Job · chapter 9 of 42
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In Job 9 Job answers Bildad. He admits that God is just and powerful, that he moves mountains and made the constellations, but he asks how a mortal can be in the right before him. He fears that God would not listen and that he destroys the blameless and the wicked alike. He longs for an arbiter to lay a hand on both, and concludes there is none.
Job answers Bildad by accepting part of his argument: God is just and powerful. But he turns that truth into a problem: if God is so great, how can a human being contend with him? This chapter introduces an image that will be central to the book, that of a lawsuit with God, and moves the theme of suffering to the question of divine justice.
Job answers that he knows this is so: how can a person be in the right before God? If he wished to contend with him, he could not answer him once in a thousand times. God is wise in heart and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him and succeeded?
Then Job unfolds a hymn to the Creator's power. He removes mountains without their knowing it, overturns them in his anger; he shakes the earth out of its place and its pillars tremble; he commands the sun not to rise and seals up the stars. He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea; he made the Bear, Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south. He does great things beyond understanding, wonders without number. If he passes by Job, Job does not see him; if he moves on, Job does not perceive him.
So Job does not dare to argue. Even if he were righteous, he could not answer him, only plead with his judge for mercy. If he summoned him and God answered, Job does not believe he would listen, for he crushes him with a tempest and multiplies his wounds without cause. Even if Job were blameless, his own mouth would condemn him; he is blameless, yet he does not care about his life, he despises it. He makes a daring claim: God destroys both the blameless and the wicked, and when disaster brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked.
Job feels his days are swifter than a runner and flee without seeing good. Though he says he will forget his complaint, he is afraid; he knows God will not hold him innocent. Though he wash himself with snow and cleanse his hands with lye, God would plunge him into a pit. God is not a man like him, for him to answer or for them to go to court together. There is no arbiter to lay his hand on both. If God would take away his rod and not terrify him, Job would speak without fear.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Job grants that God is just, but asks how a person can be in the right before him. This is the central question of the chapter and defines Job's problem: he has his case, but does not know how to bring it before the Almighty.
God made the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, and does great things beyond understanding, wonders without number. Job looks at the stars as a sign that the Creator is far beyond any human lawsuit.
Job says that it is all one to God: he destroys the blameless and the wicked. It is one of the boldest claims in the book, which the narrator does not correct here but which God will patiently revisit later.
Job laments that there is no arbiter between them to lay his hand on both. His longing points to a human need that the New Testament sees fulfilled in Jesus, the one mediator between God and humanity.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: How a person can be in the right before God. — Job 9:2
Answer: He removes them without their knowing it and overturns them in his anger. — Job 9:5
Answer: The Bear, Orion and the Pleiades. — Job 9:9
Answer: Job does not see him or perceive him. — Job 9:11
Answer: That he destroys both. — Job 9:22
Answer: An arbiter between God and himself who would lay a hand on both. — Job 9:33
Job 9 shows us a believer who knows that God is great and does not know how to approach him. His pain turns into fear. There are times when faith feels like this: we believe in the Creator but fear that he does not listen. In your group, you can say frankly what makes you feel far from God at times.
For the Christian the chapter also has an answer Job did not know: the arbiter he longed for exists. Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and humanity, and through him we can approach the throne of grace with confidence. As you read Job, remember that our access to God does not depend on well-made words but on what Christ has done.
Job 9 ends with an unfulfilled longing: there is no arbiter, and Job cannot speak without fear. In Job 10 he will stop speaking about God and speak to him: he will say that his soul is weary of life and will ask why God treats him as an enemy.
It is someone who can mediate between two parties and lay a hand on both, that is, hold authority over them. Job feels that no one with that authority stands between God and him. For Christians, that hope finds its answer in Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and humanity.
Job comes very close to saying it, and his claim that God destroys the blameless and the wicked is a strong statement that the book will address later. Even so, Job does not stop addressing God or waiting for his answer. The text shows a faith that questions without abandoning.
They are constellations known in the ancient world, which Job names to show that God is the Creator of the heavens. They are not a lesson in astronomy but part of the poetic hymn about God's power. The exact identity of some Hebrew constellation names is debated among translators.