Job 13:11 Commentary and Bible Study

Job charges them with being unafraid of judgment, and with being too fond of their own memorable sayings. When God becomes angry, do they imagine that it is a small matter, something easily coped with? Our being, our continued existence, is in his hands. How can we withstand his anger? If God is against us, who can be for us? His terror undermines every other pleasure, every other joy. It fills us with foreboding on the brightest, most beautiful summer’s day, so that we can find no peace, no place to hide from his anger. The guilt of sin enters into our bones like rottenness. The guilty are afraid at his excellence because they know that he has an uncompromising commitment to righteousness. They lack the only thing that could make them acceptable to God. His excellence is against them so that the more they see his glory, the more they see their own destruction. It was easy for Job to speak of the dread of God, for his soul was filled with a sense of God overwhelming awesomeness. The dread of God combines with the dread of all his instruments of judgment and we fall down before the least of them knowing that we do not have the resources to withstand him for a moment. He is like a king with a small army faced with a great mass of forces and weaponry as his adversary comes towards him.