Job 9:1 - Meaning and Application

Bildad had rebuked Job for speaking so much (Job 8:2). Job does not answer that charge directly, though he could have turned it back on Bildad just as easily. Instead, he agrees with one thing Bildad said: God never twists justice. “I know that this is true,” he says (Job 9:2). We should be ready to admit how far we agree with people we are arguing with. We should not reject a truth just because an opponent said it, especially if they used it badly.

“It is true,” Job says in effect, “that wickedness ruins people and that godly people are under God’s special care. I accept those truths. But how can any person stand right with God?” “No one living can be declared innocent in his sight” (Psalm 143:2). “How can man be right with God?” Some take this as a bitter complaint that God is too strict and severe, almost impossible to deal with. There are a few sharp words in this chapter that sound that way. But I think Job is mainly confessing human sinfulness, including his own. If God dealt with any of us only by what we deserve, we would surely be ruined.

He then states a truth: man is no match for his Creator, either in debate or in battle. If a person tries to argue with God, Job says, “He cannot answer him one time in a thousand” (Job 9:3). God can ask a thousand searching questions, and those who quarrel with him cannot answer them. When God spoke to Job from the whirlwind, he asked many questions, “Do you know this? Can you do that?” and Job could not answer them (Job 38, Job 39). God can quickly show the emptiness of the wisest human claims.

God can also charge us with a thousand sins, and we cannot clear ourselves of them. We cannot throw out one accusation as irrelevant, another as trivial, and another as false. We cannot deny one fact, admit another, and excuse a third. We are not able to answer him. Like Job later did, we must put our hand over our mouth (Job 40:4, Job 40:5) and say, “Guilty.”

Nor can anyone fight against God and win. “Who has hardened himself against him and prospered?” (Job 9:4). The answer is easy. From the beginning of the world to this day, no stubborn sinner has ever set himself against God and come out better for it. Such people do not prosper, and they do not have peace. They gain no comfort from their way, and no real success. What has anyone ever gained by testing strength or rights with their Maker? To oppose God is like setting thorns in front of a fire, foolish, useless, and destructive (Isaiah 27:4; Ezekiel 28:24; 1 Corinthians 10:22).

Even the fallen angels hardened themselves against God and did not prosper (2 Peter 2:4). The dragon fights, but he is cast down (Revelation 12:9). Wicked people do the same in their own way. They question God’s wisdom, break his laws, stay hardened in sin, and refuse to repent under suffering. They reject his grace, resist his Spirit, and make little of his warnings. They push against his rule in the world. But have they prospered? Can they prosper? No. They are only storing up wrath for the day of wrath. What a person sows in this way will come back on him.

Job then shows why this is so: the God we deal with is wise and powerful. He is wise in heart, so no one can answer him in court. He is mighty in strength, so no one can fight him. It is utter foolishness to think of contending with a God who knows everything and can do everything, and who cannot be outsmarted or overpowered. The devil expected Job to curse God in his suffering, but Job does the opposite. Even while he is in pain and wrapped up in his misery, when he speaks of God’s wisdom and power, he forgets his complaints. He lingers over that great subject with delight and strength of speech.

He begins with the world of nature, where God acts with full power and does as he pleases. All the order and power in nature come from him and depend on him. When he chooses, he can change the usual course of nature and turn its streams back (Job 9:5-7). By common order, mountains seem fixed forever, the earth is set firm and cannot be moved (Psalm 93:1), and the pillars of the world stand steady. The sun rises at its appointed time, and the stars send their influence into this lower world. But God can step outside the usual pattern, and even reverse what we think is fixed.

Nothing seems firmer than mountains. When we speak of moving mountains, we mean something impossible. Yet divine power can make them shift their place. God removes them, and they do not know it. He can make them bow low, level them, or overthrow them in anger. He can spread mountains out as easily as a farmer scatters little heaps of dirt, no matter how high, wide, or rocky they are. People have to work hard to cross them, but God can make them pass away when he wants. He shook Sinai (Psalm 68:8). The hills skipped like lambs (Psalm 114:4). The everlasting mountains scattered (Habakkuk 3:6).

Nothing seems more fixed than the earth on its axis, yet God can shake it out of place if he wills. He can move it off center and make even its pillars tremble. What seems to hold it up would itself need support if God struck it. This also shows how patient God is. He has enough power to shake the earth beneath that guilty human race that makes it groan under sin, and even to shake the wicked out of it (Job 38:13). Yet he keeps the earth in place, and he keeps people living on it. He does not make it swallow up rebels, as he once did.

Nothing seems more constant than the rising sun. It never misses its time. Yet God can stop it if he chooses. The one who first commanded it to rise can command it to stand still. At one time the sun was told to stay still, and at another time to go back, to show that it remains under the control of its great Creator.

God’s power is so great, and that makes his goodness all the more amazing. He makes his sun shine on evil and ungrateful people, even though he could withhold it. The same God who made the stars can, if he chooses, shut them up and hide them from our sight.

Earthquakes and fires under the ground have sometimes moved mountains and shaken the earth. On very dark, cloudy days and nights, it seems as if the sun is not allowed to rise and the stars are sealed away (Acts 27:20). Job is mainly speaking about what God is able to do, but if we take it as what God has actually done, these verses may point to Noah’s flood. Then the mountains were shaken, the sun and stars were darkened, and we believe this present world is kept for that final fire, which will burn up the mountains and melt the earth with its intense heat, and will turn the sun to darkness.

As long as God pleases, he keeps the regular order of nature in place. This is a kind of ongoing creation. He alone, by his own power and without help from anyone else, spreads out the heavens (Job 9:8). He did this at the beginning, and he still keeps them spread out, because otherwise they would roll together like a scroll.

He also treads on the waves of the sea, meaning he holds them back and keeps them from flooding the earth (Psalm 104:9). That is one reason why everyone should fear God and stand in awe of him (Jeremiah 5:22). He is stronger than the proud waves (Psalm 93:4; Psalm 65:7). He also makes the constellations, and three are named to stand for the rest, Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, along with the chambers of the south (Job 9:9). He made these stars at the beginning, set them in order, and still keeps them in being and directs their movements.

From this, Job turns to God’s rule over human life, his special care for the affairs of people. When you consider what God does in governing the world, you must say that he is wise in heart and mighty in strength. He does many great things, things beyond counting and beyond full understanding (Job 9:10). Job says the same thing Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends, had already said (Job 5:9), even using the same words, though Eliphaz was now arguing against him. God is a great God who does great and astonishing works. His works of wonder are so many that we cannot count them, and so deep that we cannot fully understand them.

He also works in a way we do not see clearly (Job 9:11). He passes by in his actions, and yet we do not see him or notice him. His way is in the sea (Psalm 77:19). The effects of ordinary causes are usually clear to our senses, but God is always at work around us, and we still do not see him (Acts 17:23). Our limited minds cannot fully understand his plans, track his movements, or grasp the measures he takes. So we are not fit judges of God’s ways, because we do not know what he is doing or what he intends. The secret matters of government are above us, and we should not pretend to explain them away.

He also acts with a rule that cannot be questioned or resisted (Job 9:12). He takes away our comforts and supports when and how he pleases. He takes away health, wealth, family, friends, and even life itself. Whatever is taken away, it is he who takes it. However it is removed, we must recognize his hand in it. The Lord takes away, and who can stop him? Who can make him give back what he has taken? Who can persuade him to change his mind, resist his will, or call him to account? No one can bring a case against him or say to him, “What are you doing?” or “Why are you doing that?” (Daniel 4:35). God does not owe us an explanation for what he does. We may not understand his reasons now, but we will understand later, when it will be clear that what seemed to be sheer authority was done in perfect wisdom and for the best.

He also acts with power that no creature can resist (Job 9:13). If God does not turn back his anger, which he can do whenever he chooses, then the proud helpers must bow under him. That means he surely breaks and crushes those who proudly join together against him. Proud people set themselves against God and his works. In that opposition, they join hands. The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers plan together to cast off his rule, attack his truth, and persecute his people. Others cry out, “Help us!” (Acts 21:28; Psalm 83:8). If one enemy of God’s kingdom falls under his judgment, the others come proudly to help it, thinking they can rescue it from God’s hand. But they cannot. Unless God chooses to withdraw his anger, which he often does because this is the time of his patience, the proud helpers will stoop under him and fall with those they tried to save. Who can understand the power of God’s anger? Those who think they are strong enough to help others will not be able to save themselves from it.