Job 13:23 Commentary and Bible Study

Job can see no reason why God should treat him so harshly other than that he is guilty and therefore God is punishing him for some obvious evil that he has done. And yet he is not conscious of having committed any such evil; he is not aware that he has abandoned his conscience and made shipwreck of his faith. He uses three words to describe the evil that he might have done. The word ‘iniquity’ means perversion and comes from a verb meaning ‘to bend, twist or distort’. This word describes the perversity of sin and how it twists and distorts what is good and true. The word ‘sin’ means ‘to miss, to miss the way, to go wrong, incur guilt, to miss the goal or path or right duty’. God sets before man a mark at which he is to aim. It is written on his heart and when he misses that mark, either accidentally or deliberately, he is guilty of sin. So Paul says in Romans, ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. The third term is ‘transgression’, which means rebellion or revolt against the commandment of God. When Job considers the world and all the evil in it and then thinks of his own heart and conduct, he sees no clear distinction between how God treats him and how he treats the openly sinful unbeliever.