19:3-5It is easy to point out someone else’s faults or sins. Job’s friends accused him of sin to make him feel guilty, not to encourage or correct him. If we feel we must admonish someone, we should be sure we are confronting that person because we love him, not because we are annoyed, inconvenienced, or seeking to blame him.
Life Application Study BibleJobChapter 19
Job 19
New Living Translation · Life Application Study Bible · Original pages: 809, 810, 811
A few verse numbers on this page were hard to read in the scan and are marked with a dotted underline — compare with the original page image if in doubt.
19Job 19
1Then Job spoke again: 2“How long will you torture me? How long will you try to crush me with your words? 3You have already insulted me ten times. You should be ashamed of treating me so badly. 4Even if I have sinned, that is my concern, not yours. 5You think you're better than I am, using my humiliation as evidence of my sin. 6But it is God who has wronged me, capturing me in his net.*
7“I cry out, ‘Help!’ but no one answers me.I protest, but there is no justice.
8God has blocked my way so I cannot move.He has plunged my path into darkness.
9He has stripped me of my honorand removed the crown from my head.
10He has demolished me on every side, and I am finished.He has uprooted my hope like a fallen tree.
11His fury burns against me;he counts me as an enemy.
12His troops advance.They build up roads to attack me.They camp all around my tent.
13“My relatives stay far away,and my friends have turned against me.
14My family is gone,and my close friends have forgotten me.
15My servants and maids consider me a stranger.I am like a foreigner to them.
16When I call my servant, he doesn’t come;Thave to plead with him!
17My breath is repulsive to my wife.I am rejected by my own family.18 Even young children despise me.When I stand to speak, they turn their backs on me.
18My close friends detest me.Those I loved have turned against me.
20T have been reduced to skin and bonesand have escaped death by the skin of my teeth.
21“Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy, for the hand of God has struck me. 22Must you also persecute me, like God does? Haven't you chewed me up enough? 23“Oh, that my words could be recorded. Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument, 24 carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock.
25“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,and he will stand upon the earth at last.
26And after my body has decayed,yet in my body I will see God*!
27Twill see him for myself.Yes, I will see him with my own eyes.I am overwhelmed at the thought!
28“How dare you go on persecuting me,saying, ‘It’s his own fault’?
29You should fear punishment yourselves,for your attitude deserves punishment.Then you will know that there is indeed a judgment.”
Textual footnotes
- 19:6 Or for / am like a city under siege.
- 19:26 Or without my body I will see God. The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain.
Life Application Notes 4 notes
19:6Job felt that God was treating him as an enemy when, in fact, God was his friend and thought highly of him (1:8; 2:3).
19:25-27At the heart of the book of Job comes his ringing affirmation of confidence: “I know that my Redeemer lives.” In ancient Israel a redeemer was a family member who bought a slave's way to freedom or who took care of a widow (see the note on Ruth 3:1). What tremendous faith Job had, especially in light of the fact that he was unaware of the conference between God and Satan. Job thought that God had brought all these disasters upon him! Faced with death and decay, Job still expected to see God—and he expected to do so in his body. When the book of Job was written, Israel did not have a well-developed doctrine of the resurrection. Although Job struggled with the idea that God was presently against him, he firmly believed that in the end God would be on his side. This belief was so strong that Job became one of the first to talk about the resurrection of the body (see also Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2, 13).
19:26Job said: “In my body I will see God.” In Job's situation, it seemed unlikely to him that he would, in his body, see God. And that’s just the point of Job’s faith! He was confident that God’s justice would triumph, even if it would take a miracle like resurrection to accomplish this.
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to those who practice these sins. Some live a long time with ill-gotten gain. But in the end, God’s justice will prevail. What Zophar missed is that judgment for these sins may not come in the lifetime of the sinner. Punishment may be deferred until the last judgment, when sinners will be eternally cut off from God. We should not be impressed with the success and power of evil people. God’s judgment on them is certain.