Job 9King James Version
Job answers that he cannot argue with God. How should man be just with God? God removes the mountains and they know not. He commands the sun and it rises not. The chapter is a hymn to divine power that ends in despair. Job wishes there were a daysman (an umpire) who could lay a hand on them both.
Job responds to Bildad. He acknowledges that a man cannot contend with God in court: if God demanded an accounting, a human could not answer one question in a thousand. God moves mountains, shakes the earth, walks on water. Job longs for a mediator, an arbiter between himself and God. He knows he will be condemned if he speaks, but he cannot keep silent. God destroys both the blameless and the wicked alike. This is not justice by any human standard.
Job does not deny God's power. He denies that power and justice are the same thing, and he begins to wish for someone who can stand between him and God as an equal advocate.
33: "Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." The word translated daysman means arbitrator or mediator. Job is the first voice in the Bible to articulate a need for someone who can represent humanity before God on equal footing.
Ancient Near Eastern legal proceedings involved an arbiter or third party who could mediate between two disputants. Job is drawing on this legal framework to describe his predicament with God. He wants the court to convene, but there is no one who can call it to order, because one of the parties is the God who made the court.
Job speaks. God is addressed as the overwhelming, uncrossable Power. The friends are in the background. The idea of a mediator, not yet a person, emerges for the first time.
This chapter introduces the mediator motif that runs through the rest of the book and resonates forward into much of biblical theology. Job is not asking for a lawyer to argue he is innocent; he is asking for someone who can make the conversation between human and God possible at all.
For when you are so small in a crisis that you cannot even find words to address it. Job knows he cannot win a courtroom argument with the Creator of everything. He just wants someone to help him be heard.
1Then Job answered and said,
2I know it is so of a truth: but how should man be just with God?
3If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand.
4He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered?
5Which removeth the mountains, and they know not: which overturneth them in his anger.
6Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.
7Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars.
8Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea.
9Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.
10Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.
11Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not: he passeth on also, but I perceive him not.
12Behold, he taketh away, who can hinder him? who will say unto him, What doest thou?
13If God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers do stoop under him.
14How much less shall I answer him, and choose out my words to reason with him?
15Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer, but I would make supplication to my judge.
16If I had called, and he had answered me; yet would I not believe that he had hearkened unto my voice.
17For he breaketh me with a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds without cause.
18He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness.
19If I speak of strength, lo, he is strong: and if of judgment, who shall set me a time to plead?
20If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.
21Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul: I would despise my life.
22This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.
23If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
24The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if not, where, and who is he?
25Now my days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good.
26They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.
27If I say, I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my heaviness, and comfort myself:
28I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent.
29If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain?
30If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;
31Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.
32For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.
33Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.
34Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me:
35Then would I speak, and not fear him; but it is not so with me.