Job27chapter 27

Job 27:1-2

Moreover Job continued his parable opens the last extended speech of the dialogue proper, the Hebrew mashal marking a weighty, sustained discourse rather than a short proverb. As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment is an oath sworn by the very God Job charges with wronging him, and Henry reads the paradox as faith holding fast to God even in the act of protesting against him. The Almighty, who hath vexed my soul keeps both halves together in one sentence, the God Job serves and the God Job accuses named in a single breath.

Job 27:3-4

All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils ties Job's continued honesty to the very breath God gave him, an echo of Genesis 2:7 several of the older writers note. My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit is Job's pledge against the one thing the wager itself never predicted, that suffering would make him lie rather than protest. Clarke notes the oath's scope, that Job binds his own speech for as long as life itself continues, not merely for the length of this reply.

Job 27:5-6

God forbid that I should justify you refuses the one settlement the friends have been pressing toward, that Job confess a guilt he does not have. Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me is the wager of chapters 1 and 2 holding firm in Job's own words, though he never learns there was a wager to hold. My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live closes the pledge with the one court Job still trusts, his own conscience, which Barnes reads as distinct from any claim to sinlessness.

Job 27:7-10

Let mine enemy be as the wicked turns Job's argument into an imprecation, wishing on his accuser the very fate the friends insist already falls on every wicked man. What is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his soul asks the friends' own question back at them, that wealth gained without integrity ends in nothing when death comes. Will he delight himself in the Almighty, will he always call upon God presses the point toward prayer itself, that a hypocrite crying out under trouble is not the same thing as Job's own persistent calling upon God through this whole book.

Job 27:11-12

I will teach you by the hand of God turns Job from defense to instruction, offering to explain the Almighty's ways to the very men who claimed that office for themselves through the whole debate. Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it charges the friends with no special revelation, only the same observation of the world Job has access to, which is why then are ye thus altogether vain follows as a direct rebuke of their pretended authority. Henry reads the verse as Job's pivot into the section that follows, where he describes the wicked man's end in terms the friends themselves have used against him.

Job 27:13-15

This is the portion of a wicked man with God opens a catalogue that reads exactly like the friends' own doctrine of retribution, and the readings on why it stands in Job's mouth divide sharply. Some of the bench read Job as finally conceding the point the friends have pressed, that the wicked do meet a bad end, while others read him as rehearsing the friends' creed at length to expose its thinness against his own case; a number of modern critics reassign part or all of the section to a lost third speech of Zophar, since Zophar alone is given no third speech in the text as it stands. If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword states the catalogue's opening claim, and his widows shall not weep pictures grief itself withheld even from the wicked man's own household.

Job 27:16-18

Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay pictures wealth piled without limit, yet the catalogue insists it profits nothing: he may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver. He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh compares the wicked man's structure to two things built for a single season, a moth's cocoon and a watchman's shelter in the field. Gill reads the pairing as the section's central irony, immense effort spent on something never meant to last.

Job 27:19-21

The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered pictures a death with no proper burial, a phrase Delitzsch reads against the honor patriarchal culture placed on being gathered to one's fathers. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night moves the catalogue from slow loss to sudden catastrophe, the same night imagery the book already used of the raids in chapter one. The east wind carrieth him away pictures the scorching desert wind as an agent with its own violence, and as a storm hurleth him out of his place closes the verse with total displacement.

Job 27:22-23

For God shall cast upon him, and not spare closes the catalogue by naming its true author, not chance or enemies but God himself pursuing the wicked man past every attempt to flee, he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place ends the speech with public mockery replacing the sympathy Job has been begging for since chapter nineteen. Watson notes the irony that closes the cycle of speeches here, Job describing a fall attended by scorn from bystanders, the very treatment his own friends have given him throughout the book.