Job 9:20

Job is saying that since the mountains and the stars give way before God, a suffering man like him has even less hope of answering him in court.

In Job 8 Bildad insisted that God always punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous, so Job’s suffering must come from some hidden sin, and he ought to repent. Job’s reply runs through Job 9 and on into chapter 10. He agrees that God is just, and he asks how a man could contend with him (Job 9:2–3). He says of God, “He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered?” (Job 9:4). He tells how God moves the mountains, shakes the earth and commands the stars (Job 9:5–10), and how he acts unseen, beyond anyone’s power to question him (Job 9:11–12). Verse 14 draws the conclusion from all of it.

“How much less” translates the Hebrew ʼaph ki, which argues from the greater to the lesser. If creation itself gives way before God, Job, sick and grieving, has even less strength to stand. The verb “answer” is ʻânâh, the ordinary word for answering or responding, which is also used of giving testimony, and here it means replying to a charge. To “choose out” is bâchar, to try or select, a careful and deliberate choosing. “Words” is dâbâr, word or speech, a word that in other places can also mean a matter or a thing. Job pictures himself as a man accused before a judge, weighing every phrase of his defence, and he knows that the most carefully chosen words would carry no weight against the Almighty.

Courtroom language runs all through these verses: answering, a judge, a time to plead, justifying oneself, being condemned. The book is set in the land of Uz, among the men of the east, where a hearing before a judge was a familiar way of thinking about justice. Job’s friends assume that God acts like such a judge and punishes only the guilty, which in their eyes means that Job must be guilty. Job agrees that God is the judge. His anguish is that the judge is also the almighty Creator, so a man and God could never meet as equals in court.

“Though I were righteous” uses tsâdaq, a verb meaning to be right in a moral or legal sense: to be just, cleared or justified. Job is supposing the strongest case he could have, and he keeps hold of his innocence as he does so. Even with a perfect case, he says, he would lay his defence aside and make supplication to his judge.

“Make supplication” is chânan. Its root means to bend or stoop in kindness to someone lower, to show favour, and in the form used for asking, to implore, that is, to move someone to favour by petition. People sought favour this way from a superior, whether a king or God. To answer, in the courtroom sense, is to argue for a verdict on one’s own merits. To make supplication is to rely wholly on the grace of the one you ask. Job sees that the second is the only true footing before God, even for an innocent man.

In calling God “my judge,” Job owns God’s right to judge him, and he also shows where his hope lies, in the character and compassion of the one he appeals to. Scripture says the same elsewhere. A psalmist asks God to keep from entering into judgment with his servant, because no one living is justified in his sight (Psalm 143:2). Paul writes that by the deeds of the law no one is justified before God (Romans 3:20). Isaiah pronounces woe on the one who strives with his Maker (Isaiah 45:9).

Job is saying that in a court with God, the very words he spoke in his own defence would become the evidence against him.

“Justify myself” in verse 20 is the same verb as “righteous” in verse 15, tsâdaq, here used of declaring oneself in the right. “Mouth” is peh, the mouth as the means of speech. “Perfect” is tâm, an adjective meaning complete, perfect, plain or upright. “Prove me perverse” is ʻâqash, to twist or make crooked, and in this verse it means to declare or prove someone perverse. If Job argued that he was in the right, his own mouth would condemn him, and if he called himself perfect, the claim itself would show him crooked.

The reason lies in who stands on the other side. To set up one’s own righteousness before the holy God is to challenge his judgment, and it betrays pride and self-sufficiency in a creature who owes his Maker humility. Measured against God’s perfect standard, every human claim to be perfect falls short. Paul says so plainly: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Jesus says that the one who humbles himself is the one who goes home justified (Luke 18:14). And Paul answers anyone who would argue with God, “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” (Romans 9:20–21).

“Called” in verse 16 is qârâʼ, to call out or cry out, as a man does in distress or in prayer. “Answered” is again ʻânâh. “Hearkened” is ʼâzan, a verb formed from the word for the ear, meaning to broaden out the ear, that is, to listen or give ear. “Believe” is ʼâman. Job imagines that he has cried out to God and God has answered, and he says that even then he would find it hard to believe that God had given ear to his voice.

His doubt is about God’s attention. Job is sure that God exists and that he is mighty. What he fears is that any answer from so great a God would come as a crushing show of power that passes over his pain and his plea to be cleared. His suffering has darkened his sight of God’s character, and he feels shut away from the God he serves.

“Breaketh” in verse 17 is shûwph, a verb that properly means to gape or snap at, and figuratively to overwhelm. “Tempest” is sᵉʻârâh, a storm, hurricane or whirlwind. Job feels God crashing over him like a violent storm, a force too great to control or escape. He says God multiplies (râbâh) his wounds (petsaʻ), so the blows keep coming and growing, in body and in spirit, as he loses his children, his wealth, his health and his good name.

In Scripture a storm often goes with God’s power and his coming in judgment. A psalm hears the voice of the LORD thundering over the waters (Psalm 29:3–4). When God does speak to Job at last, he answers him out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1). Job pictures God’s power turned against him, and in the end the same God comes to him in the storm and speaks.

“Without cause” is chinnâm, an adverb formed from the word for favour, meaning gratis, for nothing, without cause or in vain. It is the word behind Satan’s question in the opening chapter, “Doth Job fear God for nought?” (Job 1:9). Satan charged that Job served God for what he got out of it. Now Job uses the same word of his suffering: God is wounding him for nothing that Job has done. The prophet’s long lament of being broken under God’s hand in Lamentations 3:1–18 speaks from the same depths.

“Suffer” in verse 18 means to allow, and the Hebrew is nâthan, the common verb “to give,” used very widely of putting, setting and granting. Job says God keeps him from taking his breath. “Breath” is rûwach, from a root meaning to blow or breathe, a word that can mean wind, breath or spirit. One blow follows another before he can catch his breath. “Bitterness” is mamrôr, bitterness, and figuratively calamity. Job speaks of bitterness as if God were pouring it into him until he is full, a grief that soaks his whole inner life.

He has already spoken out of the anguish of his soul (Job 7:11), and in the next chapter he asks God why he treats him as he does (Job 10:3). To Job, God feels like an adversary. A psalmist knew this flood of trouble too (Psalm 42:7), and Lamentations remembers affliction and bitterness (Lamentations 3:19). The book shows where Job’s road ends. After God has spoken, Job says that he had only heard of God before, and now he has seen him (Job 42:5).

Job is asking who could call God into court, and the whole verse answers that God stands above every court. “Strength” is kôach, power, might or ability, and in any contest of strength God wins at once: “lo, he is strong.” “Judgment” is mishpâṭ, a legal decision, a verdict, justice. “Set me a time” is yâʻad, to appoint, fix or designate, and in another form to meet by appointment, so the question means “Who would fix a day for my hearing?” A court date needs someone above both parties, and there is no one above God.

Job’s wish for a hearing grows stronger later. He longs to find where God is and lay his case before him (Job 23:3–7). When God does speak, he challenges Job to answer him (Job 40:1–2), and Job falls silent before him (Job 40:4–5).

Scripture praises the same unrivalled strength. “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding” (Isaiah 40:28). “But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased” (Psalm 115:3). The nations are like a drop in a bucket before him (Isaiah 40:15), righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne (Psalm 97:2), and the depth of his wisdom and knowledge is past searching out (Romans 11:33). Job has already called God’s works “great things past finding out” (Job 9:10).

“Perfect” in verse 21 is tam again, and here it means integrity, completeness, blamelessness of life, the uprightness God himself praised at the start of the book. “Know my soul” joins yâdaʻ, to know, perceive, recognise or acknowledge, with nephesh, a breathing creature, life, soul, self or person. “Despise my life” joins mâʼaç, to spurn, reject, loathe or despise, with chay, life or living. Job is saying that even with complete integrity he would feel a stranger to himself. In such a confrontation he could neither recognise nor affirm his own innocence, and life itself has become a burden he would reject.

He has said this before (Job 7:16) and will say it again (Job 10:1). Other servants of God have come to the same place. Jeremiah lamented the day he was born (Jeremiah 20:18), Asaph wondered whether his own innocence had been for nothing (Psalm 73:13), and the Preacher saw righteous men receive what the wicked deserve (Ecclesiastes 8:14). Lament psalms such as Psalm 22 and Psalm 13 pour out pain, confusion and even anger to God, and they come round to trust in the end.

Job’s words also show why his friends did him most good in the days when they simply sat with him, before they began to accuse him. A man this far down needs companions who share his pain, and quick explanations only wound him further.

Later in this chapter Job wishes for someone who could stand between him and God and lay a hand on both (Job 9:33). Every verse of this passage cries out for such a person, one who could answer God for us, plead our case and bring us a hearing. God has given him. Christ Jesus is the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), the Word made flesh (John 1:14), fully God and fully man. He was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin, so he feels for our weakness (Hebrews 4:15). He is our advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1), and he intercedes for us (Romans 8:34). So we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

Job saw that his own mouth could only condemn him, and in Christ God gives a righteousness that is his gift. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Paul wanted to be found in Christ, with the righteousness that comes through faith (Philippians 3:9), and being justified by faith we have peace with God (Romans 5:1). Job’s choice of supplication over argument already points to this grace.

Job suffered without cause as far as his own sin went. Jesus suffered with no sin of his own at all (1 Peter 2:22). Isaiah foretold the servant who would bear our griefs and be wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:4–5), and Peter says that Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree, so that by his wounds we are healed (1 Peter 2:24). On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Job despised his life in his pain, and Jesus laid his life down of his own will (John 10:18) as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). God commends his love toward us in that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). And he offers the weary and burdened the rest Job longed for (Matthew 11:28–30).

Job could only picture himself bowing before his judge to beg for favour. The word he used for supplication, chânan, has at its root the picture of someone greater bending down in kindness to someone lower, and that is what God has done in Christ. The judge whom Job despaired of summoning has come to us himself, the mediator Job wished for has been given, and the God who felt to Job like a storm answered him in the end.

These verses also give us Job’s honesty. God gave his servant’s bitter words a place in his word, and he remembers our frame (Psalm 103:14), so the believer who feels broken and unheard may bring those very feelings to him. And they show that our standing before God rests on his grace. Our best words in our own defence fall silent before him, and through Christ the plea for mercy is heard.