Job 9:27 Commentary and Bible Study

What strategy can Job use to cope with all this pain? One that suggests itself to his mind is to simply pretend that all is well, and live in a world of make-believe. He could act as if he was not accountable to God and as if either there was no God to judge him at the end of life, or as if God was pleased with him. He could say, ‘I will leave off my face’, that is ‘my sad face’, ‘wear a smile’, or as the KJV has it, ‘comfort myself’. Barnes suggests that it be translated ‘brighten up’, based on the Arabic meaning of the related word. Either of these policies would be a fiction concocted to relieve him of fear. He cannot live like this because this world of make-believe would soon dissolve when faced with reality. Job is a realist and would rather face the truth as he understands it however unpleasant, than live in an imaginary world.He is afraid to do this because his conscience warned him that all was not well. God would not hold him innocent. This above all must drag us back to reality: the knowledge that God’s view of us is the true view and that how he sees us will determine what the future for us. No man can have peace of mind who has not made peace with God, for while he is on the wrong path he knows he is just putting off the evil day.At the same time he feels the hopelessness of trying to defend himself before God. Being certain that he will not be held innocent, he sees the hopelessness of the situation. Why should he struggle and strive when it is bound to end in failure? ‘I am bound to be held guilty, so why waste effort on trying to justify myself?’ The three friends urge him to just come clean and confess his sin, but Job realises the task of justifying himself before the Lord is so much more difficult than they have ever grasped.Snow water is water that was considered particularly pure. His hands here stand for his actions. Let him cleanse his heart ever so carefully and it will achieve nothing. God would reject all his arguments, and Job himself would be compelled to agree with the Lord’s verdict, his own conscience condemning him. His own clothes would abhor him, is a graphic way of saying that the discovery of sin within him would be so clear that even what was most familiar to him would take offence at what had been discovered in him.