
and can do, and they will go down and go up, and thus society will be
kept in motion: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first—not by
the operation of any arbitrary law, but just to sweeten and fraternise the
world.
Job turns back to his friends and says: "Have pity upon me, have pity
upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me" ( Job
19:21). We must be just to the friends. How do we know what action God
has permitted to take place upon the minds of the three comforters? May
not God have said, Hitherto shall ye come, but no farther; I will touch
you, as well as touch Job; I will bring you to intellectual poverty that ye
may cry unto me as ye have never cried before; I will riddle your wisdom
through and through, so that it shall be useless to you; I will make you as
men who are trying to draw water with a sieve? God does a great deal of
collateral work. The whole of his action may not exercise itself in the
personality of Job; the whole outlying world may be touched by the
mystery of Job"s education. We ought to learn something from great
sufferers; and we ought to learn something about prayer from the
pointlessness of our own. When we utter the prayer and receive no
answer, we should fix ourselves upon the prayer and say, The fault is
there. Instead whereof we have fixed ourselves upon the answer and
said, Behold the inutility of prayer. "Ye have not, because ye ask not, or
because ye ask amiss."
PULPIT, "Job begins his answer to Bildad's second speech by an
expostulation against the unkindness of his friends, who break him in
pieces, and torture him, with their reproaches (verses 1-5). He then once
more, and more plainly than on any other occasion, recounts his woes.
Job 19:1, Job 19:2
Then Job answered and said, How long will ye vex my soul, and break me
in pieces with words? Job is no Stoic. He is not insensible to his friends'
attacks. On the contrary, their words sting him, torture him, "break him
in pieces," wound his soul in its tenderest part. Bildad's attack had been
the cruellest of all, and it drives him to expostulation (verses 2-5) and
entreaty (verses 21, 22).

27. GUZIK 1-6, "A. Job laments his comfortless affliction.
1. (Job 19:1-6) Job complains that his friends have not understood him at
all.
Then Job answered and said:
“How long will you torment my soul,
And break me in pieces with words?
These ten times you have reproached me;
You are not ashamed that you have wronged me.
And if indeed I have erred,
My error remains with me.
If indeed you exalt yourselves against me,
And plead my disgrace against me,
Know then that God has wronged me,
And has surrounded me with His net.”
a. How long will you torment my soul: Job answered Bildad with a
familiar complaint, that his friends were unsympathetic tormentors of
his soul.
i. “They struck at him with their hard words, as if they were breaking
stones on the roadside. We ought to be very careful what we say to those
who are suffering affliction and trial, for a word, though it seems to be a
very little thing, will often cut far more deeply and wound far more

28. terribly than a razor would.” (Spurgeon)
ii. We might say that many in the church today are as unloving as Job’s
friends were. “The church has become very jealous about men being
unsound in the faith. If a man becomes unsound in the faith, they draw
their ecclesiastical swords and cut at him. But he may be ever so
unsound in love, and they don’t say anything.” (D.L. Moody)
iii. “Job's friends have been, by the general consent of posterity,
consigned to endless infamy. May all those who follow their steps be
equally enrolled in the annals of bad fame!” (Clarke)
b. And if indeed I have erred, My error remains with me: Job was
steadfast in his refusal to agree with his friends that he had caused his
crisis by some remarkable sin and refusal to repent.
c. Know then that God has wronged me, and has surrounded me with His
net: Job insisted to his friends that he was not a guilty victim before a
righteous God. If God had sent or allowed this calamity in Job’s life, it
could be said that God had wronged Job because the calamity was not a
just penalty for some sin in Job.
i. And of course, allowing for the emotional aspect of this pained
outpouring, we understand how Job would say, “Know then that God has
wronged me.” He had reason to think this, and poured out his honest
feelings before God and his friends.
ii. “In a sense the Accuser was acting as the hand of God, for he had said
to God, ‘But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh’ (Job 2:5). And
God had replied, ‘Very well, then, he is in your hands’ (Job 2:6). So Job
was not totally wrong when he said, ‘The hand of God has struck me’ (Job
19:21).” (Smick)
2 "How long will you torment me
and crush me with words?

29. BAR ES, "How long will ye vex my soul? - Perhaps designing to reply to
the taunting speech of Bildad; Job_18:2. “He” had asked “how long it would
be ere Job would make an end of empty talk?” “Job” asks, in reply, “how
long” they would torture and afflict his soul? Or whether there was on hope
that this would ever come to an end!
And break me in pieces - Crush me, or bruise me - like breaking any thing
in a mortar, or breaking rocks by repeated blows of the hammer. “Noyes.”
He says they had crushed him, as if by repeated blows.
CLARKE, "How long will ye vex my soul - Every thing that was irritating,
vexatious, and opprobrious, his friends had recourse to, in order to support
their own system, and overwhelm him. Not one of them seems to have been
touched with a feeling of tenderness towards him, nor does a kind
expression drop at any time from their lips! They were called friends; but
this term, in reference to them, must be taken in the sense of cold-blooded
acquaintances. However, there are many in the world that go under the
sacred name of friends, who, in times of difficulty, act a similar part. Job’s
friends have been, by the general consent of posterity, consigned to endless
infamy. May all those who follow their steps be equally enrolled in the
annals of bad fame!
GILL, "How long will ye vex my soul,.... Which of all vexation is the worst;
not only his bones were vexed, but his soul also, as David's was, Psa_6:2.
His body was vexed with boils from head to feet; but now his soul was vexed
by his friends, and which denotes extreme vexation, a man's being vexed to
his very heart: there are many things vexations to men, especially to good
men; they are not only vexed with pains of the body, as others, and with loss
of worldly substance; but even all things here below, and the highest
enjoyment of them, as wealth, wisdom, honours, and pleasures, are all
vanity and vexation of spirit, as they were to Solomon; but more especially
truly good men are vexed with the corruptions of their hearts, which are as
pricks in their eyes and thorns in their sides, and with the temptations of
Satan, which are also thorns in the flesh and fiery darts, and with the
conversation of wicked men, as was the soul of righteous Lot, and with the
bad principles and practices of professors of religion; and sometimes, as
Job was, they are vexed by their own friends, who should be their
comforters, but prove miserable ones, as his did, and even vexations, and
continued so to the wearing him out almost; and so some render the words,
"how long will ye weary my soul" (c)? with repeating their insinuations that
he was a wicked and hypocritical man, and therefore was afflicted of God in
the manner he was; and which, knowing his own innocency, extremely
vexed him:
and break me in pieces with words? not his body, but his spirit; which was

30. broken, not by the word of God, which is like an hammer that breaks the
rocky heart in pieces; for such a breaking is in mercy, and not an affliction
to be complained of; and such as are thus broken are healed again, and
bound up by the same hand that breaks; who has great, regard to broken
spirits and contrite hearts; looks to them, and dwells with them, in order to
revive and comfort them: but by the words of men; Job was smitten with the
tongues of men; as Jeremiah was, and was beaten and bruised by them, as
anything is beaten and bruised by a pestle in a mortar, as the word (d)
signifies, and is sometimes rendered, Isa_53:5; these must be not soft but
hard words, not gentle reproofs, which being given and taken in love, will
not break the head, but calumnies and reproaches falsely cast, and with
great severity, and frequently, which break the heart. See Psa_69:20.
JAMISO , "How long, etc. — retorting Bildad’s words (Job_18:2).
Admitting the punishment to be deserved, is it kind thus ever to be harping
on this to the sufferer? And yet even this they have not yet proved.
Bildad in 18:2 asked Job how long it would be before he ended his words so they
could get a word in edgewise, and Job here asks back how long they were going to
crush him with words. This whole poem is about words, for Job and his friends do
nothing but fire words back and forth and get nowhere. Only God and Satan do
anything in this book. Satan does evil and causes all the suffering, and God ends it
and gives Job a new life of greater than ever blessings. They are the only actors, and
all the rest of the characters in the book are just speakers. They exist only by words,
for it you take away their words they cease to be.
Job was not one of those who said sticks and stones may break my bones, but names
will never hurt me. He knew this would be a superficial proverb, for he knew that
words could hurt worse than sticks and stones. Words can penetrate to the very soul
and hurt the inner man and not just the flesh. His friends came to comfort him, but
before long they begin to torment him with words of judgment. They became angry
and could not stand Job because he would not admit that they were right and that
he was suffering because of sin in his life. Righteous authorities do not like it when
we disagree with their wisdom and solutions, and if we do not conform to them at
some point they consider us their enemy, and that is what the friends of Job did to
him. He was now the enemy that they were fighting with their slanderous words.
Job's greatest trial was that imposed by his friends. He could accept the trial as
God's doing even though he could not understand why God was doing it, but he
could not understand and accept the cruelty of his best friends treating him like a
wicked man deserving of judgment. Satan hurt him in the flesh and robbed him of
all he had, but these friends crushed his spirit with their verbas assalt. He was being
verbally stoned by them, and it hurt is a way that was so deep that even pain could
not penetrate that far. We all hurt people with words, and ofter it is because we are
thoughtless, but these friends were doing it deliberately. They were hoping to shame
Job into confession of his sin.

31. The humor in the book of Job is due to its revealing the human nature of men so
that we see just how far wrong good people can be in their stubborn insistence that
they know what others do not, and that others, if they know what is good for them,
will give heed and respond in obedience to their advice. It is funny to see how the
pride of men can lead them to attack a friend who will not acknowledge their
wisdom. The modern saying is one they would have uttered with conviction: "My
way or the highway!" In other words, listen and follow my advice or get lost. They
could not conceive of a world where they could be wrong. They could not dream
that there was something going on that did not fit their theory of suffering. They
were dogmatic absolutists, and such people are almost always good for more than a
few laughs, for they are blind to the paradoxes of life, and they refuse to see the
complexity of it.
Job's friends used an ocean of words to express a tub of ideas. They drowned their
subject in a sea of words when all they really needed to say is-Job you suffer because
you are a sinner. They took hours to say it.
Their theology made it easy to judge the good and the wicked, for the rich and
healthy had to be good and the poor and sickly had to be bad. Their theology was
wrong but it made them cruel because they had this simple answer and condemned
Job because of his suffering. As defenders of God they ceased to be comforters of
Job. They were not concerned with his hurt but in maintaining their theology.
STRAHA , "2 break me in pieces with words. The verb (S2tt) is used
frequently in the book, and always in a metaphorical sense ' to
crush the spirit.' Here it refers to the crushing effect of un-
merited rebukes and cruel insinuations. In a good sense the
* crushed ones' are the contrite, the penitent (Is 57 15 , cf. Ps
So 17 ). All the time that Job's friends are trying to make him
contrite, he feels that, while they are missing their mark, they are
not failing to * break him in pieces.'
BE SO , "Job 19:2-3. And break me in pieces with words — With mere empty
words, void of sense or argument; with your impertinent and unedifying discourses
and bitter reproaches. These ten times have ye reproached me — That is, many
times, a certain number being put for an uncertain. Ye make yourselves strange —
You carry yourselves like strangers to me, are not affected with my calamities, and

32. condemn me as if you had never known my integrity and piety.
3 Ten times now you have reproached me;
shamelessly you attack me.
BAR ES, "These ten times - Many times; the word “ten” being used as we
often say, “ten a dozen” or “twenty,” to denote many; see Gen_31:7, “And
your father hath changed my wages “ten times.” Lev_26:26, “and when I
have broken your staff of bread, “ten women” shall bake your bread, in one
oven;” compare Num_14:22; Neh_4:6.
You are not ashamed that you make yourselves strange to me - Margin,
“harden yourselves strange to me.” Margin, “harden yourselves against
me.” Gesenius, and after him Noyes, renders this, “Shameless ye stun me.”
Wemyss, “Are ye not ashamed to treat me thus cruelly? The word used here
(‫הכר‬‫הכר‬‫הכר‬‫הכר‬ hâhâhâhâkarkarkarkar) occurs no no where else, and hence, it is difficult to determine its
meaning. The Vulgate renders it, “oppressing me.” The Septuagint, “and
you are not ashamed to press upon me.” - ᅚπίκεισθέᅚπίκεισθέᅚπίκεισθέᅚπίκεισθέ υοιυοιυοιυοι epikeistheepikeistheepikeistheepikeisthe moimoimoimoi.
Schultens has gone into an extended examination of its meaning, and
supposes that the primary idea is that of being “stiff,” or “rigid.” The word
in Arabic, he says, means to be “stupid with wonder.” It is applied, he
supposes, to those who are “stiff or rigid” with stupor; and then to those
who have a stony heart and an iron an iron fore-head - and who can look on
the suffering without feeling or compassion. This sense accords well with
the connection here. Gesenius, however, supposes that the primary idea is
that of beating or pounding; and hence, of stunning by repeated blows. In
either case the sense would be substantially the same - that of “stunning.”
The idea given by our translators of making themselves “strange” was
derived from the supposition that the word might be formed from ‫נכר‬‫נכר‬‫נכר‬‫נכר‬ nânânânâkarkarkarkar -
to be strange, foreign; to estrange, alienate, etc. For a more full examination
of the word, the reader may consult Schultens, or Rosenmuller “in loco.”
CLARKE, "These ten times - The exact arithmetical number is not to be
regarded; ten times being put for many times, as we have already seen. See
particularly the note on Gen_31:7 (note).
Ye make yourselves strange to me - When I was in affluence and
prosperity, ye were my intimates, and appeared to rejoice in my happiness;

33. but now ye scarcely know me, or ye profess to consider me a wicked man
because I am in adversity. Of this you had no suspicion when I was in
prosperity! Circumstances change men’s minds.
GILL, "These ten times have ye reproached me,.... Referring not to ten
sections or paragraphs, in which they had done it, as Jarchi; or to the five
speeches his friends, in which their reproaches were doubled; or to Job's
words, and their answer, as Saadiah; for it does not denote an exact number
of their reproaches, which Job was not so careful to count; but it signifies
that he had been many times reproached by them; so Aben Ezra, and in
which sense the phrase is often used, see Gen_31:7; it is the lot of good men
in all ages to be reproached by carnal and profane sinners, on account of
religion, and for righteousness' sake, as Christians are for the sake of Christ
and his Gospel; and which Moses esteemed greater riches than all the
treasures of Egypt; but to be reproached by friends, and that as an hypocrite
and a wicked man, as Job was, must be very cutting; and this being often
repeated, as it was an aggravation of the sin of his friends, so likewise of his
affliction and patience:
ye are not ashamed, so that ye make yourselves strange to me; they looked
shy at him; would not be free and friendly with him, but carried it strange to
him, and seemed to have their affections alienated from him. There should
not be a strangeness in good men one to another, since they are not aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of
promise, to the grace of God, and communion with him; since they are
fellow citizens, and of the household of God; belong to the same city, share
in the same privileges, are of the same family, children of the same father,
and brethren one of another, members of the same body, heirs of the same
grace and glory, and are to dwell together in heaven to all eternity;
wherefore they should not make themselves strange to each other, but
should speak often, kindly, and affectionately, one to another, and freely
converse together about spiritual things; should pray with one another, and
build up each other on their most holy faith, and by love serve one another,
and do all good offices mutually that lie in their power, and bear one
another's burdens, and so fulfil the law Christ: but, instead of this, Job's
friends would scarcely look at him, much less speak one kind word to him;
yea, they "hardened themselves against" him, as some (e) render the word;
had no compassion on him or pity for him in his distressed circumstances,
which their relation to him obliged unto, and was due unto him on the score
of friendship; nay, they "mocked" at him, which is the sense of the word,
according to Ben Gersom (f); and of this he had complained before, Job_
12:4; and with some (g) it has the signification of impudence and
audaciousness, from the sense of the word in the Arabic language, see Isa_
3:9; as if they behaved towards him in a very impudent manner: or, though
they "knew" him, as the Targum paraphrases it, yet they were "not
ashamed" to reproach him; though they knew that he was a man that feared
God; they knew his character and conversation before his all afflictions
came on, and yet traduced him as an hypocrite and a wicked man. Whatever
is sinful, men should be ashamed of, and will be sooner or later; not to be

34. ashamed thereof is an argument of great hardness and impenitence; and
among other things it becomes saints to be ashamed of their making
themselves strange to one another. Some render it interrogatively (h), "are
ye not ashamed?" &c. you may well be ashamed, if you are not; this is put in
order to make them ashamed.
HE RY, "II. How he aggravates their unkindness. 1. They had thus abused
him often (Job_19:3): These ten times you have reproached me, that is, very
often, as Gen_31:7; Num_14:22. Five times they had spoken, and every
speech was a double reproach. He spoke as if he had kept a particular
account of their reproaches, and could tell just how many they were. It is
but a peevish and unfriendly thing to do so, and looks like a design of
retaliation and revenge. We better befriend our own peace by forgetting
injuries and unkindnesses than by remembering them and scoring them up.
2. They continued still to abuse him, and seemed resolved to persist in it:
“How long will you do it?” Job_19:2, Job_19:5. “I see you will magnify
yourselves against me, notwithstanding all I have said in my own
justification.” Those that speak too much seldom think they have said
enough; and, when the mouth is opened in passion, the ear is shut to
reason. 3. They were not ashamed of what they did, Job_19:3. They had
reason to be ashamed of their hard-heartedness, so ill becoming men, of
their uncharitableness, so ill becoming good men, and of their
deceitfulness, so ill becoming friends: but were they ashamed? No, though
they were told of it again and again, yet they could not blush.
JAMISO , "These — prefixed emphatically to numbers (Gen_27:36).
ten — that is, often (Gen_31:7).
make yourselves strange — rather, “stun me” [Gesenius]. (See Margin for
a different meaning [that is, “harden yourselves against me”]).
These sadistice friends would not relent, but persued their goal with determination,
and thus we see how even great virtues can be perverted. It is a great virtue to be
determined, but when the goal is wrong, cruel and even evil it becomes a vice to
have determination. othing is worse than being determined to keep going when
you are on the wrong road. They felt is was their duty to keep pounding Job with
their false theory and never giving up until they forced him to concede and confess
his sin. They would keep harping on the same string until Job admited they had the
right tune. They were shameless in their attack and gave no sign of pity or
compassion. They had become total legalists now and all that mattered was that Job
cease his stubborn rebellion and conform to their words.
Schultens has gone into an extended examination of its meaning, and
supposes that the primary idea is that of being “stiff,” or “rigid.” The word
in Arabic, he says, means to be “stupid with wonder.” It is applied, he
supposes, to those who are “stiff or rigid” with stupor; and then to those
who have a stony heart and an iron an iron fore-head - and who can look on
the suffering without feeling or compassion. This sense accords well with
the connection here. Gesenius, however, supposes that the primary idea is

35. that of beating or pounding; and hence, of stunning by repeated blows. In
either case the sense would be substantially the same - that of “stunning.”
STRAHA 3 These ten times have ye reproached me. 'Ten times * is
not to be taken literally, but as a round number meaning * often.'
The person who used the expression would lift his hands with
a gesture of impatience, displaying ten fingers. 'Thou hast
changed my wages ten times,' said Jacob to Laban (Gn 3i 7 ;
cf. u i4 22 ). The word for 'deal hardly' p?H) occurs only
here, and the meaning has to be guessed from an Arab. root.
COFFMA , ""These ten times" (Job 19:3). "These words are not to be understood
literally."[1] This is an idiomatic expression meaning `often' or frequently.
"Mine error remaineth with myself" (Job 19:4). "This verse is not a confession of
sin by Job."[2] It states merely that whatever error Job might have committed, it
had not injured or hurt his friends in any manner whatever.
"God hath subverted me in my cause" (Job 19:6). The exact meaning here is
ambiguous; but we reject Watson's rendition of the passage, "God has wronged
me."[3] The marginal substitute for `subverted' is 'overthrown'; but whatever the
passage means, Job does not assert that God has wronged him. Clines gives the true
meaning: "God Himself has made me seem like a wrongdoer by sending entirely
undeserved suffering upon me."[4]
PULPIT, "These ten times have ye reproached me. (For the use of the expression
"ten times" for "many times." "frequently." see Genesis 31:7, Genesis 31:41;
umbers 14:22; ehemiah 4:12; Daniel 1:20, etc.) Ye are not ashamed that ye make
yourselves strange to me; rather, that ye deal hardly with me (see the Revised
Version). The verb used does not occur elsewhere, hut seems to have the meaning of
"ill use" or "ill treat".
4 If it is true that I have gone astray,
my error remains my concern alone.
BAR ES, "And be it indeed that I have erred - Admitting that I have erred,

36. it is my own concern. You have a right to reproach and revile me in this
manner.
Mine error abideth with myself - I must abide the consequences of the
error.” The design of this seems to be to reprove what he regarded as an
improper and meddlesome interference with his concerns. Or it may be an
expression of a willingness to bear all the consequences himself. He was
willing to meet all the fair results of his own conduct.
CLARKE, "And be it indeed that I have erred - Suppose indeed that I have
been mistaken in any thing, that in the simplicity of my heart I have gone
astray, and that this matter remains with myself, (for most certainly there is
no public stain on my life), you must grant that this error, whatsoever it is,
has hurt no person except myself. Why then do ye treat me as a person
whose life has been a general blot, and whose example must be a public
curse?
GILL, "And be it indeed that I have erred,.... Which is a concession for
argument's sake, but not an acknowledgment that he had erred; though it is
possible he might have erred, and it is certain he did in some things, though
not in that respect with which he was charged; "humanum est errare", all
men are subject to mistakes, good men may err; they may err in judgment,
or from the truth in some respect, and be carried away for a while and to
some degree with the error the wicked, though they shall be turned from it
again; they may err in practice, and wander from the way of God's
commandments; and indeed their strayings and aberrations of this sort are
so many, that David says, "who can understand his errors?" Psa_19:12; and
they may err in words, or make a mistake in speech; but then no man should
be made an offender for a word for he must be a perfect man that is free
from mistakes of this kind: now Job argues that supposing this to be his
case in any of the above instances; yet, says he,
mine error remaineth with myself; I only am chargeable with it, and
answerable for it; it is nothing to you, and why should you trouble
yourselves about it? it will not be imputed to you, nor will you suffer on
account of it; or, admitting I have imbibed an error, I do not publish it
abroad; I keep it to myself; it lies and lodges in my own breast, and nobody
is the worse for it: or "let it remain", or "lodge with me" (k); Why should my
mistakes be published abroad, and all the world be made acquainted with
them? or else this expresses his resolution to abide by what his friends
called an error; and then the so is, if this is an error which I have asserted,
that God afflicts both good and bad men, and that afflictions are no
argument of a man's being an hypocrite and a wicked man, I am determined
to continue in it; I will not give it up, I will hold it fast; it shall remain with
me as a principle never to be departed from; or it may be rather his
meaning is, that this notion he had imbibed would remain with him, and
was likely to do so, for anything they had said, or could say to the contrary.