Job 29
Job Recalls His Days of Divine Favor 1–6
Job’s Righteousness and Esteem in the City Gate 7–17
The Expectation of Undisturbed Life 18–20
The Authority of Job's Counsel 21–25
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Study Notes for Job 29
Verse 1
his parable — Mashal, the same word and the same opening as 27:1; in Job only these two speeches are introduced this way. This is the first of Job’s three closing chapters (29–31), which end with the words ‘The words of Job are ended’ (31:40). It begins with what he had been, and ch.30 turns to what he is.
Verse 3
his candle shined — Ner is a lamp, the same word as in ‘How oft is the candle of the wicked put out!’ (21:17). The lamp over his head is God’s, as David says, ‘For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness’ (Ps 18:28). By that light Job ‘walked through darkness’ (choshek).
Verse 4
the secret of God — Sod is a company in close counsel, then the confidence shared there: ‘The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him’ (Ps 25:14); ‘his secret is with the righteous’ (Prov 3:32). Eliphaz had asked, ‘Hast thou heard the secret of God?’ (15:8). ‘Youth’ is choreph, the season of the gathered crop, later the winter.
Verse 6
washed my steps with butter — Chemah is butter or curdled milk, and ‘oil’ is shemen, olive oil. The picture is of plenty so great that the feet are bathed in it and the rock gives streams. Moses had said of Israel, ‘he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock’ and given ‘Butter of kine’ (Deut 32:13–14).
Verse 7
the gate through the city — The gate (shaar) was where the elders sat and cases were heard: ‘Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there’ and took ‘ten men of the elders of the city’ (Ruth 4:1–2). ‘Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land’ (Prov 31:23). Job’s ‘seat’ (moshab) was set in the open square.
Verse 12
the poor that cried — Job’s defence against the charge Eliphaz had made, ‘the arms of the fatherless have been broken’ (22:9). He ‘delivered’ (malat, to bring out to safety) the poor who ‘cried’ (shava, a cry for help) and the fatherless. It is the work Psalm 72:12 gives the king: ‘he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.’
Verse 14
I put on righteousness — Lavash, to clothe, is used twice: he put it on and it clothed him. The LORD himself ‘put on righteousness as a breastplate’ (Isa 59:17), and the priests are to be ‘clothed with righteousness’ (Ps 132:9). The ‘diadem’ is tsaniph, a wound turban, the word of ‘a royal diadem’ in Isa 62:3; his judgment (mishpat) was his crown.
Verse 17
I brake the jaws of the wicked — The ‘jaws’ (methalleah) are the fangs of a beast of prey, as in Prov 30:14. The ‘spoil’ is tereph, what has been torn, which he ‘plucked… out of his teeth’. David asks the same of God: ‘thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly’ (Ps 3:7). Job pictures the wicked oppressor as a beast and himself as the one who rescued its prey.
Verse 18
I shall die in my nest — ‘Die’ is gava, to breathe out, the verb of ‘till I die’ in 27:5. The nest (qen) is the settled home; the days ‘as the sand’ (chol) are the number Job set against his troubles in 6:3, ‘heavier than the sand of the sea’. He had counted on a full life and a quiet end.
Verse 19
My root was spread out by the waters — The tree by water is a figure of blessing in Jer 17:8 and Ps 1:3. ‘Branch’ is qatsir, a cut or lopped bough, and the same word closes Bildad’s picture of the wicked: ‘above shall his branch be cut off’ (18:16). Job says he had been such a tree, with ‘dew’ (tal) that ‘lay all night’ on it.
Verse 21
kept silence at my counsel — Damam, to be still, with yachal, to wait in hope, which returns in v.23. ‘Counsel’ is etsah, advice. Elihu later says to the friends, ‘I waited for your words; I gave ear to your reasons’ (32:11): the waiting and listening Job once received from others he now gets from a younger man.
Verse 22
my speech dropped upon them — Nataph, to fall in drops, as ‘honeycomb’ drops in Prov 5:3. It is the image Moses uses for his own teaching, ‘My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew’ (Deut 32:2). ‘Spake not again’ is shanah, to repeat: no one answered a second time.
Verse 23
as for the latter rain — Malqosh, the spring rain that ripens the grain, paired with ‘the first rain’ in Deut 11:14. A king’s favour is ‘as a cloud of the latter rain’ (Prov 16:15). They ‘opened their mouth wide’ (pa’ar), as the psalmist ‘opened my mouth, and panted’ for the commandments (Ps 119:131).
Verse 25
comforteth the mourners — Nacham, to comfort, and abel, one in mourning, the pair of Isa 61:2, ‘to comfort all that mourn’. The three friends had come ‘to mourn with him and to comfort him’ (2:11); Job later calls them ‘miserable comforters’ (16:2). ‘In the army’ is gedud, a troop, the word of 25:3.