Job 19:5-12

2. He has been overthrown by God. (Job 9:5-12)

TEXT 19:5-12

5 If Indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me,

And plead against me my reproach;

6 Know now that God hath subverted me in my cause,

And hath compassed me with his net.

7 Behold I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard:

I cry for help, but there is no justice.

8 He hath walled up my way that I cannot pass,

And hath set darkness in my paths.

9 He hath stripped me of my glory.

And taken the crown from my head.

10 He hath broken me down on every side,

and I am gone; And my hope hath he plucked up like a tree.

11 He hath also kindled his wrath against me,

And he counteth me unto him as one of his adversaries.

12 His troops come on together,

And cast up their way against me,
And encamp round about my tent.

COMMENT 19:5-12

Job 19:5Job chides his friends for assuming an air of superiority. If taken as a rhetorical question, the answer is clearly positive. The verb translated magnify has a negative sense here as in Psalms 35:26; Psalms 38:16. The last line contains a verb used in Job 16:21 and here means plead my disgrace against me. His humiliation is taken as proof of the accuracy of their charge.

Job 19:6This verse is proof that Job 19:4 does not contain a confession of guilt. Bildad has asserted that the godless man is caught in his own net in Job 18:8. The word for net is a different one from any employed by Bildad. Here the image is one of a hunter's large net into which animals are driven.

Job 19:7Job's friends have built their arguments on the doctrines of divine justice from the assumption that he is conscious of his own innocence. The verse begins with emphatic appeal to injusticeHabakkuk 1:2 and Jeremiah 20:8. The same verb cry aloud appears in Job 24:12; Job 19:12; Job 30:28; Job 35:9; Job 36:13. Yet, his pitiful cries for help go unheard. God remains silent.

Job 19:8Job has been hemmed in; restrictions surround himLamentations 3:7; Hosea 2:6; Job 3:23; Job 13:27; Job 14:5. In Job 1:10 Satan had asserted that God had placed protective barriers around Job. Perhaps darkness should be amended to thorn hedge.[205]

[205] A. Guillaume, Promise and Fulfillment, ed. by F. F. Bruce, 1963, pp. 106ff.

Job 19:9The crown of glory (kabodLXX doxa)[206] is a metaphor for esteem. Job's crown of righteousness has been removed from himPsalms 8:5. Shame as a garment is an image used in Job 8:22. Honor is a garment to be worn by the godly, or removed fromstripped offthe unrighteousJob 29:14; Isaiah 61:3. Job was once a prosperous man who enjoyed an honorable reputation; now he has nothing.

[206] Kittel and von Rad, Doxa, TWNT, Vol. II, 232-255.

Job 19:10The metaphors are rich and varied. In this verse God has pulled Job down as one wrecks a building. The second metaphor is that of a tree uprootedPsalms 52:5. The common verbhalakmeaning walk used metaphorically as a way of life, i.e., life style, here appears as an image of death, death as a way of existence.

Job 19:11The metaphor now shifts to warfare. God will not cease His aggression against Job. God is pictured as a leader directing one attack after another on JobJob 10:17; Job 16:12 ff. The Hebrew text has the plural, his adversaries, but here it is God and probably should be in the singular, his adversary.

Job 19:12The military metaphor is extended. Here the troops are raising a siege ramp. But there is a strong conflict between the image of the siege ramp and a tent. One does not need to besiege a tent with an attack force. Perhaps this tension suggests the inequity of it all.