July 6, 2025, Job 19:1-29
Job
Replies: My Redeemer Lives
19 Then Job
answered and said:
2 “How
long will you torment me
and
break me in pieces with words?
3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
are you
not ashamed to wrong me?
4 And even if it be true that I have erred,
my error
remains with myself.
5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
and make
my disgrace an argument against me,
6 know then that God has put me in the wrong
and
closed his net about me.
7 Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not
answered;
I call
for help, but there is no justice.
8 He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
and he
has set darkness upon my paths.
9 He has stripped from me my glory
and
taken the crown from my head.
10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
and my
hope has he pulled up like a tree.
11 He has kindled his wrath against me
and counts
me as his adversary.
12 His troops come on together;
they
have cast up their siege ramp against me
and
encamp around my tent.
13 “He has
put my brothers far from me,
and those
who knew me are wholly estranged from me.
14 My relatives have failed me,
my
close friends have forgotten me.
15 The guests in my house and my maidservants count
me as a stranger;
I have
become a foreigner in their eyes.
16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
I must
plead with him with my mouth for mercy.
17 My breath is strange to my wife,
and I am
a stench to the children of my own mother.
18 Even young children despise me;
when I
rise they talk against me.
19 All my intimate friends abhor me,
and
those whom I loved have turned against me.
20 My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,
and I
have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21 Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
for the
hand of God has touched me!
22 Why do you, like God, pursue me?
Why are
you not satisfied with my flesh?
23 “Oh that
my words were written!
Oh that
they were inscribed in a book!
24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they
were engraved in the rock forever!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at
the last he will stand upon the earth.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet
in my flesh I shall see God,
27 whom I shall see for myself,
and my
eyes shall behold, and not another.
My
heart faints within me!
28 If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’
and,
‘The root of the matter is found in him,’
29 be afraid of the sword,
for
wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
that you
may know there is a judgment.”
How beautiful and powerful it is to see Job’s witness of his
Redeemer in these verses through the midst of his suffering.
This chapter highlights the importance faith plays in the
midst of tremendous suffering. What will define you during a period
of suffering?
If the hope and glory of God lives in us, that is what comes
out during suffering. When squeezed,
what is inside is what comes out!
Robin Adams
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