Job 23 - Introduction

Job 23-24. Job's Reply to Eliphaz. He dwells on the mystery of Providence. He cannot put his own personal conviction of final justification forward as a general solution of the problem. Hence he seems to lose the vantage ground already reached and viewing his own case as a part of the general world-problem, restates it as a prelude to stating this on the large scale. His tone is, however, very different from what it was before. Job dwells little on his own misery, but much on the misery of the world.

To solve the world-problem a revelation here and now seems requisite. The question is no longer, Shall I again find God on my side? but, Does God govern the world righteously? Job, therefore, putting out of sight the thought of meeting God by and by, comes back to the thought expressed in Job 13:22, though in a very different mood, of meeting Him here and now.