Job 31
After chapter on chapter of argument with his friends, Job comes at last to his closing word - and it is not an argument at all but an oath. He swears to his own innocence in the ancient form of a self-curse: one sin after another, he says, in effect, if I have done this, then let this calamity fall on me. Read down the list and you are reading the portrait of a life, and a remarkable one. It opens not with some great public crime he is clearing himself of, but at the most hidden place of all: I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid? Job has bound even his gaze by a solemn pact. Before lust could become a glance, before a glance could become an act, he had sworn his eyes to faithfulness. He begins his defense at the root.3
From there the oath unfolds into the whole shape of integrity. He has walked without deceit and is willing to be tested for it - let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity. He has not despised the cause of his servants when they brought a complaint against him, and he grounds their equal worth in something deeper than custom: Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb? He has not withheld from the poor, has not let the widow's eyes fail, has fed the fatherless and clothed the perishing. He has not made gold his confidence, has not bowed his heart to sun or moon, has not gloated over a fallen enemy, has kept his door open to the stranger in the street. And he names the one temptation that haunts every upright man - the urge to hide what is wrong: If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom. Job will not do even that.
It would be easy to hear all this as the self-praise of a proud man - and that is exactly how his friends had cast him. But the book itself forbids that reading. At its close, God Himself declares that Job, and not the friends, has spoken of Him what is right; this oath answers and overturns the fabricated charges Eliphaz had thrown against him. Job's integrity is genuine, and Heaven vindicates it. And yet Job is the same man who, chapters before, had cried out that no mortal can be just with God of himself - that even a righteous man could only make supplication to his Judge. So the oath does a double work. It is the true testimony of an upright life; and it is a witness that points past itself, for the man who could swear all this had already set his hope on a Redeemer he could not yet see. The closing words of his defense - The words of Job are ended - leave him standing innocent before the bar and still waiting for One who could answer where his own integrity could not.
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Job 31:1-12I Made a Covenant with Mine Eyes
1I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid? 2For what portion of God is there from above? and what inheritance of the Almighty from on high? 3Is not destruction to the wicked? and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity? 4Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps? 5If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; 6Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity.
Of all the places a righteous man might begin to clear his name, Job begins at the most hidden: his eyes. I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid? He does not open with the great public sins he never committed - murder, theft, perjury. He opens with the inward gate through which temptation first enters, and tells us he has guarded it by a sworn pact. This is a striking thing to lead with. It means Job understood that integrity is not first a matter of the deed but of the desire; that the battle for faithfulness is won or lost long before the hand acts, in the place where the eye lingers and the heart begins to imagine. To make a covenant with one's eyes is to treat the gaze itself as something one is morally responsible for - not a neutral faculty but a power to be bound, governed, kept. Job has not waited to see whether he would do wrong; he has gone behind the wrong to its root and sworn there.1
Job grounds the whole oath in a settled conviction about God: Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps? The God he answers to is not distant or inattentive; He watches the road a man walks and numbers every step on it. This is why Job can speak as he does. He is not performing for human approval - his friends have already condemned him - but living before the eyes of One who misses nothing. For what portion of God is there from above? he asks, and answers it with the certainty that the wicked meet destruction and a strange punishment. Job knows the moral order is real, that God sees, that deeds have weight before Heaven. And precisely because he believes God counts every step, he can offer his own steps for the counting. The man who lives as though God sees everything has nothing to gain by hiding and everything to gain by being seen truly.
7If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands; 8Then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out. 9If mine heart have been deceived by a woman, or if I have laid wait at my neighbour's door; 10Then let my wife grind unto another, and let others bow down upon her. 11For this is an heinous crime; yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges. 12For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root out all mine increase.
Here the form of the oath shows itself plainly, and it is sobering. Job does not simply assert his innocence; he stakes everything he loves on it. If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes… then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out. This is the structure of the whole chapter: a charge he denies, followed by the terrible penalty he is willing to bear if the denial is false. And the penalties strike at exactly what a man holds dearest - his harvest, his children, his wife. No one swears such an oath lightly. To invite the rooting out of one's own offspring, the loss of one's own marriage, is to put one's deepest treasures on the scale as collateral. Job can do it because he is telling the truth. He calls adultery what it is - an heinous crime… a fire that consumeth to destruction - not a small indulgence but a blaze that burns a life to the ground. And against that fire he sets his sworn covenant, confident enough in his faithfulness to wager everything on it.
Job 31:13-23Did Not One Fashion Us in the Womb?
13If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me; 14What then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him? 15Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb? 16If I have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail;
Job turns from his own household's inner life to how he treated those beneath him, and what he says would have been radical in his world. If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me - that is, when a servant brought a legal complaint against Job, the master. In the ancient world a slave had no standing to contend with a master; the master simply prevailed. Job declares that he heard their cause, did not despise it, did not crush a grievance merely because he held the power. And then he gives the ground, and it is breathtaking: Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb?4 Master and servant came from the same hand. The same God knit them both in the womb. Whatever distance the social order placed between them, before their Maker they stood level - equal in origin, equal in dignity, equally His. Job will not stand on his rank, because he knows that one day God will rise up and visit, and the master will have to answer for how he treated the man he might have despised.
17Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof; 18(For from my youth he was brought up with me, as with a father, and I have guided her from my mother's womb;) 19If I have seen any perish for want of clothing, or any poor without covering; 20If his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep; 21If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate: 22Then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone. 23For destruction from God was a terror to me, and by reason of his highness I could not endure.
The oath now opens onto the poor, and Job's care is not cold charity but something closer to kinship. He has not eaten his morsel alone while the fatherless went hungry; he has shared his bread. More than that - from my youth he was brought up with me, as with a father. Job did not toss scraps to the orphan from a distance; he raised him as his own, fathered the fatherless, guided the widow as a son guides a mother. He has clothed the perishing, and the warmth of his own fleece has drawn blessing from the body of the man who was freezing: if his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep. This is mercy that costs and that draws near - not the management of need at arm's length but the taking of the needy into one's own life. And again Job stakes himself on it with a fearful curse: if he ever lifted up his hand against the fatherless - if he ever used his power in the court (the gate) to crush the defenseless because he knew the verdict would go his way - then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade. Let the very arm that struck the weak be torn from its socket. He could swear it because, he says, destruction from God was a terror to me - the fear of God, not the absence of opportunity, kept his hand from the helpless.
Job 31:24-40Let the Almighty Answer Me
24If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence; 25If I rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much; 26If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; 27And my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: 28This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above.
Job turns from how he treated people to what he worshipped, and he joins two temptations that look unrelated but are the same sin underneath: trusting gold, and bowing to the heavens. If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence… If I rejoiced because my wealth was great. Job was a rich man - the richest of all the men of the east - and he names the precise danger of wealth, which is not having it but resting on it, letting it become the thing in which the heart finds its security. He did not say to gold, Thou art my confidence. Then, in the same breath: If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand. To kiss the hand toward the sun and moon was the gesture of homage to the great lights of heaven.4 Job sees both for what they are - I should have denied the God that is above. To trust riches or to worship the creation is, at bottom, one act: it gives to a created thing the confidence and the homage that belong to the Creator alone. Job kept his heart fixed past the gift to the Giver, past the bright lights to the One who made them.
29If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil found him: 30Neither have I suffered my mouth to sin by wishing a curse to his soul. 31If the men of my tabernacle said not, Oh that we had of his flesh! we cannot be satisfied. 32The stranger did not lodge in the street: but I opened my doors to the traveller.
The oath now reaches into the secret movements of the heart toward those outside Job's love. If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil found him. Here is a test few would pass: not merely whether Job harmed his enemy, but whether he gloated when calamity struck the man who hated him - whether some hidden corner of him was glad. Job swears he did not, and goes further: Neither have I suffered my mouth to sin by wishing a curse to his soul. He did not even let his tongue ask for his enemy's ruin. Long before the command to love one's enemies was spoken aloud, Job was already refusing the small, private revenge of rejoicing in another's downfall. And against that closed door of malice he sets an open door of welcome: The stranger did not lodge in the street: but I opened my doors to the traveller. In a world where the traveler far from home was utterly vulnerable, Job took the stranger in. The same man who would not gloat over an enemy would not leave a stranger in the cold. His integrity faces both directions - no secret hatred toward those against him, no closed hand toward those who could give him nothing.
33If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom: 34Did I fear a great multitude, or did the contempt of families terrify me, that I kept silence, and went not out of the door? 35Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book. 36Surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me. 37I would declare unto him the number of my steps; as a prince would I go near unto him.
Job names the most universal temptation of all, the one even the upright feel - the urge to hide what is wrong rather than bring it into the light. If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom. The reference is to the oldest instinct in the human story: Adam, having sinned, hid among the trees and covered himself, concealing his guilt rather than confessing it. Job says he has not done this - has not buried a secret sin in his breast, has not kept silence out of dread of what the crowd or the great families would say if the truth came out. He has lived in the open. And on the strength of that openness he issues the climactic summons of the whole oath: Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book. Job longs for his accuser to put the charges in writing - and so confident is he in his integrity that he says he would take that very indictment, bind it as a crown to me, wear it like an honor, and walk up to God as a prince to give an account of every step. This is not arrogance; it is the boldness of a clear conscience. A man with nothing hidden does not fear the file being opened.
38If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain; 39If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: 40Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley. The words of Job are ended.
The oath closes where a wealthy landowner's life touched the most people - his land and those who worked it. If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain; if I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life. Even the soil, Job says, can bear witness; if he wrung its fruit from the labor of others without paying them, if he ground the life out of the people who tilled it, let the ground itself testify against him - let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley. Let his fields turn to weeds if his prosperity was built on stolen labor. And then, with no flourish, the defense simply stops: The words of Job are ended. He has said everything. The whole case rests. There is a kind of finality in those four words - a man who has laid his entire life open to inspection, named every sin he did not commit, staked everything he loves on the truth of it, and now falls silent before God. He has done all that integrity can do. He waits to be answered. And the deep current beneath the silence is this: Job has proven, exhaustively, that he is upright - and an upright man, by his own earlier confession, still cannot make himself just before God. The words of his self-defense are ended. The longing for One who could answer where his own righteousness could not is not.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Job 31 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the “covenant” (berit) Job makes with his eyes in verse 1, the just balance and integrity of verse 6, and the shared-Maker argument of verse 15 (did not one fashion us in the womb?).
- Job 31 ↔ Matthew 5 · Matthew 25 · James 1Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Job's covenant with mine eyes (v. 1) to the inward righteousness of whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her (Matt. 5:28), and his care for the widow and the fatherless (vv. 16-21) to the pure religion of James 1:27 and the least of these of Matthew 25:40.
- Job 31 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Job 31 - the legal form of the self-imprecation (“if I have done X, then let Y befall me”), the meaning of the “even balance” in verse 6, the gesture of the hand kissed to the sun and moon in verse 27, and the much-discussed phrase as Adam in verse 33.
- Art of the Ancient Near East · Heilbrunn TimelineThe Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Met's survey of the world Job belongs to - the merchant's balance scales behind “weighed in an even balance” (v. 6), the household servants of verse 13, and the worship of sun and moon (vv. 26-27) that Job refused as a denial of the God above.
Where this echoes in Scripture
I Made a Covenant with Mine Eyes
- Matthew 5:28Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.The inward righteousness Job reached for in his covenant with his eyes - the law pressed to the heart by the Lord Jesus.
- Psalm 101:3I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.The same covenant of the gaze - integrity guarded at the gate through which temptation enters.
- Job 9:2I know it is so of a truth: but how should man be just with God?Job’s own confession that even an upright man cannot be justified before God of himself - the integrity of chapter 31 points past itself.
- 1 Corinthians 1:30Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.The righteousness Job swore to, supplied as a gift - the One who kept the covenant perfectly given to us.
Did Not One Fashion Us in the Womb?
- Proverbs 14:31He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poor.Job’s very logic - how we treat the poor is bound up with our reverence for the God who made them.
- James 1:27Pure religion and undefiled before God… is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.The shape of Job’s mercy named as the heart of true religion - care for the widow and the fatherless.
- Matthew 25:40Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.The ground Job stood on - that what is done to the lowest is done before, and to, their Maker.
- Malachi 2:10Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?The shared-Maker conviction of verse 15 echoed by the prophet - one origin, and so one obligation of justice.
Let the Almighty Answer Me
- Job 19:25For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.The Redeemer Job had already named - the hope the upright man rests on where his own integrity cannot reach.
- Job 42:7Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.God’s own verdict - Job, not the friends, spoke rightly. The oath of chapter 31 is vindicated, not corrected.
- Matthew 6:3But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.The hidden, costly mercy Job practiced toward the poor - given in secret, before the God who sees.
- 1 Corinthians 1:30Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.The answer Job longed for - the righteousness no oath could secure, given in full in Christ.