Job — Chapter 19

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: The second round of speeches goes on. Bildad has just spoken for the second time (ch 18), and his speech was a long, cold portrait of the wicked man's end. The wicked man's light is put out (18:5). He walks into a net and a trap (18:8–10). Terrors chase him, disease eats his skin, and he is marched off to "the king of terrors," death (18:13–14). Worst of all, "his memory perishes from the earth" and he leaves no children behind (18:17–19). Bildad never names Job, but he doesn't need to. Job has lost his children, his skin is diseased, and he sits in disgrace. Every detail fits. Now Job answers, in a speech that falls into four movements. He rebukes his friends (vv1–6), describes God as an army besieging him (vv7–12), lists everyone who has abandoned him (vv13–22), and then, out of the deepest loneliness in the book, rises to its most famous confession of faith: "I know that my Redeemer lives" (vv23–29). Handel set that line to music in Messiah, and Christians have sung it at gravesides for centuries. To hear it rightly, it helps to see how low Job is when he says it.

Job Replies: My Redeemer Lives (vv1–29)

• "How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words?" (v2). Bildad had opened his last two speeches with "How long?" (8:2; 18:2). Job throws the question back. Words can crush. The friends came to comfort, and their speeches have become one more blow.
• "These ten times you have cast reproach upon me" (v3). "Ten times" is not an exact count. The Tyndale notes explain that ten was a round number meaning "many times" (compare Gen 31:7; Num 14:22). "Are you not ashamed to wrong me?" JFB follows the older lexicon of Gesenius in taking the rare verb as "stun" or "stupefy" me. Either way, the friends have no shame about how they are treating him.
• "And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself" (v4). Job is not admitting guilt. He is saying, "Even suppose I had slipped somewhere. That is between me and God, and it is my burden to carry, not yours to prosecute." JFB notes that the word for "erred" describes an unintended mistake, not willful rebellion. Job knows of no deliberate sin. JFB adds that "remains" is literally "passes the night," like a guest who stays over, a picture of a fault that lodges with its owner and harms no one else.
• "Make my disgrace an argument against me" (v5). This is the friends' whole method. They look at Job's suffering and treat it as evidence. He is disgraced, so he must have done something disgraceful.
• "Know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me" (v6). Bildad said the wicked man walks into a net by his own feet (18:8). Job answers that this is not his own net. God threw it over him. "Put me in the wrong" means God has bent justice against him, at least as Job sees it. The Tyndale notes point out that Elihu and God himself will later reject this charge (34:12; 40:8). Guzik makes the same point gently: these are the words of a man in agony, not a settled doctrine. Job is right that his suffering is not a penalty for sin. He is wrong to conclude that God is being unfair.
• "Behold, I cry out, 'Violence!' but I am not answered" (v7). "Violence!" is the cry a person shouted when attacked, a call for anyone nearby to come and help. Jeremiah used the same cry (Jer 20:8), and Habakkuk asked how long he must cry "Violence!" without being heard (Hab 1:2). Job shouts, and no one comes. "There is no justice" means no court will hear his case.
• "He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass" (v8). Job had said this before: God has "hedged in" a man whose way is hidden (3:23). Now there is a wall across the road and darkness over it. JFB pictures a traveler lost at night with no way forward.
• "He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head" (v9). Job had been a leading man in his city, honored at the gate (29:7–11). He feels like a king who has been dethroned, his robes torn off and his crown taken.
• "My hope has he pulled up like a tree" (v10). In 14:7 Job said a cut-down tree has hope, because it can sprout again from its stump. This tree has been torn out by the roots. JFB notes that the hope Job means here is hope for this life. He has not yet spoken about the life to come. That comes in v25.
• "His troops come on together; they have cast up their siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent" (v12). An ancient army took a walled city by piling up an earth ramp against the wall. Job pictures God's troops building one against him. Then comes the bitter, almost absurd twist: all this siege equipment, and the target is a tent. Guzik, following the scholar Elmer Smick, points out the overkill in the image. Job is no fortress, only a fragile tent, and the whole army has surrounded it.
• "He has put my brothers far from me" (v13). The next section is the loneliest passage in Job. It moves inward in rings: brothers and acquaintances (v13), relatives and close friends (v14), guests and maidservants (v15), his own servant (v16), his wife and family (v17), even children (v18), and finally his most intimate friends (v19). Job says God did this ("he has put"), because he sees God behind everything. "Wholly estranged" uses the Hebrew verb zur. The lexicon defines it as to be or become a stranger. Watch that word. It comes back twice.
• "The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger" (v15). "Stranger" here is zar, the same root as "estranged" in v13. The lexicon lists this verse under "stranger to the family, of another household." Job has become an outsider in his own house. "Foreigner" makes it stronger still: the servants look at their master as though he came from another country.
• "I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy" (v16). A master who once gave orders now has to beg. JFB notes the servant in view may be a home-born slave, the most loyal kind, and even he will not answer.
• "My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother" (v17). Job's disease has made his breath foul, and his wife keeps her distance. The last time she spoke, she told him to "curse God and die" (2:9). "The children of my own mother" probably means his brothers. His own children are dead (1:18–19). The Tyndale notes list the possibilities: his clan, parents, children or siblings. JFB argues for the brothers, since the children had died. Guzik mentions the same problem and the suggestion of grandchildren or children of servants.
• "Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me" (v18). In the ancient Near East children rose when an elder entered. Job had once been treated with such respect that "the young men saw me and withdrew, and the aged rose and stood" (29:8). Now children mock him when he tries to get up.
• "All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me" (v19). "Intimate friends" is literally "men of my council," the people he shared secrets with. The Tyndale notes connect this to the psalms of betrayal: "Even my close friend in whom I trusted... has lifted his heel against me" (Ps 41:9; compare 55:12–14). Jesus quoted Psalm 41:9 about Judas (John 13:18).
• "I have escaped by the skin of my teeth" (v20). This is where the English phrase comes from. Job means he has barely escaped with his life. His body is skin and bone. The Hebrew is hard to pin down, and commentators have taken it in several ways. JFB reads it as a proverb meaning only his gums are left unbroken by sores. The Tyndale notes add that it may picture a skull, with nothing left of the face but teeth. Guzik lists several older guesses and doesn't press any of them. The point is clear either way: there is almost nothing left of Job.
• "Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!" (v21). The double plea is the most broken line in Job's speeches. He has given up arguing for a moment and simply asks for pity. "The hand of God has touched me" uses the very phrase Satan used in the heavenly court: "stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh" (2:5). The reader knows what Job does not: God did permit this, but for reasons Job cannot see.
• "Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?" (v22). "Pursue" is a hunting word (compare 10:16). Job says his friends have joined the hunt. "Not satisfied with my flesh" plays on an Aramaic phrase, "to eat someone's pieces," which meant to slander them (Dan 3:8 uses it of the men who accused Daniel's friends). JFB reads it the same way: the friends feed on Job with their accusations.
• "Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!" (v23). Job expects to die before he is cleared. So he wants a permanent record of his innocence. Bildad said the wicked man's memory perishes (18:17). Job wants his words to outlast him. The Tyndale notes take "book" as an inscription on a monument rather than a scroll.
• "Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!" (v24). Kings carved their victories into cliffs. The best-known example is the Behistun inscription of the Persian king Darius, cut high into a rock face in Iran. JFB explains the method: letters were cut into the rock and filled with molten lead so they would stand out. Job asks for that kind of permanence. In a way his wish came true. His words have been read for nearly three thousand years.
• "For I know that my Redeemer lives" (v25). This is the turn. A moment ago Job had no one: no brother, no friend, no servant, no wife. Now he says, "I know." The word "Redeemer" is go'el. The lexicon gives its basic meaning as "to act as kinsman, do the part of next of kin." In Israel's law, the go'el was a close relative with duties to a family member in trouble. He bought back land a poor relative had sold (Lev 25:25). He bought a relative out of slavery (Lev 25:48–49). He avenged a murdered relative as "the avenger of blood" (Num 35:19). Boaz acted as go'el for Ruth (Ruth 3:13; 4:1–6). The Tyndale notes add that the word belonged both to civil law (property, freedom) and criminal law (avenging blood). The lexicon lists Job 19:25 with the uses where God himself is the subject, alongside "the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel" (Isa 41:14; 54:5) and "the Redeemer of the fatherless" in Proverbs 23:10–11. All his human kin have abandoned him (vv13–19). So Job reaches for the one Kinsman who has not.
• Who is the Redeemer? (v25). Faithful readers have answered in three main ways. First, many take the Redeemer to be God himself. Job appeals from God as he seems to be, the besieging enemy of vv7–12, to God as he truly is, the Kinsman who will clear his name. The cross-references point this way, since they gather the passages where the LORD is called go'el (Isa 41:14; 54:5; 59:20; Ps 19:14). Second, some scholars think Job means a heavenly figure distinct from God, a defender in the heavenly court, in line with his earlier hope for an "arbiter" (9:33) and a "witness in heaven" (16:19). Third, Christian readers have long heard Christ here. Matthew Henry says plainly: "There is a Redeemer provided for fallen man, and Jesus Christ is that Redeemer." The Tyndale notes say Job's hope for a Redeemer, like his hope for an arbiter and a witness, could only come true in Christ (Eph 1:7; 1 Pet 1:18). Guzik agrees that Job, probably without knowing it, was looking ahead to Christ. These readings don't cancel each other. Job meant God. Christians believe God became that Kinsman in the flesh.
• "And at the last he will stand upon the earth" (v25). "At the last" is acharon, "last" or "after." The lexicon suggests that here it means "as one coming after me," that is, someone who will still be standing after Job is dead and can clear his name then. Isaiah uses the same word when God says, "I am the first and I am the last" (Isa 44:6). JFB takes that hint and reads it as a title of Christ, "the Last." "Earth" is 'aphar, "dust." The lexicon lists this verse under "surface of the ground," but elsewhere in Job the same word means the dust of the grave (17:16; 20:11). So the line may picture the Redeemer standing up over Job's grave as the final witness. "Stand" is the ordinary verb for rising, including rising in court to give testimony. JFB prefers "arise."
• "And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God" (v26). This verse is famously hard in Hebrew, and honest readers differ. "After my skin has been thus destroyed" is literally something like "after my skin, they have struck off this." Job means the death of his body, perhaps pictured as his disease finally finishing him off. The bigger question is the next phrase, mibbesari, literally "from my flesh." Hebrew "from" can mean "from within" or "apart from." The unfoldingWord translator notes give both. In my flesh, from inside a body, would be a hope of bodily resurrection. Apart from my flesh, as a spirit after death, is how the lexicon takes it here: "apart from my body, in disembodied state." The ESV, KJV and most Christian tradition read "in my flesh." JFB argues for the renewed body and rejects the "without flesh" reading. The Tyndale notes are more cautious: Job believed God would vindicate him, even if he died first. Whichever way the preposition goes, Job expects to see God after death. That is a big step beyond his despair in chapter 14, where he asked, "If a man dies, shall he live again?" (14:14).
• "Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another" (v27). "Not another" is zar, the "stranger" word from vv13 and 15. The lexicon lists this verse under the sense "another person." Job's family treated him as a stranger. When he sees God, it will be with his own eyes and not a stranger's. Many readers hear both senses at once: Job himself will see God, and God will no longer be a stranger to him. JFB puts it, Job will see God "no longer as one estranged" from him. The Tyndale notes connect this hope to "when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness" (Ps 17:15) and to the New Testament promise that "we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2; compare 1 Cor 13:12). In the translator notes, seeing a king's face was a mark of his favor. Job expects God to look on him not as a condemned man but as an innocent one.
• "My heart faints within me!" (v27). Literally, "my kidneys are spent in my chest." In Hebrew thought the kidneys were the seat of the deepest feelings, much as we speak of the heart. JFB explains it as pining with longing. Job is overwhelmed, not with despair this time, but with longing for that day.
• "If you say, 'How we will pursue him!' and, 'The root of the matter is found in him'" (v28). Job turns back to his friends. They plan to keep hunting him, convinced "the root of the matter," the real cause of his trouble, lies in Job himself. The standard Hebrew text actually reads "in me," as the KJV has it, while many Hebrew manuscripts and old translations read "in him," which the ESV follows. The meaning is much the same. JFB keeps "in me," notes the variant, and takes "root of the matter" in the opposite sense: the root of true integrity is in Job, and that is the very thing at issue. Matthew Henry applies the KJV phrasing beautifully: "A living, quickening, commanding, principle of grace in the heart, is the root of the matter."
• "Be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment" (v29). Job ends with a warning. If his Redeemer is coming to stand over his grave and judge, the friends who slandered him should be afraid. Their wrath against him is itself a sin that brings judgment. The Tyndale notes point ahead to the end of the book, where God is angry with the friends for not speaking rightly, yet shows them mercy when Job prays for them (42:7–8). Henry speaks of "the flaming sword of God's justice, which turns every way."
• Commentators: All three read vv25–27 as a real hope beyond death, and Henry and JFB as a hope of bodily resurrection. Henry says there "will be a latter day, a last day, a day when time shall be no more," and names Jesus Christ as the Redeemer outright. JFB calls the Redeemer Job's "Vindicator" and reads vv25–26 as the resurrection of the body. Its readings "the Last" (as a title of Christ) and "from my renewed flesh" are possible, but neither is required by the Hebrew. The lexicon actually takes mibbesari the other way, "apart from my body," as noted above. Guzik explains go'el as the kinsman who defends, avenges and vindicates, and says Job was probably reaching, without knowing it, toward Christ. He passes on F. B. Meyer's picture of a Kinsman beyond the heavens who will one day appear on the earth. Henry on the friends who deserted Job: "So uncertain is the friendship of men; but, if God be our friend, he will not fail us in a time of need." And on vv8–12: "It is a gross mistake, but a very common one, to think that whom God afflicts he treats as his enemies." JFB has no note on v14 and only a heading for v1. On v13 JFB sees Job's desertion by his kin as a foreshadowing of Christ's.

Pointing to Christ

Job's Redeemer was a kinsman, and the New Testament says God became one. The Son "partook of the same things," flesh and blood, so that he could free those held in fear of death (Heb 2:14–15). Like the go'el, he paid the price to buy back what was lost: "you were ransomed... not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ" (1 Pet 1:18–19). Like Job, he was deserted by his brothers, by his friends and by those he loved. His family thought he was out of his mind (Mark 3:21), and at the end "all the disciples left him and fled" (Matt 26:56). And Job's strange hope, that after his skin was destroyed he would see God with his own eyes, became solid ground on Easter morning. The Redeemer did stand up out of the dust. Because he lives, those who belong to him will too. Paul writes that Christ "will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body" (Phil 3:21), and John promises that "when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). Job said he would see God "and not another." The friend who stands over the grave at the last is no stranger.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik identifies vv.25-27 as the climax of Job's entire theological journey. The progression from arbiter (9:33) to witness (16:19) to Redeemer (19:25) shows faith growing through suffering, not merely surviving it. Guzik notes the Hebrew "goel" (redeemer/kinsman-redeemer) implies one who has the right and obligation to redeem — like Boaz for Ruth. Job's Redeemer is not merely willing but obligated by relationship to vindicate him. Guzik also emphasizes the physicality of v.26: "in my flesh I shall see God" — this is bodily resurrection, not disembodied spiritual existence.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• BibleProject: bibleproject.com On the whole book: the speech from the whirlwind, and why it answers Job the way it does.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Job -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Human Abandonment Isn't Divine Abandonment (vv.13-19) — Job catalogs how his wife, brothers, servants, friends, and even children have turned against him, leaving him utterly alone among people. When every earthly support fails you, can you still trust that God has not abandoned you the way people have?
• Faith Worth Preserving in Writing (vv.23-24) — Job wants his words about God permanently inscribed in rock, treating a moment of clarity in the darkness as something worth protecting for the future. When you have a moment of real conviction in a hard season, do you capture it so you can return to it later?
• "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" (v.25) — From total loss and isolation, Job declares not a hope but a certainty that his Redeemer lives and will one day stand on the earth. Can you say you know your Redeemer lives, or does your faith stay at the level of merely hoping it's true?
• Seeing God Face to Face (v.27) — Job insists he will see God personally and directly, not through anyone else's account, even after his body is destroyed. Does the hope of one day seeing God yourself change how you endure what feels unbearable now?