Job 9:2

First division THE FACT THAT GOD IS IMMUTABLY JUST (Job 8:3) AND ABSOLUTELY PURE, (Job 4:17,) DOES NOT SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF THE IMPLACABLE ANTAGONISM TO THE RIGHTEOUS ON THE PART OF AN OMNIPOTENT GOD, Job 9:2-12.

Strophe a Job ironically grants the propositions of his antagonists, but only as NON SEQUITURS. In almost the same breath they have insisted that “God rewards the just,” and that “none are just before God,” thus apparently contradicting themselves. Taking advantage of their discomfiture he redoubles his blows, plying them with the most momentous questions man can ask, Job 9:2-4.

2. Man ( אנושׁ , a mortal) be just with God, ( אל , the Strong) The key to the subsequent glowing description of the terror-working God (5-11) is found in this antithesis of mortal man to an omnipotent God. Prayers and oblations, temples and altars, sacrifices and self-tortures, lustral waters and bleeding victims, bear witness to a universal consciousness of sin and guilt to man’s abiding sense that he is not acceptable to his God; moreover, that the wrath of that God has gone forth against him, and must by some means be appeased. Whence that sense? By what means did it so deeply ingrain itself in man’s nature? It antedates all other merely human knowledge, and points, as with a wand, to certain deep, underlying, and congenital facts of a fallen nature everywhere recognized in Scripture. The only religion which proffers a satisfactory answer to the questions of Job is that which alone gives peace with God. Romans 5:1.