Job 19

“Death is the great adventure, beside which moon landings and space trips pale into insignificance.” —J B

Bildad opened his second speech with the same words he used in his first speech: “How long?”

(Job 18:2; 8:2), and Job said the same thing when he replied (19:2). The friends were growing impatient with each other because their conversation seemed to be getting nowhere. George Bernard Shaw compared the average conversation to “a phonograph with half-adozen records—you soon get tired of them all.”

Bildad blamed Job for the stalemate and admonished him, “Be sensible, and then we can talk” (18: niv). It never dawned on Bildad that he and his two friends were playing the same tunes over and over again: (1) God is just; (2) God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous; (3) since Job is suffering, he must be wicked; (4) if he turns from his sins, God will again bless him. They were going around in circles.

Bildad said that Job was not being sensible, nor was he being respectful. He was treating his friends like dumb cattle instead of like the wise men they really were (v. 3). Job was also being irritable and displaying anger instead of humility (v. 4). “Is God supposed to rearrange the whole world just for you?” Bildad asks. “Should He ravage the land with war or even send an earthquake just because of you?” Eliphaz wasn’t the only one who knew how to use sarcasm!

However, Bildad planned to use a stronger weapon than sarcasm. His weapon was fear. If the three friends could not reason with Job, or shame Job into repenting, perhaps they could frighten Job by describing what happens when wicked people die.

Before we study Bildad’s terrifying speech, we should note that fear is a normal human emotion and there is nothing wrong with it. We use the fear of sickness, injury, or death to teach children to wash their hands, stay away from power lines, and look carefully before crossing the street. Fear of financial loss motivates people to buy insurance, and fear of death encourages them to have an annual physical checkup.

Fear of death (and the judgment that follows) is a legitimate motive for trusting Jesus Christ and being saved. “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” said Jesus. “But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10: nkjv). Jesus preached a gracious message of love, but He also preached a stern message of judgment. Paul wrote, “Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11). When Jonathan Edwards preached his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he did not violate any psychological or biblical principles. The emotions of nonbelievers must be stirred before their minds can be instructed and their wills challenged.

However, Bildad made two mistakes when he gave this speech about the horrors of death. To begin with, he preached it to the wrong man; for Job was already a believer (Job 1:1, 8). Second, he preached it with the wrong motive, for there was no love in his heart. Dr. R. W. Dale, the British preacher, once asked evangelist D. L. Moody if he ever used “the element of terror” in his preaching. Moody replied that he usually preached one sermon on heaven and one on hell in each of his campaigns, but that a “man’s heart ought to be very tender” when preaching about the doom of the lost. Bildad did not have a tender heart.

When Bildad finished describing the terrors of death, Job replied by describing the trials of life, his own life. “I don’t have to die to experience trials,” he said to his friends. “I’m experiencing them right now, and you don’t seem to care!”

Insults (Job 19:1–4). Our words either hurt others or heal them; we either add to their burdens or help them bear their burdens with courage. Job’s friends crushed him with their words; they made him feel worthless and helpless in the face of all his suffering. How sensitive we should be to the needs and struggles of others! Even if people do need rebuke, we should do it in love; and our words should hearten them and not weaken them.

“Even if I have sinned,” Job said in 19:4, “it’s my sin and not yours. God and I can work things out, so leave me alone.” The word Job used (“erred”) means “an unintentional sin.” Job still defended his integrity and claimed that he had committed no sins worthy of all the suffering he had endured.

Illustrations (Job 19:5–12). Bildad had given four frightening pictures of the terrors of death, so Job countered with seven vivid pictures of the trials of his life, what he was experiencing right then and there!

He felt like an animal trapped (v. 6). Job saw himself caught in God’s net, not because of his sins but because God had trapped him. Bildad described six different kinds of traps that would catch a fleeing criminal (18:7–10), but Job did not put himself into that picture. He was not running away from God, nor was he guilty of sin. It was God who had suddenly caught him for reasons Job did not understand.

He also felt like a criminal in court (19:7). God had wronged him by arresting him and bringing him into judgment. What had he done? Why were the charges not read to him? Why was he not permitted a defense? “Though I call for help, there is no justice” (v. 7 niv). Throughout the book, Job pleads for justice and cries out for an advocate to defend him before God. What Job did not realize was that he was the advocate defending God! It was Job’s faith and endurance that proved Satan wrong and brought glory to the Lord.

Job saw himself as a traveler fenced in (v. 8). Satan had complained that God had “walled in” Job and his family so that they were protected from trouble (1:9–12). Now Job is complaining because God has blocked his path, and he cannot move. Job could not see what lay ahead because God had shrouded the way with darkness.

At times God permits His children to experience darkness on a dead-end street where they don’t know which way to turn. When this happens, wait for the Lord to give you light in His own time. Don’t try to manufacture your own light or to borrow light from others. Follow the wise counsel of Isaiah: “Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God” (Isa. 50: nkjv).

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. used to say, “Never doubt in the darkness what God has taught you in the light.” In fact, what God teaches us in the light will become even more meaningful in the darkness.

“Oh, the unspeakable benediction of the ‘treasures of darkness’!” wrote Oswald Chambers. “It is not the days of sunshine and splendor and liberty and light that leave their lasting and indelible effect upon the soul, but those nights of the Spirit in which, shadowed by God’s hand, hidden in the dark cleft of some rock in a weary land, He lets the splendors of the outskirts of Himself pass before our gaze.”

Job’s suffering left him feeling like a king dethroned (Job 19:9). Before his calamities came, Job had been the leading man in Uz and the greatest man in the East (1:3; 29:1–25); but now all that honor and authority were gone. God had taken from him his royal robes and crown, and now he was the lowest instead of the highest. What humiliation!

His fifth picture is that of a structure destroyed (19:10). It could be a wall or a building that God’s “troops” swooped down on and left in ruins. Job may have been looking back at his business affairs or his household; or perhaps he was contemplating his emaciated body. In any event, what was once strong and useful was now useless and destroyed. Bildad had spoken about a tent being destroyed (18:15), and Job knew what this meant.

In the sixth picture, Job borrowed the image of a tree uprooted (19:10; see 18:16). Job had used the tree as a picture of hope (14:7), but now he sees it as a symbol of lost hope. But in Job 14, Job was speaking about a tree that was chopped down, while here the tree is uprooted. Without a root system, the tree cannot live.

Job’s final picture is that of a besieged city (19:11–12). God has declared war on Job (13:24) and is treating him like an enemy. His troops have attacked him and settled down for a long, hard siege. Imagine a large army building a ramp just to attack a tent! Once again, Job cannot understand why God has sent so much suffering. Why use an atomic bomb just to destroy a tent?

Isolation (Job 19:13–22). Job went on to explain how his suffering affected his relationship with people. We must recognize that extreme and prolonged pain often isolates sufferers from people and circumstances around them. When people really hurt, they may tend to withdraw and give the impression that others don’t really understand what they are going through. Job felt alienated from those left in his family, from his friends, and even from his servants.

But there was more to this alienation than Job’s pain. He was now bankrupt and ill, living at the city dump; and nobody wanted to be identified with him. Furthermore, people were convinced that Job was a guilty sinner suffering the judgment of God; so why be his friend? His appearance was repulsive, and people avoided looking at him. He was being treated like a leper, an outcast who was not wanted by family or friends.

One evidence of our Lord’s compassion is the way He identified with outcasts. He ate with “publicans and sinners” (Matt. 9:9–13), touched the lepers (Matt. 8:1–4), accepted gifts from prostitutes (Luke 7:36–50), and even died between two criminals (23:32–33). Jesus knew what it was like to be “despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). How important it is that we, His disciples, have this same kind of compassion. It’s easy to identify with people we know and like when they are going through trials, but we tend to overlook the helpless, the poor, and the neglected in their sufferings.

Job’s statement in Job 19: has become a familiar but misunderstood proverb: “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” This is usually quoted, “I escaped by the skin of my teeth,” that is, “I just barely escaped!” (If there were skin on our teeth, how thick would it be?) But the Hebrew text says “with” and not “by,” and interpreters don’t agree on the meaning.

Some suggest that Job meant “I’m so far gone that only my gums are left!” But the gums are not usually referred to as “the skin of the teeth.” Others say that he meant, “If there were skin on my teeth, that’s how close I am to death!” Or, “My body is so emaciated that all I have left is the skin of my teeth!” (He was exaggerating, of course.) Whatever Job had in mind, the image clearly shows one thing: it was a miracle that Job was alive.

Job closed this part of his defense by appealing to his friends for pity (vv. 21–22; 6:14). God was against him, his family and friends had deserted him, and all he had left were his three intimate friends who were now pursuing him like wild beasts after their prey. Couldn’t they stop and try to help him? Why must they have such hard hearts?

Insight (Job 19:23–29). Why did Job want his words to be recorded permanently? He thought he was going to die before God would vindicate him, and he wanted people to remember how he suffered and what he said. Bildad warned him, “The remembrance of him [a wicked man] shall perish from the earth” (18:17), and Job wanted his record to remain.

At this point, Job uttered another of his statements of faith that in this book punctuate his many expressions of grief and pain. It is significant that Job would go from the depths of despair to the heights of faith, and then back into the depths again. This is often the normal experience of people experiencing great suffering. The skies will be dark and stormy, a ray of light will suddenly shine through, and then the storm will come again.

In spite of what some preachers say, very few people can maintain a constant high level of faith and courage in times of severe pain and trial. John Henry Jowett, at one time known as “the greatest preacher in the English-speaking world,” wrote to a friend: “I wish you wouldn’t think I am such a saint. You seem to imagine that I have no ups and downs, but just a level and lofty stretch of spiritual attainment with unbroken joy and equanimity. By no means! I am often perfectly wretched, and everything appears most murky” (John Henry Jowett, by Arthur Porrit, 290).

In 19:25–27, Job expressed confidence that, even if he died, he would still have a Redeemer who one day would exercise judgment on the earth. Furthermore, Job affirmed that he himself expected to live again and see his Redeemer! “And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God” (v. 26 niv). It was an affirmation of faith in the resurrection of the human body.

The Hebrew word translated “redeemer” in verse 25 refers to the kinsman redeemer, the near relative who could avenge his brother’s blood (Deut. 19:6–12), reclaim and restore his brother’s property (Lev. 25:23–24, 39–55), and set his brother free from slavery (25:25). The kinsman redeemer could also go to court on behalf of a wronged relative (Prov. 23:10–11). In the book of Ruth, Boaz is the kinsman redeemer who was willing and able to rescue Ruth and give her a new life in a new land.

Previously, Job had talked about his need for an umpire (Job 9:33–34) and an Advocate in heaven (16:19). Now he takes it a step further: his Redeemer will one day vindicate him, and Job will be there to witness it! When you consider how little God had revealed in Job’s day about the future life, these words become a remarkable testimony of faith. And when you add to this the discouragement expressed by Job’s friends and his own intense suffering, Job’s witness becomes even more wonderful.

Of course, this kinsman redeemer is Jesus Christ. He took upon Himself a human nature so that He might reveal God to us, experience all that we experience, die for our sins, and then return to heaven to represent us before the Father. He is willing to save and able to save. One day He shall stand upon the earth and exercise judgment; and He will vindicate His own people.

Job closed his speech with a word of warning to his three critical friends (19:28–29): They too will stand at God’s judgment throne, so they had better be ready. They accused Job of being a sinner, but were they not also sinners? They said that God was judging Job for his sins, but will He not judge them as well? One day they will have to answer to God for the way they have spoken to and about Job, so they had better beware. Job’s words remind us of Paul’s counsel in Romans 14:10–13 and our Lord’s warning in Matthew 7:1–5.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “He has a right to criticize who has a heart to help.”

Do you qualify?