Day 22

Today Job speaks. He responds to his friends and he is not all that happy with them. Look at 13:4:

As for you, you smear me with lies.

As physicians, you are worthless quacks.

He clearly is not feeling the comfort. They have continued to insist that Job must have hidden evil and wickedness, and God certainly finds out evil and punishes it.

But Job will take the argument now in a different direction. He now expresses the desire to speak directly with God and to plead his innocence. Apparently he has a clear conscience. He has not appreciated that his friends have misrepresented God (cf. 13:7). They don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing on Job’s part, but ye they insist it must be true. So Job wants to go before the Almighty and plead his case, believing that before God he will be treated fairly. Yet even in this Job knows that God is God.

Look at 13:15, 16 (ESV):

Though he slay me, I will hope in him;

yet I will argue my ways to his face.

This will be my salvation,

that the godless shall not come before him.

Job expresses that even if he is killed (justly) he will hope in God. But he also knows that the godless cannot stand before God and he is confident in his innocence.

Listen to this from Christopher Ash:

“Job is about to do something hugely significant. It is worth pausing to ask why. After all, he knows it is dangerous. The System of his friends tells him he must be a secret sinner because he is suffering. He knows this is not true. The evidence of his eyes tells him that God is dangerous, random, and unpredictable. The faith in his heart tells him that God is righteous and that he, Job, is a believer who is in the right before God. Knowing The System is not true, and despite the evidence of randomness and danger, Job’s decision goes with Job’s faith. This is why he appeals to God.”

Ash, C. (2014). Job: The Wisdom of the Cross (R. K. Hughes, Ed.; p. 167). Crossway.