Job 9: "It's Not A Fair Fight!"

In chapter 9, Job continues crying out against the unfairness of his situation.  He attempts to plead his case (that he has been wrongfully and unjustly punished with suffering) before God.  The only problem is - Job realizes that arguing with God is an impossible task.  It is simply never going to be a fair fight.

Job agrees with his friends' premises about God.  He knows that God is wise (vs. 4), strong (vs. 4), powerful (vs. 5-6), in control (vs. 7), and was the original Creator of all things (vs. 8-9).  In light of these characteristics, Job feels that arguing his case would be hopeless: "If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand" (vs. 3).  Yet Job cannot simply leave it there.

Verses 13-24 include a recapitulation of Job's complaint: he feels himself wronged, having been innocent (vs. 15 and 20).  Because God is doing this to him, Job believes that God does not always reward the righteous and punish the wicked, as his friends believe.  Instead, Job states, "He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.  When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent" (vs. 22-23).  Job's experience leads him to believe that God is an equal opportunity destroyer, a capricious Supreme Being who brings disaster upon everybody.  Job leaves open only the sliver of a possibility that these injustices are not the fault of  God, but the responsibility of someone else.  But he leaves that issue open with a rhetorical question, "If it is not he, who then is it?" (vs. 24).

In the final verses of this chapter, Job expresses his desire for an even playing field.  His troubles are so great, he cannot let them go.  They gnaw at him and he is afraid of continued punishment.  His only hope is for some kind of intermediary, a go-between, who would stand in the gap between him and God.  "There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand on us both" (vs.33).

This idea of a Being with one hand on man and one hand on God is an amazingly accurate prophecy of what we will see realized in the life of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, fully God and fully man!