Job Chapter 9

From The Open Bible Project

9:1 Then Job answered,

9:2 "Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?

• (a) Job here answers Eliphaz and Bildad’s oration, touching the justice of God, and his innocency, confessing God to be infinite in justice and man to be nothing in respect.

9:3 If he is pleased to contend with him, he can't answer him one time in a thousand.

• (b) Of a thousand things, which God could lay to his charge, man cannot answer him one.

9:4 God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?

9:5 He removes the mountains, and they don't know it, when he overturns them in his anger.

9:6 He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.

• (c) He declares the infirmity of man, by the mighty and incomprehensible power that is in God, showing what he could do if he would set forth his power.

9:7 He commands the sun, and it doesn't rise, and seals up the stars.

9:8 He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.

9:9 He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.

• (d) These are the names of certain stars by which he means that all stars both known and unknown are at his appointment.

9:10 He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.

9:11 Behold, he goes by me, and I don't see him. He passes on also, but I don't perceive him.

• (e) I am not able to comprehend his works, which are common and daily before my eyes, much less in those things, which are hid and secret.

9:12 Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, 'What are you doing?'

• (f) He shows that when God executes his power, he does it justly, as no one can control him.

9:13 "God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.

• (g) God will not be appeased for anything that man can say for himself for his justification.
• (h) That is, all the reasons that men can lay to approve their cause.

9:14 How much less shall I answer him, And choose my words to argue with him?

• (i) How should I be able to answer him by eloquence? By which he notes his friends, who although they were eloquent in talk, did not believe in their hearts, that which they spoke.

9:15 Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn't answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.

• (k) Meaning, in his own opinion, signifying that man will sometimes flatter himself to be righteous which before God is an abomination.

9:16 If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn't believe that he listened to my voice.

• (l) While I am in pain I cannot break forth into many inconveniences although I still know that God is just.

9:17 For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.

• (m) I am not able to feel my sins so great, as I feel the weight of his plagues; and this he speaks to condemn his dullness and to justify God.

9:18 He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.

9:19 If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, 'Who,' says he, 'will summon me?'

• (n) After he has accused his own weakness, he continues to justify God and his power.

9:20 Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse.

• (o) If I stood in my own defence yet God would have just cause to condemn me if he examined my heart and conscience.

9:21 I am blameless. I don't respect myself. I despise my life.

9:22 "It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.

• (p) If God punishes according to his justice, he will destroy them who are counted perfect as well as them that are wicked.

9:23 If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.

• (q) That is, the wicked.
• (r) This is spoken according to our apprehension, as though he would say, If God destroyed only the wicked, (Job 5:3), why would he allow the innocent to be so long tormented by them?

9:24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?

• (s) That they cannot see to do justice.
• (t) That can show the contrary?

9:25 "Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,

9:26 They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.

9:27 If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;'

• (u) I think not to fall into these afflictions, but my sorrows bring me to these manifold infirmities, and my conscience condemns me.

9:28 I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent.

9:29 I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?

• (x) Why does God not destroy me at once? thus he speaks according to the infirmity of the flesh.

9:30 If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,

• (y) Though I seem pure in my own eyes, yet all is but corruption before God.

9:31 yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.

• (z) Whatever I would use to cover my filthiness with, it would disclose me even more.

9:32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.

9:33 There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.

• (a) Who might make an accord between God and me, speaking of impatience, and yet confessing God to be just in punishing him.

9:34 Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;

9:35 then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.

• (b) Signifying that God’s judgments keep him in awe.