Job31chapter 31

This chapter is a legal instrument, not a list of good intentions. Job swears a series of conditional self-curses in a fixed form: if I have done this, then let that happen to me. In the ancient world an oath of clearing was a recognised way to end a case where no witnesses could settle it — the accused swore, calling down destruction on himself if he lied, and the matter was left with God.

The catalogue covers every area a man could be charged in. A covenant with his eyes, so as not to look on a young woman. Honest scales — 'let me be weighed in an even balance' — which mattered because trade ran on a beam scale and a merchant's own stone weights, and short weights were the classic quiet fraud. No lying in wait at his neighbour's door. Justice for his manservant and maidservant when they brought a complaint against him, on the ground that the same God formed them both in the womb.

Then the social duties: not withholding what the poor desired, not eating his morsel alone while the fatherless went without, not seeing anyone perish for want of clothing when his sheep had wool. Not lifting his hand against the fatherless because he had backing in the court at the gate. Not making gold his confidence. Not rejoicing at an enemy's ruin or wishing him dead. Keeping his door open to the traveller, since a stranger with nowhere to sleep was in real danger at night.

Two entries are worth pausing over. Secret idolatry is described by its gesture — beholding the sun when it shone or the moon walking in brightness, and the heart being enticed so that the mouth kissed the hand. Kissing the hand toward a heavenly body is an act of worship attested in Mesopotamian ritual texts, and Job calls it an iniquity for the judges, meaning a crime a court should punish. And at the very end he curses his own fields: if my land cry against me, or I have eaten its fruit without paying, let thistles grow instead of wheat and weeds instead of barley. His closing demand is that his accuser write out the indictment — 'oh that mine adversary had written a book' — and he signs his defence with his mark.