Job 9:25

JOB'S PROPHETIC PLEA THAT THERE MIGHT BE AN UMPIRE

"Now my days are swifter than a post:

They flee away, they see no good.

They are passed away as the swift ships;

As the eagle that swoopeth on the prey.

If I say, I will forget my complaint,

I will put off my sad countenance, and be of good cheer;

I am afraid of all my sorrows,

I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent.

I shall be condemned;

Why then do I labor in vain?

If I wash myself with snow water,

And make my hands never so clean;

Yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch,

And mine own clothes shall abhor me,

For he is not a man that I should answer him,

That we should come together in judgment.

There is no umpire betwixt us,

That might lay his hand upon us both.

Let him take his rod away from me,

And let not his terror make me afraid:

Then would I speak and not fear him;

For I am not in myself."

"I shall be condemned" (Job 9:29). Job was prepared to accept condemnation, even though, in his heart, he was not conscious of having clone any wickedness that deserved it. It is the glory of that patriarch that his attitude toward God remained one of submission and not one of rebellion.

"There is no umpire ..." (Job 9:33). This is one of the great lines in the whole book. "Here, when Job's faith is at its lowest ebb, there emerges in this complaining negative, the conception of the Mediator, which afterward became for Job a positive conviction, a conviction that attained its grandest expression in that marvelous speech of Job 19. which, in a sense, is the glorious climax of the Book of Job."[10]

"We may view this cry for a daysman (umpire), for God with his majesty laid aside, as an instinctive prophecy of the Incarnation, although Job had no such thing in his mind."[11] "This passage is strongly looking forward to Bethlehem. There was really no answer to Job's problem short of the Incarnation. In this cry for an umpire between God and man, we see a prophetic reaching out for that One Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5)."[12]

"For I am not so in myself" (Job 9:35). The meaning of this is quite obscure; but, "The New English Bible renders it, for I know I am not what I am thought to be, that is, deserving of all his suffering."[13]

Honoring that immortal hope for an umpire, we wish to close this chapter with these words:

"'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek

In the Godhead! I seek, and I find it. O Saul, it shall be

A face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,

Thou shalt love, and be loved by, forever; a Hand like this hand

Shall open the gates of new life to thee!

See the Christ stand!"[14]

- Robert Browning, Saul.