Job9chapter 9

Job grants the point and finds it terrifying. Of course a man cannot be just with God — but not for the reason Bildad thinks. Job's problem is procedural. If he went to law with God he could not answer one question in a thousand, could not summon him, could not compel a hearing, and could not trust a verdict he had no standing to appeal.

The hymn in the middle is real astronomy and real geography as that world understood it. God removes mountains and shakes the earth out of its place; he commands the sun and it does not rise; he seals up the stars. Three constellations are named by their Hebrew names, generally taken as the Bear or Orion's neighbour, Orion himself, and the Pleiades, along with 'the chambers of the south' — the stars that only rise for those far enough south to see them. Sky-watching was a serious discipline across the ancient Near East, and Job is claiming that the God who arranges the sky cannot be cross-examined by a man.

The comparisons for how fast his life is going are all transport: the runner carrying dispatches, the swift boats of reed — light papyrus skiffs used on the Nile and the marshes — and an eagle stooping on its prey.

The chapter ends with the word the whole book has been reaching for. Job wishes for a 'daysman' — an umpire or arbiter who could lay his hand on both parties at once, the recognised role of the neutral third man in an ancient dispute. There is no such person between God and man, he says, and so no fair hearing is possible.