Job Refuses a Defence of God Built from False Charges

“All this” is the catalogue of divine reversals he has just recited in chapter 12. Eye and ear make his knowledge first-hand, set against Eliphaz’s “as I have seen” (4:8) and Bildad’s inherited learning from the fathers (8:8).

Job’s claim to equal knowledge, first made in 12:3, is restated before he turns away from the friends. What they know he concedes; the quarrel is over what that knowledge proves about him.

“Surely” is a strong “but”: but I want something else. “Desire” is chaphets, to take pleasure in. Job actually wants the hearing that the friends treat as a threat. “Reason” is the courtroom verb again, to argue a case.

“Forgers of lies” is literally “plasterers of falsehood”, men who smear whitewash over cracks, the charge Ezekiel lays against false prophets (13:10–11). “Of no value” is elil, a worthless thing, the same word the prophets use for idols.

Proverbs 17:28 says the same thing with a straight face: “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise.” Job offers it as a prescription.

Two legal terms open a formal defence: “reasoning” is tokhachath, an argued case, and “pleadings” are rivoth, the points of a lawsuit. Job asks the court to come to order.

“Wickedly” and “deceitfully” are the two words Job will later swear never to use himself: “my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit” (27:4). He accuses the friends of acting as God’s defence counsel with a crooked brief.

“Accept his person” is literally “lift up his face”, the court idiom for partiality that the law forbids to judges (Leviticus 19:15). Showing favour to God is still showing favour, and a judge may not do it.

“Search you out” is chaqar, the verb of Eliphaz’s boast in 5:27, “we have searched it”. The investigators are threatened with investigation. “Mock” is the word for trifling with someone, as Laban deceived Jacob (Genesis 31:7).

“Surely reprove” doubles the verb yakach for emphasis, the root of the daysman in 9:33. Job says God himself will argue the case against them. In 42:7 the LORD does, telling Eliphaz his wrath is kindled against all three.

“Excellency” is seeth, a rising up, used in 41:25 of Leviathan rearing up so that the mighty are afraid. Job has asked for God’s dread to be taken off himself (9:34); here he wishes some of it on the friends.

“Remembrances” are memorable sayings, maxims, and the Hebrew puns on mashal, both “like” and “proverb”: your proverbs are proverbs of ashes. “Bodies” is gab, the boss of a shield or a rampart: your defences are defences of clay.

“Let me alone” was addressed to God in 7:16 and 10:20; now Job says it to the friends. “Let come on me what will” is literally “let whatever pass over me”: he accepts the risk before naming it.

“Take my flesh in my teeth” pictures an animal carrying its prey in its jaws, gambling on not dropping it. “Put my life in mine hand” is the idiom for risking one’s life, used by Jephthah (Judges 12:3) and David (1 Samuel 19:5).

“Slay” is qatal, a rare verb in Hebrew, found only three times. “Maintain mine own ways before him” is literally “argue my ways to his face”, so the face language of 1:11 and 6:28 returns: Job will say it to God’s face.

Paul quotes the Greek of this line from prison in Philippians 1:19, “this shall turn to my salvation”. “Hypocrite” is chaneph, the godless. Job’s logic is that a godless man would never volunteer to stand before God.

“Hear diligently” doubles the verb, “hear, hearing”, a Hebrew way of saying listen carefully. “Declaration” is a rare word for a statement or disclosure, what a witness sets on record.

“Ordered my cause” uses arak, the verb for drawing up battle lines, the word used in 6:4 when God’s terrors were set in array against him. Now Job draws up his own case in order. “Justified” means vindicated by the verdict.

“Who is he that will plead with me?” is the challenge of one confident of acquittal; the Servant in Isaiah 50:8 says almost the same. The second half is stark: if he kept silent now, he would die.

The two things are named in the next verse. “Hide myself” recalls Adam hiding among the trees (Genesis 3:8), and sets up verse 24, where it is God who hides his face.

“Thine hand” is kaph, the palm, the hand Satan asked God to put forth in 1:11. The two conditions match 9:34, rod and terror, but there Job spoke of God as “him”; now he says “thou”.

The LORD in the end takes up the first option: “I will demand of thee, and answer thou me” (38:3, 40:7). Job, at the close, quotes that phrase back to God in 42:4.

Iniquity, sin and transgression are the three words of Exodus 34:7, the LORD “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”. Job asks for the list of charges under all three heads.

The hidden face is the lament of Psalm 13:1. “Enemy” is oyeb, which in Hebrew is almost the same word as Job’s name, Iyyob. Job hears himself renamed.

A shaken leaf is the covenant curse of Leviticus 26:36, “the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them”. “Pursue” is radaph, to hunt. The mismatch is the point: a warrior chasing chaff.

“Writest bitter things” is the picture of a judge writing out an indictment, as in Isaiah 10:1, “that write grievousness”. The sins of youth are what David asked God not to remember (Psalm 25:7).

The stocks were a wooden block fastening the feet, as Paul and Silas were held in Philippi (Acts 16:24). “Settest a print upon the heels” may mean drawing a line round the soles, marking how far the prisoner may move.

The sudden “he” is Job speaking of mortal man in general, and it leads straight into 14:1; some translations move the verse after 14:2. The moth-eaten garment is Isaiah’s image too (Isaiah 50:9).