What Goes Around Comes Around – Job 19

According to Mary and Martha, Jesus was too late in coming to deal with their brother Lazarus’ illness (John 11). He had died, but, they said, if Jesus had come he could have healed him. Was Jesus too late? We might could answer both yes and no. Perhaps Job could, also.

Then Job answered and said:

“How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and make my disgrace an argument against me, know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me. Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice. He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary. His troops come on together; they have cast up their siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent.

“He has put my brothers far from me, and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me. My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me. The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes. I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy. My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother. Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me. All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’ be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.” (Job 19, ESV)

God has been attacking Job wrongly, he believes, like a siege against a walled city, refusing as yet to respond to his plea for a correction. But Job’s friends, he says, have added insult to injury. They have wronged him with their words, insisting, as they do, that Job has sinned and brought this divine judgment upon himself.

All those to whom Job has looked for comfort have abandoned him, even his servants. And his suffering has brought him just shy of death, escaping that by the skin of his teeth.

Job pleads for mercy from his friends.  Believe him when he says that he is innocent. Job desires a permanent record be made of his dilemma.  He believes that God will eventually be his kinsman redeemer who will vindicate him, if necessary, even after Job’s death.  Perhaps Job will then stand again in the flesh before God to receive justice. He accuses his friends of responding to him in wrath and warns that such wrath will bring God’s judgment. Job will be judged and found innocent, they will be judged and found guilty.

Discussion Questions

1. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of God?
2. What is Job thinking about God?
3. Is Job correct or wrong about whether it is God who is bringing “darkness upon his paths”?
4. What would loss of all your most cherished relationships do to you?
5. Why does Job believe that God will at some point vindicate him but that at the moment God is not listening?
6. Have you experienced God not acting in your sense of right timing and what was the result of that?