Job 9

This chapter belongs to the first cycle of debate within the dialogue section of the Book of Job. In Job 8, Bildad asserted that God does not pervert justice. Job replies in this chapter and in Job 10.

Outline

• Verses 1–4 Job concedes that Bildad's words are true, yet he asks how a man can be righteous before God. Even if someone tried to contend with God, he could not answer Him one time in a thousand.
• Verses 5–10 Job extols the power of God, who removes mountains and shakes the earth, commands the sun and the stars, stretches out the heavens, and made Arcturus, Orion, the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.
• Verses 11–13 God passes by unseen, and when He takes away, no one can hinder Him. Even the helpers of Rahab stoop beneath Him.
• Verses 14–21 Job says that even if he were righteous, he could not answer God but could only make supplication. He laments that God breaks him with a tempest without cause, and he maintains that he is blameless.
• Verses 22–24 Job protests that God destroys both the blameless and the wicked, and that the earth has been given into the hand of the wicked.
• Verses 25–31 Job laments that his days pass more swiftly than a post (a runner), than swift ships, and than an eagle. Even if he washed himself with snow water, God would plunge him into the filthy ditch again.
• Verses 32–35 Job says that God is not a man whom he could face in judgment, and that there is no arbiter to lay his hand upon them both. If God would take His rod away, Job would speak without fear.

Key Verses

• Job 9:2 "How should man be just with God?" — This question runs through the entire Book of Job. It asks how a human being can be righteous before God.
• Job 9:33 "Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." — This verse is the first expression of a longing for a mediator to stand between God and humanity.

People and Places

• Job: The speaker in this chapter.
• Bildad: One of Job's three friends. This chapter is a reply to his speech.
• Rahab (verse 13): Not Rahab, the woman of Jericho. The name is understood as that of a monster symbolizing chaos or the sea in ancient Near Eastern literature and in the poetic books of the Old Testament.

Points for Reflection

• The names of the constellations in verse 9 are renderings of Hebrew words. They are commonly identified as Ursa Major, Orion, and the Pleiades, but exactly which stars are meant remains uncertain.
• Interpreters differ on Job's vehement protest in verses 22–24. Some regard it as an honest lament uttered in suffering; others regard it as excessive speech. At the conclusion of the book, God says that Job spoke more rightly than his friends (Job 42:7–10), and this statement is also taken into account.
• In Christian tradition, the arbiter of Job 9:32–33 is sometimes read as a longing that looks toward Christ, the mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5–6). Others hold that the passage should be read only within the context of the Book of Job. This longing later develops into Job's confession of a witness in heaven (Job 16:19–21) and of a redeemer.
• Some interpreters connect the phrase "treadeth upon the waves of the sea" in verse 8 with Jesus' walking on the water.