Job 19:25

25. For I know “For” and. It is not uncommon in the classics to commence a distinct poem or treatise in like manner. (OVID, Amos 3:8; PROPERTIUS, Job 1:17.) Ewald pertinently renders it but, in the sense of “Yet whereto other thoughts?” Or it may be used in a manner similar to the οτι of classic and N.T. Greek, which is often redundant before citations and declarative sentences. (Comp. THAYER’S Buttmann, pp. 245, 274.) And I, I know. The “I” stands forth with prominence as if to express the personal identity of the entire man. No one of the constituent natures answers to the “I;” but all body, mind, and spirit together constitute man. Thus in Job 19:27, “Whom I, I shall see for myself.” I know By degrees has Job been rising to this wondrous sunlight of faith. There has been all along not only a progress of doctrine, but a steady advance in faith. He has sighed for a daysman (Job 9:33) who might intercede for man with God. (Job 16:21.) The fearful struggle in the fourteenth chapter disclosed, for the miserable service in sheol, gleams of hope that God would bring it to an end. (Job 14:14.) Still horrors and doubts have “compassed him about” until, in agony, he cries out to God that he himself should be his sponsor with himself. (Job 17:3.) And all this time his “attester in the heights” (Job 16:19) has kept silence. But now the clouds vanish, and he cries triumphantly aloud, I KNOW my Redeemer liveth, etc. It is to be remembered that from this time forth we hear no more of the gloom of sheol, or of dismal doubts concerning the state of the dead.

My Redeemer Hebrew, Goel. The prime meaning of the verb is loose, set free. There is no word that, better than redeemer, expresses the fourfold duties of a goel or kinsman. On him devolved, first, the recovery of the lost possession of a kinsman; (Leviticus 25:25;) second, the deliverance of a kinsman from bondage; (Leviticus 25:48-49;) third, the avenging of the violent death of a kinsman; (Numbers 35:12;) fourth, care for the widow of a deceased and childless kinsman; (Deuteronomy 25:5.) See vol. 3:308, 314. Christ is our nearest kinsman. Through his veins coursed a tide of blood in common with that of our entire race. The extremes of our race unite in him however remote the circle of humanity, its radii all centre in him. Each human being can lay claim to a relationship to this divine Goel as close and tender as that which bound the brothers and sisters of Jesus to himself. (Matthew 13:56.) He stretches his arm of protection over our whole life, and draws to his heart each sorrowing child of Adam.

Liveth (Is) living. “He ever liveth,” “hath life in himself,” “in him was life.” Job’s Redeemer would be pre-eminently a living one. “Life, in the Hebrew and Semitic languages, is a more complete idea than being.” Dillmann.

He shall stand The posture of Christ in great emergencies. (Acts 7:56.) Faith sees its future champion standing upon (not rising upon) the dust, as some would read the clause. The attitude is one of firmness, dignity, and endurance, like that of the angel of the last day. (Revelation 10:5.)

At the latter day upon the earth Though Merx and others render אחרון at the latter, at last, it is plainly a substantive:

The last (Gesenius, Michaelis, Zockler, etc.) It is an attribute of Deity (Isaiah 48:12) which Christ assumes to himself, (Revelations Job 1:11,) and to which the apostle alludes (“ the last Adam”) in his description of the resurrection. (1 Corinthians 15:45.)

The earth The dust. That into which the dead body moulders; hence the “dusty death” of the classics. Shall the dust (dead body: De Wette) praise thee? (Psalms 30:9.) Ewald and Merx read, instead of “upon the earth,” “on (my) grave.” a sense justified by the frequent use by Job of “dust” for the grave. (Job 7:21; Job 10:9; Job 17:16; Job 20:11; Job 21:26; Job 34:15.) The expression dust is peculiarly elegant in view of man’s origin and destiny. (Genesis 3:19.) In the Arabic the tomb is called turbe, dust.