Job9chapter 9

Job 9:1-4

Job answers Bildad's true doctrine with the question the whole book turns on: how should man be just with God, since no one can answer him one of a thousand. Barnes reads the courtroom language as literal, a legal contest Job knows in advance he cannot win against a party who is both accuser and judge. He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength states the imbalance plainly, and Gill notes that neither wisdom nor strength has ever prospered against him.

Job 9:5-10

Job answers his own hard question with a doxology rather than a complaint, praising the God whose power removeth the mountains, shaketh the earth out of her place, and sealeth up the stars. Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea has drawn a tradition, named by Delitzsch among others, that hears an echo of the Lord walking on the sea behind the line, a reading the older writers hold and not a claim the verse itself makes. Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades reaches past the debate entirely into the same created order the whirlwind speeches return to in chapters 38 and 39, doing great things past finding out.

Job 9:11-13

Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not turns the doxology's power into an ache, a God active everywhere and visible nowhere to the man questioning him. Gill notes that Job here describes not God's absence but his own incapacity to perceive a presence never in doubt. The proud helpers do stoop under him extends the same unanswerable strength from nature to the mightiest of human allies, none of whom could stand against him either.

Job 9:14-19

How much less shall I answer him draws the conclusion from the doxology just sung: if mountains and stars obey without argument, a man has still less standing to argue his own case. Though I were righteous, yet would I not answer states Job's fear that even genuine innocence would find no hearing, since he would not believe that God had hearkened unto his voice. Who shall set me a time to plead closes the unit on the absence of any fixed court date, a complaint Barnes reads as the seed of the daysman Job names later in this same speech.

Job 9:20-22

If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me states Job's despair of process itself, that any words he offers in his own defense could be turned against him regardless of the truth. He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked is the hardest sentence Job speaks in the whole book, and Henry lets it stand as Job's own extremity under the speech rule rather than softening it, a charge God never repeats and Job himself retracts at 42:6. Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul shows the accusation has reached past his outward case into the reliability of his own self-knowledge.

Job 9:23-24

If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent extends Job's complaint from his own case to a general observation on disaster striking without regard to guilt. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked, he covereth the faces of the judges thereof reads corrupt courts as further evidence for the same complaint, unjust judgment left unchecked. Gill notes the closing question, if not, where, and who is he, as Job's demand that someone name another cause if this one is refused.

Job 9:25-31

Now my days are swifter than a post returns to the speed-of-life complaint from chapter 7, now pictured as a runner, a ship, and an eagle stooping to its prey, three images for time outrunning any hope of relief. If I say, I will forget my complaint admits that even resolving to stop lamenting brings no comfort, since I am afraid of all my sorrows regardless of Job's own resolve. If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean closes the unit with an image of futile self-cleansing, since God would still plunge him in the ditch and his own clothes would abhor him.

Job 9:32-35

For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him states the imbalance the whole chapter has been building toward, that Job's opponent is not a peer he could meet on equal legal footing. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both is the sole occurrence of the word in Scripture and the first rung of a ladder the book climbs again at 16:19 and at 19:25, a wished-for umpire able to touch both parties at once. The older writers, Gregory among them, read the daysman toward the one mediator later revealed in Christ, a reading held by tradition and not a claim this verse makes on its own; the verse itself is Job's longing for a role no one in his world can fill. Let him take his rod away from me closes the speech asking for the one concession that might make an honest hearing possible.