Job13chapter 13

Job 13:1-3

Job answers the friends' claim to superior wisdom by matching it point for point: what ye know, the same do I know also, and I am not inferior unto you. His desire already turns past the friends toward God himself, I desire to reason with God, the wish the whirlwind speeches will finally answer in chapters 38 to 40. Henry notes that Job counts himself no worse a divine than his accusers, since the debate has been fought on doctrine he already holds.

Job 13:4-5

Ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value names the friends' comfort itself as the failure, false diagnosis dressed as wisdom. Job's wish that they had altogether held their peace turns their own maxim from 2:13 back on them, since their silence rather than their speeches would have been their wisdom. Gill reads physicians of no value against the ancient custom of physicians attending the sick, useless doctors who worsen the patient they claim to treat.

Job 13:6-9

Job calls the friends to hear his reasoning and turns their own defense of God into an accusation, will ye speak wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for him, the charge that false doctrine spoken in God's defense is itself sin against him. Will ye accept his person carries the language of a corrupt judge favoring one party, and Job asks whether God himself will not search out such flattery as he would any other deceit. This is the exact ground God will rule on at 42:7, that the friends have not spoken of him the thing that is right, planted here by Job's own words rather than by the narrator.

Job 13:10-12

He will surely reprove you, if ye do secretly accept persons presses the charge further, warning that even a private partiality toward God's side of the argument will not escape his own reproof. Shall not his excellency make you afraid asks whether the majesty the friends invoke against Job does not stand over them as well. Your remembrances are like unto ashes reduces their proverbs to something as fragile as what a fire leaves behind, and Gill takes it of maxims that crumble under the weight they are made to bear.

Job 13:13-14

Hold your peace, let me alone asks the friends for the silence Job has already told them would be their wisdom, so that he may address God directly and let come on me what will. Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand is proverbial for staking everything on one desperate act, and Henry reads it of a man determined to speak the truth to God though it cost him his life. The courtroom Job has been building toward since verse 3 is about to open.

Job 13:15

Though he slay me: Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him is the sole occurrence of this exact confidence in the book, and the Hebrew text itself carries two readings: the reading followed by the King James margin as the more literal sense yields I have no hope, while the text as commonly received and preached reads the positive yet will I trust in him. Both readings are argued by named commentators, and the second half of the verse holds under either, but I will maintain mine own ways before him, Job's resolve to keep arguing his case to God's own face. Clarke and Delitzsch set out the textual question without deciding it for the reader.

Job 13:16-19

He also shall be my salvation continues the confidence of the previous verse into an argument, for an hypocrite shall not come before him, so a guilty man would never dare the approach Job is making. Behold now, I have ordered my cause states his readiness as a plaintiff who has prepared his brief, I know that I shall be justified, and Gill notes the legal sense of ordered, the marshaling of a case point by point. If I hold my tongue, I shall give up the ghost makes the courtroom no mere figure of speech but the only thing keeping him alive.

Job 13:20-22

Job asks God for terms before the trial opens, withdraw thine hand far from me, and let not thy dread make me afraid, the two conditions that the suffering and the terror both be lifted so an honest hearing can proceed. Then call thou, and I will answer: or let me speak, and answer thou me offers God either position in the exchange, plaintiff or defendant, so long as the silence between them breaks. Barnes reads the double offer as proof Job wants truth more than victory, since he will take either side of the conversation.

Job 13:23-25

How many are mine iniquities and sins, make me to know my transgression and my sin is the demand the whole chapter has built toward, a bill of particulars rather than the general charge of guilt the friends have pressed. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy reads God's silence itself as an accusation, since a judge who will not state the charge still lets the sentence stand. Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro pictures the disproportion the friends never weighed, the Almighty's full strength turned against a man already as weak as a windblown leaf.

Job 13:26-28

Thou writest bitter things against me and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth has Job charging God with reviving old sins to justify present suffering, a bitter record kept and produced against him. Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks turns the language of a prisoner's confinement onto providence itself, every path watched and every step marked. The chapter ends where it began, a man consuming like a rotten thing, as a garment that is moth eaten, and Gill notes the double figure naming both a slow decay from within and a wasting no one intended, the two things Job has argued suffering can be.