Job 17:11 Commentary and Bible Study

Job falls back again to thinking of the miserable state that he is. His life is as good as over, for there is no prospect of recovery as far as he can see. A man’s purposes in life are like the bones of the skeleton which give shape to the body. Job’s purposes are all broken and his life crumples into a shapeless heap as a result. How can he maintain his purposes when all of them had to do with his place in the plan of God? Now that God has abandoned him he cannot set his hope on worshipping the Lord, or testifying of him to others, or teaching the rising generation. At every point that he would in the past have found bright source of meaning in life, he finds himself headed off and blocked by the insoluble problems that he faces. He fails to see how exaggerated are his complaints. They, the comforters, change night into day. Job cannot have anyone else in mind in changing to the third person, especially when he has just said there is not a wise man among them. Why does he accuse them of this? Because they make him a hypocrite under the judgment of God for secret sin, and although they offer a way of escape, it is on terms which Job can on no account accept. Yes, they will allow him the possibility of finding forgiveness, peace with God, restoration to their circle, but only if he will agree with their analysis of his condition. For Job this would be a false repentance, involving him in denying what he knows to be true. In this way they turn night into day. The light is near, they say, when in fact there is nothing but darkness in view and they have no power to conjure up the light which they offer him. Job would rather remain in the darkness of his present state than to take a false way of escape. He would rather face the confusion of being in a world in which he does not understand why God acts as he does, than to believe that man can please God, that God accommodates his standards to human weakness, that salvation can be obtained on their terms, and that the faith that he knows exists in his heart is not there. ‘Light is short because of darkness.’ The Hebrew contains the word ‘near’ and others translate this, ‘”The light is near”, they say, in the presence of darkness.’ This would then mean that they hold out the hope of light when all that exists is the darkness of their hopeless theology.