DAYSMAN

Job was an outstanding man. God referred to him as ‘my servant Job’, adding ‘there is none like him’. His relationship with God was reflected in his treatment of the poor, of neighbours and of his own family. Then disaster struck: he lost his animals, his children and his health. His attitude to all this was to ask the rhetorical question, ‘shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’, Job 2.10.

His problems were compounded by the advice of his wellmeaning friends. Some of what they said about God was true, some was simplistic, and all was inappropriate. Job knew that the accusations which they levelled at him were unjustified. He was indignant, eager to rebut their charges. He was not claiming sinless perfection, merely maintaining his integrity.

Yet he also attributed his sufferings to God. This dilemma faced him. How could he maintain his integrity before God and explain why God was afflicting him so sorely? He believed God to be just and almighty. But he could find no way in which he could put his case to God, who was so infinitely greater than Job. God would have no difficulty finding things to accuse him of, even though he had lived with a good conscience.

In these final eleven verses of chapter 9 he reaches a crisis. He sees himself as a creature whose life flits past and is gone. Any attempt to be cheerful in suffering perishes, because at any moment even worse suffering may come. He cannot hope to rise to the standard of perfect holiness in God’s sight.

Verse 33 is a cry for someone to come between Job and God, able to relate to God in His holiness and might, and also to Job in his weakness and unworthiness - to lay his hand on each. This daysman must be able to relate to God on equal terms, while coming near to Job without terrifying him.

Ultimately the daysman would need to be both divine and human. We come inevitably to ‘one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’, 1 Tim. 2. 5. Neither is incarnation the full answer, for in the next verse Paul goes on, ‘who gave himself a ransom for all’ - even men of integrity need a ransom. This is Paul’s inspired answer to Job’s perceptive cry.