Context No. 3958 of 4322 · Job
Context · Reflection
Job 19:17-29: in context
17My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother. 18Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me. 19All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me. 20My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 21“Have pity on me. Have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me. 22Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh? 23“Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! 25But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth. 26After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh, 27whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. “My heart is consumed within me. 28If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ because the root of the matter is found in me, 29be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”
Job has reached the depths. His breath is repulsive to his wife, his familiar friends abhor him, even children despise him; he is abandoned by everyone and wasting away, barely escaping with the skin of his teeth. Out of this utter desolation, though, comes one of the great confessions of faith in all of Scripture.
Rising above his misery, Job declares: I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself. In the middle of loss, abandonment, and the approach of death, Job holds onto a hope that reaches beyond the grave. He does not fully understand it, but he is sure of it: he has a living Redeemer who will vindicate him, and he will see God with his own eyes, even after his body has wasted away. Here is faith stubborn and beautiful, a hope that survives even when everything visible is stripped away.
When I am stripped of comfort, health, or friends, can I hold, like Job, to the confidence that my Redeemer lives and that I will see God, a hope that not even death can take away?