Job 13:20

These verses close Job’s answer to his three friends in Job 12–14. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar hold that God always blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked in this life, so Job’s ruin must come from some hidden sin. Job has called them “forgers of lies” and “physicians of no value” (Job 13:4), and he has said that he desires “to reason with God” (Job 13:3). He has even said, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). From verse 20 he stops arguing with his friends about God and speaks to God directly.

Job’s suffering is real and terrible. He has lost his children and his possessions, and he has been struck with painful sores (Job 1–2). His friends’ way of explaining suffering was the common one among the men of the east, and Job’s own life breaks it, because he suffers while he holds fast to his integrity.

Much of what Job says here is the language of a court. In his day an accused man could stand before a judge and answer for himself, and Job wants that hearing with God: the charges stated plainly, the chance to reply, and a just verdict. That is why he speaks of being called and answering, of being shown his transgression, of bitter things written against him, and of being held as a prisoner is held.

“Only do not two things unto me” uses the everyday Hebrew verb ʻâsâh, to do or make, and the number shᵉnayim, two. The KJV supplies the word “things”. Job names the two in the next verse, and his promise hangs on them: “then will I not hide myself from thee.” The verb çâthar means to hide or conceal, and “from thee” is literally “from thy face”. The word for face, pânîym, is plural in form and always used as a singular, and from the face itself it comes to mean the front of something and a person’s presence. Job wants to stand openly before the face of God and plead his cause there.

The first request is “Withdraw thine hand far from me.” The verb râchaq means to be far or to put far away, and kaph is the hollow of the hand, the palm, often used in Scripture for power and action. Job sees his affliction as coming from God’s own hand, and he asks God to take it off him long enough for him to speak.

The second request is “let not thy dread make me afraid.” The word ʼêymâh means fright, terror or horror, and it is often used for the fear that God’s presence and acts bring on people. Job asks for the overwhelming effect of God’s majesty to be held back so that he can keep his composure and make his defence, while God remains as holy and mighty as ever. Scripture gives good reason for that fear. The LORD told Moses that whoever saw his face would die (Exodus 33:20), and when Isaiah saw the Lord he cried out that he was undone (Isaiah 6:5). A psalm says there is nowhere to go from God’s presence (Psalm 139:7–10), and Job feels that presence pressing on him.

Job offers God the choice of how the hearing will run. “Then call thou, and I will answer” lets God speak first, as the one who brings the charge, and Job will reply. “Or let me speak, and answer thou me” lets Job state his case first, and God will reply. The verb qârâʼ means to call out or summon, ʻânâh means to answer or respond, and dâbar means to speak. The second “answer” is a different verb, shûwb, to turn back or return, used here for giving back a reply. The two halves mirror each other, with God first and last and Job in the middle, so the verse itself has the shape of the two-way conversation Job longs for.

Job is ready to face any charge, and he is just as ready to bring his own case. What he finds unbearable is silence while the suffering goes on. He comes back to this longing again and again. Later he cries, “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!” (Job 23:3–5), and near the end of his speeches he longs for someone to hear him (Job 31:35). The psalmists put the same cry to God, asking how long he will forget them (Psalm 13:1) and why he sleeps and hides his face (Psalm 44:23–24). God does answer Job in the end, speaking to him out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1).

A new paragraph begins at verse 23 in the KJV, and Job puts the question at the heart of his case: “How many are mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my transgression and my sin.” He uses three words for wrongdoing. The first, ʻâvôn, iniquity, speaks of perversity, a bending away from what is right, and it can mean the guilt or the punishment that follows as well as the act itself. The second, chaṭṭâʼâh, is the common word for sin, and it also names the sin offering. The third, peshaʻ, transgression, is rebellion, an act by which someone defies an authority, and by extension the guilt or punishment for it. Between them they cover every kind of wrong, and Job asks God to name whichever of them stands against him.

Job asks why the God he has served has turned his face away from him and treats him as an enemy. The verb here is çâthar, the same verb as in verse 20. Job promised that he would come out of hiding before God’s face, and now he asks why God hides that face from him. “Face” is pânîym once more. In Scripture God’s face stands for his presence, his favour and his kindly attention. To hide the face is to withdraw favour, refuse an audience and show displeasure, as kings and patrons did toward those they rejected. This experience is often called by a Hebrew name, hester panim, the hiding of the face. The psalms plead with God to keep his face toward his servant (Psalm 27:9), ask why he hides it (Psalm 44:24) and why he stands far off (Psalm 10:1), and Isaiah calls him a God who hides himself (Isaiah 45:15).

“Holdest” translates châshab, a verb of the mind that means to think, regard, count, reckon or impute. Job’s complaint is that God has reckoned him an enemy, and the word for enemy, ʼôyêb, is the participle of a verb meaning to be hostile. This is a bitter reversal for the man Scripture introduces as “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil” (Job 1:1). Job has already pleaded to understand what God is doing to him (Job 10:2), and here the plea reaches its sharpest point: the God who should be his protector looks to Job like his adversary.

“Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?” The KJV’s “break” translates ʻârats, which means to awe or terrify, and so to harass or oppress. The leaf is ʻâleh, and it is nâdaph, driven about by the wind, with no strength or direction of its own. “Pursue” is râdaph, to run after, pursue or chase, usually with hostile intent. Dry stubble, qash yâbêsh, is the brittle leftover of the harvest, easily scattered by the wind or burned. Both pictures come straight from the fields, and anyone who farmed would feel their force.

Job’s point is the mismatch. He has just asked why God counts him an enemy, and now he asks why the Almighty would bring his terror against something as weak as a blown leaf, or chase something as worthless as stubble. He feels treated as a great threat while he knows himself to be frail and fleeting. Scripture agrees about our frailty. God remembers our frame (Psalm 103:14), Isaiah speaks of how quickly even princes pass (Isaiah 40:24), and James says the rich man’s glory fades like a flower (James 1:10–11). Job’s question is an appeal to God to remember that frailty in him.

“For thou writest bitter things against me.” The verb kâthab means to write, engrave, inscribe or record, and Job pictures God drawing up a formal sentence against him, the way a judge puts a decree in writing. The word for bitter things, mᵉrôrâh, means bitterness, a bitter thing, gall or venom, and it is plural here. The afflictions Job suffers feel to him like a written list of poisons.

“And makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.” The verb yârash means to occupy, seize, inherit or take possession of, and here it is causative: God makes Job inherit his own past. Job fears that sins from his early years, perhaps long forgotten, are now being counted against him and punished out of all proportion. In his agony he half takes up his friends’ way of thinking, searching his memory for some old fault that could explain the present. David prays to God about the sins of his youth as well (Psalm 25:7), and the poet of Lamentations remembers his affliction and its bitterness (Lamentations 3:19–20), as the psalmist of Psalm 77 remembers God in his anguish.

“Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and lookest narrowly unto all my paths; thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet.” The stocks, çad, were a wooden frame that held a prisoner fast, used on criminals for restraint and for public shame. Job feels treated as a criminal, unable to move and stripped of his dignity.

“Lookest narrowly” translates shâmar, a common verb meaning to guard, watch or keep. Here it describes watching closely, the way a guard watches a prisoner, so that every step Job takes is observed.

“Settest a print” translates châqâh, which means to carve, engrave, inscribe, mark out or decree. Taken with “the heels of my feet”, it can be read in three ways. It may be a mark cut on him like the brand set on slaves and criminals, a sign of guilt or ownership. It may be a boundary marked out around his feet, a fixed path he must keep to. Or it may be a trace of every step, so that wherever he goes he can be followed. On each reading Job feels confined, watched and marked.

The same truth that God sees every path can be a comfort or a terror. David marvels that the LORD knows his sitting down and rising up and is acquainted with all his ways (Psalm 139:1–6), while Job, in his suffering, feels that knowledge as scrutiny. The prophet of Lamentations describes the same kind of affliction from God’s hand (Lamentations 3:1–18), and David’s cry “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) belongs with Job’s.

“And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.” Job speaks of himself here as “he”, the man God is watching and pursuing. The word râqâb means rottenness or decay, often of bones or wood, a breaking down from within. “Consumeth” is bâlâh, to wear out or waste away. The garment is beged, cloth or clothing, the moth is ʻâsh, and the verb for eating is ʼâkal, to eat, and figuratively to devour or consume. The Hebrew reads “as a garment, a moth has eaten it”. A moth works quietly until the cloth falls apart, and Job feels his body and his life being worn away in the same slow way.

He has spoken like this before, of his flesh clothed with worms (Job 7:5) and of God bringing him into dust again (Job 10:9). David says his eye was consumed because of grief (Psalm 6:7), a psalm counts the brief years of our life (Psalm 90:10), and since the fall the body made from dust returns to dust (Genesis 3:19). Jesus uses the same moth when he warns against laying up treasure on earth, where moth and rust corrupt (Matthew 6:19–20).

Job’s words tell us how God’s dealings feel to a man in agony. From the first two chapters we know what remains hidden from Job: his suffering is a test of his faith, permitted by God (Job 1–2). When Job asks whether God breaks the leaf and pursues the stubble, he speaks from inside that darkness. God has purposes in suffering that are far larger and more loving than Job can see, and he is able to use it for testing, for refining and for his glory. God takes no delight in crushing the weak.

Job’s complaints come from a faith that is wrestling, and his trust in God holds. He keeps speaking to God, the very one he trusts. When God answers him from the whirlwind (Job 38–41), he rebukes Job for speaking without knowledge (Job 38:2), and Job, having now seen God, humbles himself and repents (Job 42:5–6). Yet God tells the friends that Job has spoken of him what is right, as they have failed to do (Job 42:7), and he restores Job (Job 42). God received Job’s honest lament as the speech of a faithful servant. The laments of Psalm 22 and Psalm 44 belong to the same faith.

Earlier Job wished for a daysman between himself and God, one who might lay his hand on them both (Job 9:32–35). That longing is met in Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). Being both God and man, he is “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), our great High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, and through him we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14–16). He is our Advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1). The terms Job asked for before he would come before God’s face have been met in him.

Each of Job’s complaints finds its answer at the cross. Job asked why God hid his face, and Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The sinless one (1 Peter 2:22) was made sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21), and now God’s glory shines on us in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). Job asked God to withdraw his hand, and Christ bore the hand of judgment against sin, becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13), so that his people come to God as adopted children.

Job called himself a driven leaf, and the Word by whom all things were made (John 1:3) humbled himself and became obedient to death on a cross (Philippians 2:7–8), “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Job said God wrote bitter things against him, and Christ drank the cup his Father gave him (Matthew 26:39), was wounded for our transgressions and bore our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5–6), and blotted out “the handwriting of ordinances that was against us”, nailing it to his cross (Colossians 2:14). God showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), and by his obedience many are made righteous (Romans 5:19), to be presented holy and blameless in God’s sight (Colossians 1:22) and to have peace with God (Romans 5:1).

Job felt himself in the stocks and watched at every step. Jesus was bound and led to Pilate (Matthew 27:2), his enemies watched him closely to catch something from his mouth (Luke 11:53–54), and he bore the print of the nails (John 20:25). He did this as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Job felt himself wasting away, and Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24) and rose again. The body sown in corruption will be raised in incorruption (1 Corinthians 15:42–44), and God’s promise for his people is that “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:4).

This passage gives us words for the hardest hours. Job brings God his fear, his confusion, his sense of being watched and wasted, and his demand to know why, and he brings them to God himself. God heard him, answered him, and called his words right. Scripture gives us the same freedom to pour out our hearts before him.

The passage also shows who God is. He is holy enough that his presence brings dread, close enough that his hand is felt, and just enough that Job can appeal to him against the verdict of his friends. And he is the God who, in Christ, has lifted his hand of judgment from his people, turned his face toward them, and blotted out what was written against them. The one Job longed to stand before has come near to us in his Son.