Job 9:1 Then Job answered,
2 “Truly I know that it is so,
but how can man be righteous before God?
3 If he wished to contend with him,
he could not answer one time in a thousand.
4 God is wise in heart, and mighty in strength.
Who has hardened himself against him and prospered?
5 He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger.
6 He shakes the earth out of its place.
Its pillars tremble.
7 He commands the sun and it doesn’t rise,
and seals up the stars.
8 He alone stretches out the heavens,
and treads on the waves of the sea.
9 He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,
and the rooms of the south.
10 He does great things past finding out;
yes, marvelous things without number.
11 Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him.
He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.
12 Behold, he snatches away.
Who can hinder him?
Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’
13 “God will not withdraw his anger.
The allies of the proud prostrate under him.
14 How then can I answer him,
And choose my words to argue with him?
15 Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would beg mercy of my judge.
16 If I had called, and he had answered me,
yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice.
17 For he breaks me with a storm,
and multiplies my wounds without cause.
18 He will not allow me to catch my breath,
but fills me with bitterness.
19 If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty!
If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me to court?’
20 Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me.
Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse.
21 I am blameless. Yet I don’t know myself.
I despise my life.
22 “It is all the same.
Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
23 If the scourge kills suddenly,
he will mock at the trial of the innocent.
24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked.
He covers the faces of its judges.
If not he, then who else could it be?
25 “Now my days are swifter than a runner.
They flee away. They see no good.
26 They have passed away as the swift ships,
as the eagle that swoops on the prey.
27 If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint,
I will put off my sad face, and wear a smile;’
28 I am afraid of all my sufferings,
I know that you will not hold me innocent.
29 If I am condemned.
Why then do I labor in vain?
30 If I wash myself with snow water,
and cleanse my hands with soap,
31 yet you will plunge me in the ditch.
My own clothes will abhor me.
32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I may answer him, that we should go to court together.
33 There is no mediator between us,
that might lay his hand on us both.
34 Let him take his rod away from me.
Let his terror not make me afraid;
35 then I would speak, and not fear him,
for I am not so in myself.
Although Job is innocent of the sins that his friends accuse him of Job realizes himself to be a fallen man, born with a sinful nature. He asks,
How can man be righteous before God? vs2
The Westminster Confession of Faith explains our fallen nature like this:
1. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This, their sin, God was pleased according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory.
2. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.
3. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.
4. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.
(Westminster Confession of Faith, Of the Fall of Man, Of Sin…)
At creation man was never meant to experience death, disease or decay. All of our diseases and resulting impurities are symptoms of a much greater problem, our sin, which alienated us from our perfect, Holy God.
Adam and Eve preferred to act as a law unto themselves rather than abide by God’s Word, and to trust in their own ideas and desires rather than the good and perfect will of their Creator. By their rebellion and lack of faith, they opened a Pandora’s Box of affliction that immediately spread throughout creation. (T.M.Moore, ailbe.org)
But even in our sinful, unclean, diseased state, by grace God made provisions for his people to be cleansed, made whole, and restored to fellowship with God. As we saw in Job’s sacrifices for his children, in the Old Covenant this restoration was brought about by the ritual sacrifice of an unblemished lamb. Of course this was a picture looking forward to the New Covenant sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, so that our sins could be forgiven.
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. John 1:29
Due to his fallen sinful nature Job explains that because God is mighty in strength, he removes mountains v.5, he shakes the earth v.6, he commands the sun v.7, he stretches out the heavens, he treads on the waves of the sea v.8, he does great things without past finding out. v.10
That is why Job is unable and unwilling to contend with him. v.3 Job understands that God is not a man, as I am, that I may answer him, that we should go to court together. v.32
Job is comfortable contending with his friends, telling them that they are wrong, telling them that he is innocent of the charges that they have brought against him, but Job is not willing to contradict the Almighty. Job refuses to accuse God of wrongdoing. Job could stand before his friends but he would not stand before God in court to defend himself. He knows he could never be justified before God because there is no mediator between us. v.33
Job realized that he needed a mediator to reconcile him to God. Although Job did not know it at the time, just as his offering of sacrifices looked forward the sacrifice of Christ, his need for a mediator to stand between him and God also looked forward to the finished work of Christ on our behalf.
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. 1 Timothy 2:5-6
Therefore Christ is the mediator of a New Covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first Covenant. Hebrews 9:15
Christ’s death redeems us from our sins, from our lawlessness. Christ stands as our mediator before God the Father. Christ is our Advocate — If any man sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. 1 John 2:1
Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1
Job knew that he needed a mediator. What Job didn’t know is that God had planned to provide a mediator, Jesus Christ, from before the very foundation of the world. Ephesians 4:4
Job 10:1 “My soul is weary of my life.
I will give free course to my complaint.
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
2 I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me.
Show me why you contend with me.
3 Is it good to you that you should oppress,
that you should despise the work of your hands,
and smile on the counsel of the wicked?
4 Do you have eyes of flesh?
Or do you see as man sees?
5 Are your days as the days of mortals,
or your years as man’s years,
6 that you inquire after my iniquity,
and search after my sin?
7 Although you know that I am not wicked,
there is no one who can deliver out of your hand.
8 “‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, yet you destroy me.
9 Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again?
10 Haven’t you poured me out like milk,
and curdled me like cheese?
11 You have clothed me with skin and flesh,
and knit me together with bones and sinews.
12 You have granted me life and loving kindness.
Your visitation has preserved my spirit.
13 Yet you hid these things in your heart.
I know that this is with you:
14 if I sin, then you mark me.
You will not acquit me from my iniquity.
15 If I am wicked, woe to me.
If I am righteous, I still will not lift up my head,
being filled with disgrace,
and conscious of my affliction.
16 If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion.
Again you show yourself powerful to me.
17 You renew your witnesses against me,
and increase your indignation on me.
Changes and warfare are with me.
18 “‘Why, then, have you brought me out of the womb?
I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me.
19 I should have been as though I had not been.
I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
20 Aren’t my days few?
Stop!
Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,
21 before I go where I will not return from,
to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;
22 the land dark as midnight,
of the shadow of death, without any order,
where the light is as midnight.’”
Job continues to insist on his innocence saying that if he could speak directly to God he would ask: Show me why you contend with me, v.2… you know that I am not wicked. v.7 Job refuses to accuse God of wrongdoing but Job is willing to ask God: Why?
Job would say,
Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether … you have fashioned me as clay … you have clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews … you have granted me life and loving kindness v.8-12,
Job is reminding God that he was God’s creation. Job wonders, why would God want to afflict his own creation, his own man?
Job admits that if he had been wicked v.15, then he could understand his affliction. But because he is righteous he is being filled with disgrace. v.15 His friends refuse to believe his protestations of innocence. And given his friends outspokenness can there be little doubt that the whole community is also speculating about Job’s supposed grievous sins?
With all of this unfolding on top of his grief, pain, and debilitating illness Job again wishes that he had not been born to experience all of this trouble.
I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. v.19 He asks God, leave me alone that I may find comfort v.20 in the land of darkness and of the shadow of death. v.21