Job — Chapter 23

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: The third and last round of speeches has begun, and the friends have dropped all pretense. In the first two rounds they described "the wicked man" and let Job draw his own conclusions. Now Eliphaz, the oldest and gentlest of the three, accuses Job to his face. "Is not your evil abundant? There is no end to your iniquities" (22:5). He lists the sins Job must have committed: taking pledges from his brothers "for nothing," stripping the naked, withholding bread from the hungry, sending widows away empty (22:6–9). None of it is true, and God himself had called Job "blameless and upright" (1:8). Eliphaz also puts words in Job's mouth: "You say, 'What does God know? Can he judge through the deep darkness?'" (22:13). Then he closes with an appeal that sounds pious: "Agree with God, and be at peace" (22:21), "lay up his words in your heart" (22:22), repent and "you will be built up" (22:23). Chapter 23 is the first half of Job's reply (it runs through ch 24). What stands out is how little of it is spent on Eliphaz. Job barely answers the false charges. He turns instead to the thing that really haunts him. He wants to find God, stand before him and be heard, and he cannot. The chapter swings between longing (vv2–7), bewilderment (vv8–9), confidence (vv10–12) and fear (vv13–17), and it holds one of the most loved lines in the book: "when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold."

Job Replies: Where Is God? (vv1–17)

• "Today also my complaint is bitter" (v2). "Today also" means "even now." After all of Eliphaz's arguments, nothing has changed. JFB wonders whether the word hints that the debate had stretched over "more days than one." The word the ESV renders "bitter" is meri. The lexicon's ordinary meaning for it is "rebellion," and it lists this verse under that sense. Most translations read "bitter," a closely related Hebrew word, because it fits the line better. If "rebellion" is right, Job may be saying something like, "Even today my complaint is counted as rebellion," a glance at friends who treat every honest cry as defiance. Either way, Job will not pretend his grief is smaller than it is.
• "My hand is heavy on account of my groaning" (v2). This line has a small textual question. The standard Hebrew text reads "my hand," and the ESV follows it. The unfoldingWord translator notes take it as Job pressing his hand down on his groaning to hold it in: he has said less than he could. The ancient Greek and Syriac versions read "his hand," and some modern versions (such as the NIV) follow them: God's hand lies heavy on me in spite of my groaning. The King James has "my stroke is heavier than my groaning," meaning the blow is worse than the complaint. Matthew Henry works from that reading: "I do not complain more than there is cause; for my stroke is heavier than my groaning." He adds a fair warning for any sufferer: "We wrong God if our groaning be heavier than our stroke."- "Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat!" (v3). This is the heart of the chapter. Job's first cry is not for his health, his wealth or his children back. It is for God. "Seat" is tekunah, a rare word that the lexicon defines as a "fixed place," and here God's dwelling place. Job pictures God enthroned somewhere, like a king holding court, and he wants to walk in and stand before him. He has said this before: "I desire to argue my case with God" (13:3). The cross-references also link this verse to Isaiah: "Truly, you are a God who hides himself" (Isa 45:15).
• "I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments" (v4). The language is legal. "Lay my case" is to set out a lawsuit in order, the way a lawyer arranges evidence. "Arguments" is tokachot, which the lexicon defines as an argument or formal plea spoken by the lips (the same word as "Hear now my argument" in 13:6). Elsewhere it often means "rebuke." The Tyndale notes connect Job's wish with others who pleaded their case directly with God: Abraham over Sodom (Gen 18:25–32) and Moses for Israel (Exod 32:12–13).- "I would know what he would answer me" (v5). Job wants to hear God's side, not just give his own. This is not the speech of a man who has walked away from God. JFB puts the point simply: "it little matters what man may say of me, if only I know what God judges of me." God will answer, out of the whirlwind (38:1), but not as Job expects.
• "Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; he would pay attention to me" (v6). A real change from earlier speeches. In chapter 9 Job was afraid that God's sheer power would crush him in any trial. "There is no arbiter between us," he said, and he begged God to keep his terrors away (9:32–35). The Tyndale notes observe that here he has more hope. He now believes God would give him a fair hearing. JFB: "Do I hereby wish that He should plead against me with His omnipotence? Far from it!"
• "There an upright man could argue with him, and I would be acquitted forever by my judge" (v7). "Argue" is yakach, the same root as "arguments" in v4. The lexicon lists its senses as decide, prove, reason and reprove. It is the very verb Eliphaz used when he sneered, "Is it for your fear of him that he reproves you?" (22:4). Eliphaz says God is reproving Job. Job says he would gladly reason with God. "Acquitted" is from palat, usually "deliver" or "escape." The lexicon notes the grammar here is unusual and the exact sense uncertain, but the line is clear enough: a fair trial would end in a verdict of innocent. The Tyndale notes point out that Job is not asking to be forgiven as a guilty man. He wants to be declared innocent. Henry, writing as a Christian, adds a gentle correction: "there is no flying from his justice but by flying to his mercy."
• "Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him" (v8). Now the longing runs into a wall. Job searches every direction and finds nothing. JFB explains the directions: "The Hebrew geographers faced the east." Forward is east, backward is west, the left hand is north and the right is south. That is why some translations render vv8–9 as east, west, north and south. Job has looked to the four corners of the earth.
• "On the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him" (v9). God is at work, and Job knows it. He just can't see him doing it. This is the experience Christians have long called the hiddenness of God. The reader knows what Job does not. God has not left. He has been speaking of Job with pride in the heavenly court (1:8; 2:3). Guzik passes on G. Campbell Morgan's story of an old Puritan who said Job had looked in every direction but one: he should have looked up.
• "But he knows the way that I take" (v10). This is the turning point. Job cannot find God, but God has not lost track of Job. Eliphaz had accused Job of thinking that God cannot see through the darkness (22:13–14). Job says the opposite. God sees perfectly. That is the whole reason he wants a hearing. The cross-references link the line to Psalm 139: "You search out my path... and are acquainted with all my ways" (Ps 139:3).
• "When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (v10). "Tried" is bachan, to examine or test. The lexicon lists this verse first under the sense "prove, test, try... with the metaphor of gold," alongside Zechariah 13:9, "I will... test them as gold is tested." Metalworkers heated gold to find out whether it was genuine and to burn off what was not. Readers take Job's words in two ways. The Tyndale notes, and Guzik following Francis Andersen, read it as a claim of innocence: the test will show that Job was pure gold all along. He does not need to be "built up" by repenting of sins he never committed, as Eliphaz urged (22:23). Henry reads it as refining as well as proving: Job will "come forth as gold approved and improved, found to be good and made to be better." The book as a whole supports both. Job is right that he is not being punished. Yet by the end he will also be changed, saying, "now my eye sees you" (42:5). The cross-references point to Proverbs: "The furnace is for gold, and the LORD tests hearts" (Prov 17:3). Peter picks up the picture for Christians under trial: faith "more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire" (1 Pet 1:7).
• "My foot has held fast to his steps; I have kept his way and have not turned aside" (v11). Job's confidence rests on how he has lived. The picture is of a traveler following a guide closely, stepping exactly where he steps. JFB: "The law is in Old Testament poetry regarded as a way, God going before us as our guide." Henry puts it in a sentence: "Good people are followers of God." Job is not claiming to be sinless. He is saying he never left the road.
• "I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food" (v12). Eliphaz had told Job to "lay up his words in your heart" (22:22). Job answers that he had done so long before. The cross-references pair the two verses. JFB catches the tone: "There was no need to tell me so; I have done so already." "Treasured" is tsaphan, which the lexicon defines as "hide, treasure up." It is the verb of Psalm 119:11, "I have stored up your word in my heart." Guzik passes on Spurgeon's suggestion that the picture is of hiding grain away, the way desert families hid their food stores from raiders. The lexicon supports the idea of storing something precious out of sight, though not the specific background. "My portion of food" translates choq, which the lexicon defines as something prescribed: an allotted portion, a set ration, or a decree. Job valued God's words more than his daily ration. (The lexicon notes that the old Greek and Latin versions read "in my bosom" instead.) Henry: "The word of God is to our souls what our necessary food is to our bodies." Jesus said much the same when he quoted Deuteronomy: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt 4:4).
• "But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back?" (v13). Then the mood darkens again. The Hebrew is very short, literally "but he is in one." The unfoldingWord notes take it to mean "he is of one mind," and the King James has "he is in one mind." The ESV's "unchangeable" says the same thing. Some versions read "he is unique," and Guzik passes on Elmer Smick's view that it is a statement of monotheism: there is only one God. The lexicon entry for echad ("one") does not settle the question. The phrase is unusual, and the context of the verse (who can turn him back?) favors a fixed purpose. The Tyndale notes gather other passages that say no one can change God's mind (9:12; Num 23:19; Jas 1:17). For Job this is not yet comforting. God's mind is made up, and Job cannot see what it is.
• "What he desires, that he does" (v13). Literally, "his soul desires, and he does it." Henry draws a careful line here: "Prayer has prevailed to change God's way and his providence, but never was his will or purpose changed."
• "For he will complete what he appoints for me, and many such things are in his mind" (v14). "What he appoints for me" is chuqqi, "my portion" or "my decree." It is the same word, with the same ending, that Job used in v12 for "my portion of food." The lexicon lists this verse under the sense of a decree, "destiny of man." The wordplay is quiet but real. Job has treasured God's words more than his daily portion, and now God is carrying out the portion he has allotted to Job, a portion of suffering. "Many such things are in his mind" could mean that God has many more trials in store for Job. JFB reads it so: "He has yet many more such ills in store for me." It could also mean that God has many purposes no one can see, and Job's case is one of them. The reader, who has seen chapters 1–2, knows the second is true.
• "Therefore I am terrified at his presence; when I consider, I am in dread of him" (v15). A few verses ago Job longed to come into God's presence. Now the thought of it terrifies him. Both are honest. "When I consider" means when Job thinks it through: a God who cannot be found, cannot be turned and has already decided. The Tyndale notes point to psalms with the same mix of faith and terror (Ps 77:3; 88:16; 119:120). JFB explains the fear as the dread of "God's decrees, impossible to be resisted, and leaving us in the dark as to what may come next."
• "God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me" (v16). "Made faint" is rakak in its causative form, to make soft or tender. The lexicon lists the simple form for a heart that is timid and afraid (Deut 20:3), and also for a heart that is softened and humbled before God, as King Josiah's was (2 Kgs 22:19). Here the sense is fear. But Henry sees the second sense in it too: "The Almighty troubled him, and so made his heart soft." God's dealings were breaking Job down, but they were also making him tender. JFB hears a deeper echo: "Here again Job's language is that of Jesus Christ (Ps 22:14)," where the sufferer says, "my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast."
• "Yet I am not silenced because of the darkness, nor because thick darkness covers my face" (v17). The last line is hard, and translations divide. "Silenced" is tsamat. The lexicon's main meaning is "put an end to" or "annihilate," and it lists this verse as "I am not annihilated because of the darkness." The lexicon also notes that the related Arabic and Syriac words mean "be silent," which is how the ESV takes it. Read that way, the line is defiant: the darkness surrounds Job, but it has not shut his mouth, and it has not destroyed him. He will keep speaking to God. The older reading, followed by the King James, Henry and JFB, is "I was not cut off before the darkness." JFB: "Because I was not taken away by death from the evil to come." That is a lament: Job wishes he had died before all this came on him, as in chapter 3. The unfoldingWord notes list both. "Thick darkness" is ophel, a poetic word for deep gloom. The lexicon lists this verse under its figurative sense of calamity. Eliphaz had said darkness fell on Job because of his sins (22:11), and the Tyndale notes show the friends saying it all along (15:22; 18:6, 18). Job agrees that he is in the dark. He does not agree about why. On the ESV's reading, the chapter ends not in silence but in a man who keeps talking to a God he cannot see.
• Commentators: All three see the chapter as a mix of longing, faith and fear. Henry divides it neatly into Job's "complaint" (vv2–5, 8–9, 13–17) and his "comfort" (vv6–7, 10–12). He says Job "comforts himself with the assurance of God's clemency" and with "his own integrity, which God himself was a witness to." Guzik, drawing on Spurgeon, stresses that Job's first cry is for God himself, not for relief, and on v10 notes that only precious metal is put into the fire. On the meaning of "gold" the commentators differ. Henry speaks of being "improved" as well as approved. Guzik (through Andersen) and the Tyndale notes read the test as proving Job was already genuine. Henry also reminds readers that "The trial will have an end. God will not contend for ever." JFB is the most technical. It explains the four directions of vv8–9 and stresses Job's quarrel with Eliphaz's advice in v12. It reads vv13–14 more darkly than the others, as God being "unaltered in His purpose of proving me guilty." On v17 Henry and JFB both follow the older "not cut off" reading against the ESV. Guzik closes with Mason's observation that Job's faith and his fear keep showing up together, and neither cancels the other. JFB has no comment on v1.

Pointing to Christ

Job wanted three things in this chapter: to find God's seat, to stand before him and be heard, and to be declared righteous. He could not find the way. The New Testament says the way has been opened. Christians "have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us" (Heb 10:19–20), and so "with confidence draw near to the throne of grace" (Heb 4:16). The arbiter Job longed for (9:33) has come, the one mediator between God and men (1 Tim 2:5). There is a difference, though. Job hoped to be acquitted for his own uprightness. Henry is right that sinners can only fly from God's justice by flying to his mercy, and the gospel offers a righteousness that is not our own (Phil 3:9). The chapter also points to Christ in another way. Job's words fit Jesus better than they fit Job himself. Jesus could say without exaggeration, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me" (John 4:34). He kept God's way and never turned aside. He was tried, and came out as pure gold. Yet on the cross he entered a darkness deeper than Job's, when "there was darkness over all the land" and he cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt 27:45–46). Like Job, he was not silenced by the darkness. He cried out to God in it. And because he passed through that darkness, those who trust him can say with Job, even when God seems hidden, "he knows the way that I take."

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik emphasizes that verse 10 is remarkable because Job expresses confidence in God's refining purpose while being unable to find God. This is not fair-weather faith but furnace faith. Guzik notes the contrast between Job's longing for God (v.3) and his terror of God (v.15) — both are genuine, and both coexist in the soul of a suffering believer.
• 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.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Longing for God Is Itself Faith (v.3) — Job cannot locate God anywhere, yet he never stops searching for Him, revealing that the ache to find God is itself a form of living faith. When God feels distant, does your longing to find Him prove your faith is alive rather than gone?
• Known Even When You Can't Find Him (v.10) — Job declares that even though he cannot see God, God knows the path he's walking and will bring him through the trial refined like gold. Can you trust that God is tracking your path even in the seasons when you can't sense His presence at all?
• Treasuring God's Word Above Comfort (v.12) — Job says he has prized God's commands more than his own necessary food, holding onto God's word even while everything else in his life has fallen apart. When your circumstances don't match what you expected from following God, do you still hold on to what He has said?
• Sovereignty That Comforts and Terrifies (vv.13-15) — Job affirms that God does whatever He pleases and is unchangeable, and that same truth both steadies him and makes him tremble. Does God's unshakable sovereignty feel more like peace or more like fear to you right now, and can it be both?