Job 13

Verse 5 is the chapter's sharpest insult and one of the wisdom literature's most quoted sentences: O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom. The wisest thing the three friends have done in the entire dialogue would have been not to open their mouths at all. The chapter is making a point that Proverbs makes elsewhere in a quieter key - “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise” (Prov. 17:28).

Job is applying the principle to comforters who claim a wisdom they do not have. The kindest thing a friend can sometimes do for a sufferer is to bring soup and shut up. The friends had been with Job in silence for seven days (Job 2:13). They should have stayed that way.

Verse 7 is one of the most important questions in the wisdom literature. Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him? Job is naming a particular and persistent sin - the willingness to lie about God in order to defend what one believes is for God. The friends have been doing it the whole dialogue. They have invented a sin Job did not commit, in order to defend the proposition that God always punishes the wicked. They believed they were defending God. Job is telling them they were slandering Him.

Verse 12 is Job's most withering verdict on the friends' theological arguments. Your remembrances are like unto ashes - your proverbs, your traditions, your maxims - are ashes. Your bodies to bodies of clay - your defense-works against me are mud walls (the Hebrew can also be rendered “your defenses are defenses of clay”). The wisdom-tradition Job's friends have leaned on is, in his view, ash and mud - looks impressive until weight is applied.

The chapter is showing that there are seasons in which an inherited religious vocabulary, however orthodox in the abstract, will crack like clay under the actual pressure of suffering. Theology that has never been stress-tested by grief is still rehearsal.

Verse 14's image - taking my flesh in my teeth, and putting my life in mine hand - is the language of mortal risk. Job is saying that to speak directly to God under the circumstances feels like carrying his own dying body. He is fully aware that what he is about to do could end him. He is going to do it anyway. The chapter is about the kind of integrity that walks into the king's presence knowing the worst can happen and not blinking.

Job sets two conditions for his willingness to bring his case to God. Withdraw thine hand far from me - i.e., let off the physical and emotional crushing for long enough for me to think. And let not thy dread make me afraid - i.e., let me speak as a son, with the confidence of a child before a father. Then either God can summon Job and Job will answer, or Job will speak and God will answer.

The chapter is showing a kind of confidence in approaching God that the Bible elsewhere will name as the believer's posture in Christ: let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16). The conditions Job is asking for in vv. 20-22 are exactly the conditions Christ has secured for the believer.

Verse 25's image is one of the most poignant in the wisdom literature. Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble? Job is asking God to consider what He is doing. Is this opponent worth the effort? Am I really worth pursuing this hard? The image is meant to invoke pity. The chapter is honest about the way suffering distorts the sufferer's sense of self.

Job, who in chapter 1 was the greatest man in the east, now sees himself as a leaf in the wind and a piece of straw on the floor. The Bible is documenting how grief makes you feel small. It is also, by the very act of recording the lament, dignifying the smallness with the LORD's attention. Eventually, in chapter 38, God will answer this very man - and the answer will not call him a leaf.

It will call him my servant Job four times in seven verses (42:7-8).