Re:Verse passage – Job 19:20-27 (day three)
“Why do you persecute me as God does,
And are not satisfied with my flesh?”
The old joke, “If you can’t be an example…be a warning,” becomes poignantly real here, and it’s not in the least funny. Job’s life had invited people to aspire to all that is honorable, lovely, and noble. Now, his life invited people to castigate him as one who had it coming all along. No wonder Job dives headlong into a burst of defiant longing: “I know that my Redeemer lives.” If he were to discover otherwise, it would mean that no one is listening, and in the end, no one cares. Such a fate would destroy him. Therefore, he holds fast to the declaration that it cannot – must not – be. One might say his hope is wishful thinking. The Bible says otherwise: “My hope comes from the Lord.”
If Job was a contemporary of Abraham (or possibly even earlier), then the revelations of God’s nature throughout this text are miraculous and remarkable, and culminate with his confession of belief about Job’s Redeemer. If scholars are even close to correct about the era of Job’s life, these revelations and confessions are two millennia prior to Jesus and the written word. The question we must pose is: from whence does Job’s “knowledge” of God and his hope arise? No Law. No prophets. No Jesus. No written word. The answer lies in the personal revelation of God to Job (and hopefully to his friends) deep within his soul, that “knowing” which is beyond mental formulations, “downloads” and intellectual gymnastics. Job didn’t get this from research or Bible study: his knowledge of his Redeemer came from God Himself following his confession of his need for a mediator; an advocate with God. Another revelation Job realizes, perhaps the first mention of this in human history, is that of a life after this earthly one: a life of some sort of physical body in which Job literally sees his Redeemer who will stand on the earth at the last day. What a body of knowledge God has given us through this suffering pilgrim, secured by Jesus! Here is hope, the looking toward a guaranteed promise.