Job 17:6 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 17:6

Comments

Job had to bear the great indignity of having been a man for whom there was universal respect, and now falling to the level of someone who even the lowest in society openly mocked and insulted. His name which had been honoured had now become a byword for a hypocrite: one whom God has made an example of. Satan was allowed to perpetrate the great injustice of having Job so slanderously misrepresented in this way. Those who were outcasts were ready to spit in his face and nobody stopped them or rebuked them, for it was regarded as legitimate to endorse God’s judgment on him.The breakdown of Job’s health also troubled him greatly, though some understand this to refer to his thoughts, but the language seems to be physical here in contrast to what he says elsewhere and it is something which is visible to others (17:8). His eyes had grown dim so that he was unable to see clearly, perhaps because of excessive weeping, and all the members of his body had grown weak so that he was a shadow of his former self. The greatest problem was that this was interpreted as a sign of God’s displeasure towards him. He found it difficult to answer this because he too could find no explanation for his suffering.As a result he says, ‘I have got so low I will never be the same again.’ His mind is damaged. Even if he recovers he will never be the same again. But that was not true. His case was not to be like this. What are the promises of God? Every thought the depression produces needs to be headed off.

Application

We must be prepared to put up with even this, for no less a thing happened to our Saviour. He was insulted by men though he was the Lord of glory, and guided by the attitude of the Jewish leaders, the common people regarded him as one who was being punished for his own sin on the cross. ‘He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not’ (Isaiah 53:3). Therefore if Satan is allowed to present us to the world as its offscouring, and as nothing, it is no surprise. This will do us no permanent harm, for God will glorify us as the sons of God when the full light of day comes.

Questions

The KJV treats the second part of verse 6 as Job looking back to a better past life, and uses the word tabret, meaning timbrel or tambourine. But most understand this to be in line with the first part of the verse, and to mean that men spat in his presence as a show of contempt.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Job 17:6 Commentary and Bible Study