The Signed Defence

“A maid” is betulah, a young unmarried woman, and “think upon” means to fix one's gaze. A covenant is normally made between two parties; Job makes one with a part of his own body. The first item of his defence is not a deed at all but a look.

“Portion” and “inheritance” are the pair Zophar used in 20:29 for what God allots the wicked, and Job used in 27:13. Here Job asks what share the man who indulges his eyes would receive from God on high, and the next verse gives the answer.

“A strange punishment” is nekher, a calamity that alienates, a disaster out of the ordinary. “Workers of iniquity” is the stock phrase of the Psalms for evildoers (Psalm 5:5, 6:8). Job assumes, as the friends do, that such people have ruin coming.

In 14:16 Job complained, “thou numberest my steps: dost thou not watch over my sin?” The counting that once felt like surveillance is now called as evidence. If God has counted every step, God knows where they went.

“Vanity” is shav', emptiness or falsehood, the word in the commandment against taking God's name “in vain”. A foot that “hasted to deceit” is the picture of Proverbs 1:16, “their feet run to evil.” Walking and hurrying cover the slow drift and the eager rush.

In 6:2 Job wished his grief could be weighed on scales against the sand of the sea. Now he asks for his own integrity to be put on them. “An even balance” is literally scales of righteousness, the honest weights Leviticus 19:36 demands of every trader.

A heart walking after the eyes is the danger Numbers 15:39 warns of: “seek not after your own heart and your own eyes.” “Blot” is mum, the word for a defect that disqualified an animal from sacrifice (Leviticus 22:20), here a stain of guilt stuck to the hand.

Sowing for someone else to reap is one of the curses of the covenant in Leviticus 26:16 and Deuteronomy 28:30. “Offspring” can also mean produce, whatever springs up, so the curse may fall on the crop rather than on children.

“Deceived” is pathah, to be enticed or seduced, the verb used of seduction in Exodus 22:16. Lying in wait at a neighbour's door recalls the adulterer of 24:15 who waits for twilight. Job pictures the whole sequence, from a heart lured to feet planted outside another man's house.

Grinding grain at the hand mill was the lowest drudgery of a household, the work of “the maidservant that is behind the mill” (Exodus 11:5), and the expression may also be a euphemism. Isaiah 47:2 uses grinding for the humiliation of a captive woman.

“Heinous crime” is zimmah, a deliberate lewdness or wicked scheme, used in Leviticus 18:17 and 20:14 for gross sexual sin. “An iniquity to be punished by the judges” means a matter for the courts, not a private lapse to be settled quietly.

The fire burns “to destruction”, literally to Abaddon, the place of ruin named in 26:6 and 28:22. Proverbs 6:27–29 uses the same image of adultery: “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” It consumes the adulterer's own harvest.

“Contended” is riv, to bring a lawsuit, the word Job uses for his own case against God. He claims to have allowed his servants the very thing he now demands from heaven: a hearing in which the lesser party may argue against the greater.

“Riseth up” pictures God rising to judge, and “visiteth” is paqad, to inspect or call to account, as a king inspects his officials. In 7:18 Job complained that God visits man every morning. Here he admits he would have no answer if such a visit exposed injustice to a servant.

Proverbs 22:2 makes the same point in a single line: “The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all.” Malachi 2:10 asks, “hath not one God created us?” The verb for fashioned in the womb is the one Job used of his own making in 10:8–11.

Eyes that “fail” are worn out from watching for help that never arrives, as in Lamentations 4:17, “our eyes as yet failed for our vain help.” Job denies being the man a widow watched the road for in vain.

“Morsel” is pat, a piece of bread. Sharing the table was the heart of hospitality; Boaz invites Ruth to “dip thy morsel in the vinegar” with his reapers (Ruth 2:14). Eating alone while an orphan went hungry would be a meanness even without any law against it.

The parenthesis interrupts the list to say this care was lifelong. The first half can also be read “from my youth he brought me up as a father”, taking God as the one who raised Job. The King James reads it as the orphan raised by Job, and the widow guided by him.

“Perish” is the same word as in 29:13, “him that was ready to perish.” The verse answers Eliphaz's charge in 22:6 that Job “stripped the naked of their clothing” with its exact opposite: no one without covering was left that way while he could see it.

The loins, the part of the body a cloak covers, are pictured as blessing him, the warmed body giving thanks for what the mouth might never say. The prologue listed seven thousand sheep in Job's flocks (1:3), and the wool was not all kept at home.

The gate was the court, where Job had friends among the elders (29:7). Raising a hand against the orphan may be a threat or a vote in the assembly; either way he had backing to win. In 6:27 Job accused the friends of the very thing: “ye overwhelm the fatherless.”

The curse fits the crime limb for limb: the arm that was raised should fall from the shoulder blade. “From the bone” is literally from the reed, probably the upper arm bone or the socket in which it turns.

“His highness” is se'eth, God's majesty or exaltation, the word Job threw at the friends in 13:11, “Shall not his excellency make you afraid?” Job claims to have lived with the fear he told them they lacked. It kept him from using the gate against the weak.

Eliphaz promised in 22:24–25 that if Job returned, God would be his gold. Job answers that gold was never his god in the first place. Psalm 52:7 names the man who “trusted in the abundance of his riches”, and Job denies being him.

“Mine hand had gotten much” is almost exactly the boast Deuteronomy 8:17 warns against: “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.” Job does not deny being rich; he denies taking the credit or the joy in it that belongs to God.

“The moon walking in brightness” is the moon in stately procession across the sky, a sight that drew worship across the ancient world. Deuteronomy 4:19 warns against being “driven to worship” sun, moon and stars when one lifts up one's eyes to them.

“Secretly enticed” uses pathah again, the verb of verse 9 for a heart deceived by a woman. Idolatry is pictured as a seduction. Kissing was an act of homage to an idol (1 Kings 19:18, Hosea 13:2), and kissing the hand toward a heavenly body blew that homage across the distance.

“Denied” is kichesh, to lie to or play false. For the second time an offence is called a matter for the judges, and Israel's law did treat worship of the sun and moon as a capital case (Deuteronomy 17:2–5). Job calls it treason against the God above.

Proverbs 24:17 commands, “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth,” and Exodus 23:4–5 requires returning an enemy's straying ox. “Lifted up myself” means exulted or roused himself in glee when harm found his enemy. Job claims to have kept that satisfaction down.

“Suffered my mouth to sin” recalls the verdict of 2:10: “In all this did not Job sin with his lips.” Job cursed the day he was born (3:1), but he says he never put a curse on the life of a man who hated him, even when it might have seemed deserved.

The verse is difficult, but a common reading takes the household as witnesses to Job's generosity: “Who can find anyone who has not been filled with his meat?” The men of his tent could testify that no guest went away hungry from his table.

The stranger is the ger, the traveller with no local kin. Lot urged two strangers into his house when they offered to “abide in the street all night” (Genesis 19:2), and Abraham ran from his tent door to bring guests in (Genesis 18:1–5). Job claims the same open door.

The bosom was the fold of the robe above the belt, used as a pocket; something hidden there was carried close and kept out of sight. Job denies keeping a guilty secret tucked into his clothing while presenting a clean face to the world.

Exodus 23:2 forbids following a multitude to do evil, and this is the fear behind that law: the crowd and the scorn of the clans. A man who had sat at the gate (29:7) could not stay indoors without people noticing. Job says he never retreated behind his door to avoid exposure.

“Mine adversary” is literally “the man of my lawsuit”, the opposing party. The reader knows something Job does not: the one who raised the question about him in heaven was the adversary, the satan, of 1:6–12. Job has never seen that charge sheet.

A document of office worn on the shoulder or bound on the head was a sign of honour; Isaiah 22:22 places the key of David's house on a steward's shoulder. Job would wear the indictment the way an official wears his badge, so sure is he that it contains nothing true.

In verse 4 God counts Job's steps; here Job offers to recite them himself. “As a prince” is nagid, a leader, one who walks forward with head up. He would approach his judge not creeping but upright, the posture he will not keep when God actually speaks (40:4).

The land crying out echoes Genesis 4:10, where Abel's blood cries to God from the ground. The furrows “complain” is literally “weep together”. Ground was thought to know what was done on it, and to be able to testify.

“Without money” means without paying for the produce or the labour, the wrong Jeremiah 22:13 condemns in one who “useth his neighbour's service without wages”. Causing owners to lose their life is the crime of Naboth's vineyard (1 Kings 21), land acquired by killing its owner.

Thistles recall the curse on the ground in Genesis 3:18, and “cockle” is bo'shah, a stinking weed, from a root meaning to stink. The closing line resembles Psalm 72:20, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended”, a note marking the end of a collection.