Commentary on Job 19:23-27a

Allow me to pull back the curtain a bit here. The team that organizes these Working Preaching commentaries works way ahead. That’s a wonderful thing, because reading and thinking about a passage of Scripture enough to say anything worthwhile takes time. I was first asked to write this commentary well over a year before it was scheduled to be published. Usually, when the invitation comes, we get a short list of texts; I will skim them and choose ones about which I think I could find something interesting to say. This was certainly the case with Job 19:23–27. Thanks to a combination of its poetic images, theological incisiveness, and familiar phrases—such as the line “I know that my redeemer lives,” immortalized in many artistic works, including Handel’s Messiah—this passage stands out as notable within this momentous work of ancient literature.¹

However, one of the things that quickly becomes apparent is that the passage does not yield itself to easy interpretations. When working with the text of Job, there is always the matter of difficult language. The Hebrew in the book is widely regarded as some of the most challenging in the Old Testament. Translations vary wildly, and you find that humble note “meaning of Hb uncertain” all over the margins of your study Bible.

This passage in particular has been vexing to interpreters. Theophile Meek (1881–1966) said, “Of all the passages in the Old Testament, none has been more variously treated than Job 19:25–27.”² More recently, Edwin Good remarked, “This passage gives everyone fits, both of furious anxiety and of blank despair.”³ Verse 26 has proven especially perplexing. We find dramatically different possibilities for key Hebrew words.⁴ As one commentator notes, all the ancient manuscript traditions differ to the extent that “no reliance can be placed in any of them.”⁵ Clearly, our work is cut out for us.

It should not be all that surprising that early Christian interpreters read these verses as a prophecy for either the first or second coming of Christ and, later, as a proof text for the resurrection of the body.⁶ The New Revised Standard Version translates 19:25–26 as follows:

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.⁷

But let’s not jump ahead to the resurrection too quickly. Because verses 23–24 are also worthy of consideration in context. Again, the New Revised Standard Version:

O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!

At first glance, this might not seem so obscure. But exactly what practice is being referenced in verse 24? Is the lead being used to darken the etchings or to fill them in? Trivial though this may seem, the explanations have implications for how we think about using comparative sources and for dating the book.

But this image is also salient for how we understand Job’s complaint. Job, a man obsessed with vindication, is desperate for something to be left behind to attest to his innocence. His good name has been destroyed; his ties to kin, family, and friends have been dissolved (19:13–22); and his body is dis-integrating—being taken apart, being reduced to bones, teeth, and flesh.⁸ But this goes beyond the physical. Job’s entire self is being dismantled by this unjust persecution and by the painful realization that God either is not hearing him or is not a trustworthy judge. And so, he longs for a physical record that will endure.

“Record” is certainly better than “book” here, which conjures up (at least for contemporary English readers) an image that would not have been accessible at the time of Job’s composition.⁹ The Hebrew allows for us to read this testimony as a “witness” (le-ed) or as something that will endure forever (le-ad), and a looser association or a double entendre is also certainly possible.¹⁰

But one of the bigger-picture differences among commentators on this passage is what it says about the divine-human relationship at the center of the book. Job’s relationship with God is on full display here, in all its goriness, complexity, and (frankly) weirdness. And then when Job utters these familiar words, they are commonly taken as a “sudden burst” or “crescendo” of faith.¹¹ But do they mark a kind of turning point for the relationship, or is this essentially in line with Job’s complaint up to this point? Does he speak more about or to God in this section of poetry, or less? Is this a moment of transformation or continuity?

There is no consensus. And the lectionary can make this hard to determine, because it invites us to read verses out of context. If we put them back into a larger poetic unit, reading invokes a kind of whiplash—the mood shifts dramatically; the metaphors are mixed.¹² Job is no mere thought experiment. The intensity of emotions lands in his body, and talking about his dismantled body is a way of talking about a devastated mind. While it’s unclear if Job thinks God or the friends have flayed him (19:22, 26), leaving his raw flesh exposed, there’s a profound subjectivity to his speech. Everything being said to him feels like making an opportunity out of his suffering rather than occasioning comfort and care. What is left of him? What is left for him?

Remarkably, Job seems to hold on to the notion of justice. He still professes that redemption will come—even if he’s not sure from where. At this point, he is almost talking past God rather than appealing to God. Perhaps Job is attempting to rouse God from an apparent slumber regarding his situation? (As if to say, “Hey, remember redemption? Because I sure do, and I don’t see it anywhere around here.”) I am not so sure this is the sudden outburst of faithful speech it is often treated as. I assume this happens because we crave a resolution to the unresolvable tension Job is giving voice to. Yet, it’s important for us to read these texts on their own terms first—allow them to have their own integrity, even when they don’t say what we want them to say.

But this is the conundrum of monotheism: There is nowhere else to go, no one else to appeal to. We get a more powerful deity, but also a more mysterious one. The good word to a suffering person is not just wait, you’ll see. Redemption does come for Job, and it does come from God. Yes, it comes in the form of material and social restoration, but first it comes as vindication for Job’s psyche: You have spoken rightly of me. All that wild stuff Job says about himself and about God throughout the book? God says, I hear you. And all the pious stuff—words deeply rooted in their religious tradition—that the friends said? God says, Ask Job to pray for you.

Tradition and experience shape each other, and this push-and-pull animates the life of faith. What is there for a suffering person to do? Job calls on his friends to have sympathy for him even though he has realized they aren’t capable of it. He claims the promise of a redeemer even though God has not shown up that way for too long. As a result of this experience, Job’s faith—his sense of who God is—has changed. From the vantage point of his former self, what he believes now may look like a perversion. Job may understand the tradition differently now, but the tradition is also different because of Job’s voice. What he experienced is still worth articulating, and it is still worth hearing.

Works Cited

Beuken, W.A.M., ed. The Book of Job. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1994.

Eisenmann, Moshe. Iyov: A New Translation and Commentary. Berit Olam. Brooklyn: Mesorah

Publications, 1994.

Good, Edwin. In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,

1990.

Meek, Theophile. “Job XIX 25–27,” Vetus Testamentum 6 (1956), 100–103.

Mitchell, Stephen. Into the Whirlwind: A Translation of the Book of Job. Garden City, NY:

Doubleday, 1979.

Pope, Marvin H. Job. Anchor Bible Commentary. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.

Seow, C.L. Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 2013.

Notes

1. For more on the reception of this passage in art and music, see Seow, 792–794.
2. Meek, 100.
3. Good, 100.
4. The terms with the widest variation in translation and interpretation include: sefer (book/record/scroll), go’el (redeemer/avenger), aharon (at last/the last/the guarantor/the ultimate one), afar (dust/earth/humanity), and naqaph (to destroy). For a succinct and thorough summary, see Seow, 805-807; 823; see also Beuken, ed., 377ff.
5. Pope, 135. When scholars encounter this reality, we can either propose emendations or work with the text as it stands. The latter may involve stretching our understanding of Hebrew vocabulary and syntax (see Jan Holman’s translation of verse 25, pp. 377-381 in Beuken).
6. For more, see Seow, 803-4.
7. On the use of the verb “know” in this verse, see Seow, 803.
8. Translations of 19:20 are where we get the English idiom, “escaped by the skin of my teeth.” Seow elaborates on p. 801ff.
9. Contrast this with the “windy” (Heb: ruach) thoughts and words of Job 15:13 and 16:3 (Eisenmann, 191).
10. Seow, 823.
11. Seow, 803-4, referencing Arthur Peake and Robert Gordis, respectively.
12. Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Book of Job opts for an entirely legal setting in this passage, making choices that are more faithful to his overall interpretation than to the word or line (see Into the Whirlwind, 55). By contrast, Edwin Good’s translation allows this passage to be confounding, but emphasizes harmony across the entire book by paying attention to catchwords such as go’el in 3:5 and 19:25 (see In Turns of Tempest, 54).