Job 23:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 23:1

Comments

In what follows in the next two chapters, Job totally ignores what Eliphaz has said as irrelevant and completely unhelpful. He doesn’t even attempt to answer any of Eliphaz false charges. It is as if he dismisses them by not even referring to them. His concern is with something much more important, and if he is going to get so little sense out of human companions then he will bypass them altogether and address God directly. He therefore focuses on what troubles him most of all. His assessment of the comforters’ speeches is confirmed by the Lord at the end of the book.Job is now poised between faith and fear. Part of him feels sure that God will own him, while part of him fears his darkness and misery. He cannot feel or understand his God, though he insists that he trusts him. Why is God unpredictable in the way he dispenses afflictions?

Application

Even now he feels that he is not able to express the great burden that is upon him and the awful suffering he experiences in his inner being. The KJV translates the word ‘my hand’ as ‘my stroke’, that is, the hand of God against him – ‘my’ in the sense of the hand that I experience. It is impossible for a man to describe inner suffering because we are a secret to each other. Each one must therefore be quick to sympathise with others who give signs of inner torment, knowing that this can be much worse than anything that is suffered physically. While it is possible for some to make out their torments to be worse than they are, and to indulge in self-pity, it should have been obvious that Job had experienced unparallelled loss and was not exaggerating.

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Job 23:1 Commentary and Bible Study