Job 19:3 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Ten times’ is, says Barnes, to be understood loosely according to Hebrew custom. They have gone on and on pressing the point in spite of Job’s insistence that he is innocent. He asks if they are not embarrassed, ashamed at the way they are behaving. Certainly they have had to steel themselves to speak to him in this way and to push past a barrier of doubt, for they have had to tread where they cannot see, and if they are wrong about him it will be greatly to their shame. They know this and Job knows this, but they have encouraged each other to take the same approach and now it is hard for them to change their tune. Job is very sure of his ground and this confidence gives him the strength to stand up to their bullying ways.Admitting for the sake of argument the possibility that he has erred, Job says that the three friends have certainly failed to point out what that error is. They have accused him of all sorts of things, but nothing that they have said has come anywhere near the mark, or identified a real fault that he is conscious of. That more searching rebuke will come later in the book when first Elihu and then the Lord himself speaks. For now, any error he has remains with him, undetected. A counsellor who fails to detect the real issue and focuses on some spurious problem does more harm than good. He stirs up all sorts of resentment by false accusation and becomes more and more odious in the mind of those he is supposed to be helping, so that even good advice is unlikely to be received.Says Job, ‘If you insist on exalting yourselves against me and taking the position of a judge over me who has right on his side, and if you take advantage of the terrible condition I am in, then be aware that you have placed yourself on the side of the Lord who treats me so unjustly. God has wronged me and surrounded me with his net so that I am trapped, for who can hope to resist a God of such power if he takes up the fight against them?’ In saying this he shows himself to be cornered and obliged to take the weakest of defences. Here is the difficulty that Job faces and the weakness of his position: In protesting that God has wronged him, is against him, and has treated him unjustly, he is obliged to place the comforters on the Lord’s side, for at present he can see no difference between the unjust accusations coming from them and the unjust treatment that he receives from the Lord’s hand. Because he lacks insight into the reason why God has allowed these trials, he cannot separate the apparent harshness of God from the harshness of the comforters; in his mind they are indeed representing the God he fears is against him. This is a measure of the success that Satan has had in sowing confusion and in misrepresenting the character of God to Job. What he really requires of them is that they join him in finding fault with God, and this is something they are not prepared to do, and in fact something which they do not need to do in order to really help him, as Elihu later shows.Job therefore ends up saying to them that if they insist on bring false accusations against him, they only succeed in putting themselves on the same side as God who was treating him so unfairly. This was hardly a strong refutation of them, for it would naturally confirm them in their position if he was forced to admit that they agreed with God. The conclusion would never occur to them that all protagonists were wrong, they and Job: they because they wrongly assumed that God was against Job and condemned him for secret hypocrisy, and Job because he wrongly assumed that God was against him and acted unjustly, even though he knew that he was not a hypocrite.