Job 19
BSB
Job: My Redeemer Lives
1Then Job answered:
2“How long will you torment me
and crush me with your words?
3Ten times now you have reproached me;
you shamelessly mistreat me.
4Even if I have truly gone astray,
my error concerns me alone.
5If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me
and use my disgrace against me,
6then understand that it is God who has wronged me
and drawn His net around me.
7Though I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I get no response;
though I call for help, there is no justice.
8He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;
He has veiled my paths with darkness.
9He has stripped me of my honor
and removed the crown from my head.
10He tears me down on every side until I am gone;
He uproots my hope like a tree.
11His anger burns against me,
and He counts me among His enemies.
12His troops advance together;
they construct a ramp against me
and encamp around my tent.
13He has removed my brothers from me;
my acquaintances have abandoned me.
14My kinsmen have failed me,
and my friends have forgotten me.
15My guests and maidservants count me as a stranger;
I am a foreigner in their sight.
16I call for my servant, but he does not answer,
though I implore him with my own mouth.
17My breath is repulsive to my wife,
and I am loathsome to my own family.
18Even little boys scorn me;
when I appear, they deride me.
19All my best friends despise me,
and those I love have turned against me.
20My skin and flesh cling to my bones;
I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21Have pity on me, my friends, have pity,
for the hand of God has struck me.
22Why do you persecute me as God does?
Will you never get enough of my flesh?
23I wish that my words were recorded
and inscribed in a book,
24by an iron stylus on lead,
or chiseled in stone forever.
25But I know that my Redeemer lives,
and in the end He will stand upon the earth.
26Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God.
27I will see Him for myself;
my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger.
How my heart yearns within me!
28If you say, ‘Let us persecute him,
since the root of the matter lies with him,’
29then you should fear the sword yourselves,
because wrath brings punishment by the sword,
so that you may know there is a judgment.”
Introduction
Job 19
This chapter is Job's answer to Bildad's discourse in the foregoing chapter. Though his spirit was grieved and much heated, and Bildad was very peevish, yet he gave him leave to say all he designed to say, and did not break in upon him in the midst of his argument; but, when he had done, he gave him a fair answer, in which, I. He complains of unkind usage. And very unkindly he takes it. 1. That his comforters added to his affliction (Job 19:2-7). 2. That his God was the author of his affliction (Job 19:8-12). 3. That his relations and friends were strange to him, and shy of him, in his affliction (Job 19:20-22). II. He comforts himself with the believing hopes of happiness in the other world, though he had so little comfort in this, making a very solemn confession of his faith, with a desire that it might be recorded as an evidence of his sincerity (Job 19:23-27). III. He concludes with a caution to his friends not to persist in their hard censures of him (Job 19:28, Job 19:29) If the remonstrance Job here makes of his grievances may serve sometimes to justify our complaints, yet his cheerful views of the future state, at the same time, may shame us Christians, and may serve to silence our complaints, or at least to balance them.
Cross-references: Job 19:2 · Job 19:8 · Job 19:20 · Job 19:23 · Job 19:28 · Job 19:29