Job 19:28,29

6. He warns his friends to cease their persecution. (Job 19:28-29)

TEXT 19:28, 29

28 If ye say, How we will persecute him!

And that the root of the matter Is found in me;

29 Be ye afraid of the sword:

For wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword,

That ye may know there is a judgment.

COMMENT 19:28, 29

Job 19:28The verse is another problem text. Job is probably charging his friends with prejudiceJob 6:14-30; Job 13:7-11; Job 17:4-5; and Job 19:1-5and persistent persecution, though the Hebrew text changes to indirect speech in him rather than direct discourse expressed in the A. V.'S in me. Though the meaning is clear, it is one of the examples of grammatical confusion in the verse.

Job 19:29If you continue persecuting me, you will be judged by the sword (lit. because the iniquities of the sword are wrathIsaiah 31:8; Isaiah 34:5 ff). After Job's great assertion in Job 19:25-27, he now lapses back into his not so obscure despair. In Babylonian literature, the sword is a symbol of Nergal, the god of war; perhaps the ideograph has Near Eastern application. Contemporary man is troubled over the very existence of God. Here Job adds to our anxiety by declaring that God will manifest objective wrath in the form of judgmentRomans 1:18 ff.