As Bildad’s turn to criticize Job comes around again, he insists that Job is the one who tears himself in his anger (18:4), and like all sinners he has brought his suffering on himself: “Surely the light of the wicked is put out … Their strong steps are shortened, and their own schemes are put down. For they are thrust into a net by their own feet, and they walk into a pitfall” (18:5-8).

Job responds, “How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? … if indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me” (19:2-6). But even though God has “kindled his wrath against me,” even though God “counts me as his adversary” (19:11), Job still has confidence that he will be found innocent: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (19:25-27).

It is an astonishing combination: I know that God has brought this suffering upon me without cause, and I know that God will vindicate me in the end. That is, God is against me right now, not because I deserve it but just because that’s what God has decided to do; but in the end God will be on my side. Job doesn’t yet know any way to reconcile these two facts; but he is confident that both of them will prove to be true.

We might well note that Job did not draw out the parallel all the way in his contrasting thoughts, which would have anticipated the New Testament insight that God will be for me in the end, not because I deserve it but just because that’s what God has decided to do. Still, Job is already much closer to that realization than his friends are, in their conventional wisdom.

* * * * *

Our flesh is frail, O Lord, and the road is hard: so many times we are so close to despair. Yet we set our faith in you, the Living Redeemer who will indeed rise up and defend us and enable us in the end to see you face to face.