Job 13
Job 13 escalates the rebuttal Job began in chapter 12. The friends have been treating him as a diagnostic case. Job spends the opening of this chapter telling them, with rising fury, that what they have actually done is malpractice. I have understanding as well as you (13:2). Ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value (13:4). O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom (13:5). The Hebrew is even sharper than the English: the wisest thing the three of them have done in this entire dialogue would have been not to open their mouths at all. Job has now reached the place every sufferer eventually reaches with bad counsel - the place where the kindest move you can make is to stop being polite about it.
Then he turns away from them entirely. The chapter's second movement (vv. 13-19) is Job's announcement that he is going to bypass the friends and bring his case directly to God. Let me alone, that I may speak. The line that lands in the middle of that movement has anchored the faith of suffering Christians for three thousand years: though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him (13:15). The verse is famously text-critical - the consonants as written read “I will not hope” while the Masoretic reading tradition reads “in him I will hope” - and the KJV preserves the deeper reading. The trust is not naive. It is held against the consonants the despair has already written. Job is honest about both.
The chapter closes (vv. 20-28) with Job's two conditions for facing God in court - that God withdraw His hand and that God's dread not crush him - and then a wrenching final lament: wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy? (13:24). The chapter ends with the question that the entire book of Job is in some sense an attempt to answer, and that the cross will eventually answer in full when the One who is not God's enemy cries out from the cross, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
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Job 13:1-6Physicians of No Value
1Lo, mine eye hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard and understood it. 2What ye know, the same do I know also: I am not inferior unto you. 3Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God. 4But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value. 5O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom. 6Hear now my reasoning, and hearken to the pleadings of my lips.
Verse 5 is the chapter's sharpest insult and one of the wisdom literature's most quoted sentences1: 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.
Job 13:7-12Will Ye Speak Wickedly for God?
7Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him? 8Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God? 9Is it good that he should search you out? or as one man mocketh another, do ye so mock him? 10He will surely reprove you, if ye do secretly accept persons. 11Shall not his excellency make you afraid? and his dread fall upon you? 12Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.
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 not theology yet; it is rehearsal.
Job 13:13-19Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust in Him
13Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will. 14Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand? 15Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him. 16He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him. 17Hear diligently my speech, and my declaration with your ears. 18Behold now, I have ordered my cause; I know that I shall be justified. 19Who is he that will plead with me? for now, if I hold my tongue, I shall give up the ghost.
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 13:20-28Why Hidest Thou Thy Face?
20Only do not two things unto me: then will I not hide myself from thee. 21Withdraw thine hand far from me: and let not thy dread make me afraid. 22Then call thou, and I will answer: or let me speak, and answer thou me. 23How many are mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my transgression and my sin. 24Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy? 25Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble? 26For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth. 27Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and lookest narrowly unto all my paths; thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet. 28And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
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, not collapse as a defendant. 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).
Further study
- Hebrew text with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban on Job's reply, including the long Masoretic tradition on the kethib/qere reading at Job 13:15 and the rabbinic discussion of whether Job's trust is being held against his despair or in spite of it.
- The Text-Critical Question of Job 13:15Bible Odyssey (SBL)SBL overview of the famous text-critical crux in Job 13:15 - the consonantal text reads “I will not hope” (lo' ayachel); the Masoretic Qere reads “in him I will hope” (lo ayachel). KJV and most English translations follow the Qere; the discussion clarifies why both readings are theologically rich.
- Job 9:33 · 13:3 · 13:18 ↔ 1 Timothy 2:5Intertextual BibleJob's repeated demand for a “daysman” (umpire, mediator) to stand between him and God is answered in 1 Timothy 2:5: “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Where this echoes in Scripture
Physicians of No Value
- Job 9:32-33Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.Job’s longing for a mediator, set up across multiple chapters before this one.
- 1 Timothy 2:5-6For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.The Daysman, finally named.
- Proverbs 17:28Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise.The wisdom-literature principle Job 13:5 weaponizes against his friends.
Will Ye Speak Wickedly for God?
- 2 Corinthians 4:2We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty… not handling the word of God deceitfully.Paul on the same temptation Job is exposing in the friends.
- John 11:49-50It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.Caiaphas - the supreme example of speaking wickedly “for God” in the New Testament.
Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust in Him
- Luke 23:46Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.Christ’s inhabitation of Job 13:15 at the cross.
- Hebrews 5:7He… offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.The New Testament commentary on Christ’s living of Job 13:15.
- Matthew 1:21Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.The <em>yeshua’ah</em> of Job 13:16 becomes the name in Matthew 1:21.
Why Hidest Thou Thy Face?
- Psalm 22:1My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?The same question Job asks in 13:24, in the Psalter’s voice - which Christ would later make His own.
- Matthew 27:46Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?The question Job asked from the ash heap, answered in the only voice that could finally take it on without being its enemy.
- Hebrews 4:16Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy.The two conditions Job asks for in 13:20-22 - finally secured for the believer in Christ.