Today's Meditation

Read Job 19

Then Job answered: ²“How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? ³These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? ⁴And even if it is true that I have erred, my error remains with me. ⁵If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, ⁶know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me. ⁷Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice.

⁸He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. ⁹He has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head. ¹⁰He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree. ¹¹He has kindled his wrath against me, and counts me as his adversary. ¹²His troops come on together; they have thrown up siegeworks against me, and encamp around my tent. ¹³“He has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. ¹⁴My relatives and my close friends have failed me; ¹⁵the guests in my house have forgotten me; my serving girls count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes. ¹⁶I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must myself plead with him. ¹⁷My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family. ¹⁸Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me. ¹⁹All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. ²⁰My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. ²¹Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! ²²Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?

²³“O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! ²⁴O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! ²⁵For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; ²⁶and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, ²⁷whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! ²⁸If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him’; ²⁹be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.”

    Of course, the verses that always get the most attention in this chapter of Job are verses 25-27, "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.  My heart faints within me!"

    Often, we superimpose our knowledge of Christian beliefs unto Old Testament verses which can lead to some faulty theology.  No, Job did not know Christ as Redeemer.  But rather, this word in Hebrew, go-el, refers to a person who avenges the death of a person slain unjustly, or who works for vindication of a person's character for having been falsely accused during life.  The word is also used in the book of Ruth for Boaz, who redeems her life, but while she is still living.  Although in concept, she was dead to this life, having lost a husband and having no kin to care for her.

    The same could be said for Job; for him, he feels that life is over.  But he knows that God will, one day, vindicate him and show his family and friends that he was blameless the whole time.  For they have accused him of previous sins, otherwise, such calamity would not have come upon him.

    In this passage, Job's go-el or redeemer is probably not a family member as all have accused him of sin, and could be no other than God himself.  As we work through the book of Job, we'll see that God does just that.

I Know That My Redeemer Lives

Although I have said in this meditation that it is faulty theology to superimpose our Christian beliefs onto Old Testament understanding, this song is wonderful.  We can adopt the concept onto our belief in Christ, as long as we acknowledge the separation between the two.