REDEEMER

In chapter 19 Job’s suffering is marked by both depth and variety. He is shunned by friends and acquaintances. He is despised and insulted even by children and servants. He is physically repulsive, as his wife makes clear to him. No one shows him natural affection. People have joined forces with God against him. He seems to be almost ‘skin and bone’, as we would say.

He would love to be assured that his words were recorded in durable form. He is confident that some day God will stand up, as it were in court, to vindicate him. This is surely the sense of ‘my redeemer’ in verse 25. He clings to his integrity and has confidence that God will ultimately come to champion his cause.

But his frailty puts in doubt whether God will do this before his ‘skin has been destroyed’, as the Revised Version margin renders the early part of verse 26. Even if he should die, God, he says, will live on to vindicate him.

Then his faith takes a great leap forward and he affirms, ‘yet in my flesh shall I see God’. The word ‘yet’ makes this translation preferable to other possibilities. Resurrection seems to be implied. There is a strong emphasis on his ‘seeing’ God. This will be with his own eyes, ‘and not another’, v. 27. Alternatively, this last phrase may be rendered, as in the Revised Version margin, ‘not as a stranger’. We may render the early part of verse 27, ‘Whom I shall see on my side’. God will take a stand for His servant Job. Job will see Him with his own eyes.

This whole section, from verse 25 to verse 27, represents a confidence and faith which is remarkable in a man so broken physically with disease and suffering. He is also broken psychologically by the abuse unfairly heaped upon him. Yet amidst all of this he clings to the God whom he knows; his faith outruns his ability to give a theological analysis.

We wonder at this knowledge of God which Job had. When he would be vindicated is not of primary importance. Let Francis I. Andersen have the last word: ‘There is no need for the loud note of Job’s certainty of ultimate vindication to be drowned by the static of textual difficulties’.