Job 13:22

JOB might well have been driven frantic by his miserable comforters. It is wonderful that he did not express himself far more bitterly than he did. Surely Satan found better instruments for his work in those three ungenerous friends than in the marauding Sabeans, or the pitiless whirlwind. They assailed Job remorselessly and seemed to have no more hearts of compassion than so many flint stones. No wonder that he said to them many things which otherwise he would never have thought of uttering and, a few, which I dare say, he afterwards regretted. Possibly the expression of our text is one of those passages of too forcible speech. The tormented Patriarch did what none but a man of the highest integrity could have done so intensely as he did. He made his appeal from the false judgement of man to the bar of God and begged to be forthwith summoned before the tribunal of the Judge of All, for he was sure that God would justify him. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain my own ways before Him. He, also, shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before Him." He was ready to appear at the Judgement Seat of God, there to be tried as to his sincerity and uprightness! He says, "Only do not two things unto me: then will I not hide myself from You. Withdraw Your hand far from me: and let not Your dread make me afraid." He offers, in the words of our text, to come before the righteous Judge in any way which He might appoint—either he will be the defendant and God shall be the plaintiff in the suit—"Call and I will answer," or else he will take up the part of the plaintiff and the Lord shall show cause and reason for His dealings towards him, or convict him of falsehood in his pleas—"Let me speak, and You answer me." He feels so sure he has not been a hypocrite that he will answer to the All-Seeing, then and there, without fear of the result.

Then call thou - Begin thou first to plead, and I will answer for myself; or, I will first state and defend my own case, and then answer thou me.

Then call thou, and I will answer - Call me to trial; summon me to make my defense. This is language taken from courts of justice, and the idea is, that if God would remove his calamity, and not overawe him, and would then call on him to make a defense, he would be ready to respond to his call. The language means, “be thou plaintiff in the case, and I will enter on my defense.” He speaks now to God not as to a judge but as a party, and is disposed to go to trial. See the notes at Job 9:33-35. Or let me speak, and answer thou me - “Let me be the plaintiff, and commence the cause. In any way, let the cause come to an issue. Let me open the cause, adduce my arguments, and defend my view of the subject; and then do thou respond.” The idea is, that Job desired a fair trial. He was willing that God should select his position, and should either open the cause, or respond to it when he had himself opened it. To our view, there is something that is quite irreverent in this language, and I know not that it can be entirely vindicated. But perhaps, when the idea of a trial was once suggested, all the rest may be regarded as the mere filling up, or as language fitted to carry out that single idea, and to preserve the concinnity of the poem. Still, to address God in this manner is a wide license even for poetry. There is the language of complaint here; there is an evident feeling that God was not right; there is an undue reliance of Job on his own powers; there is a disposition to blame God which we can by no means approve, and which we are not required to approve. But let us not too harshly blame the patriarch. Let him who has suffered much and long, who feels that he is forsaken by God and by man, who has lost property and friends, and who is suffering under a painful bodily malady, if he has never had any of those feelings, cast the first stone. […]