Job Responds: No Mediator for Me
Job 9Then Job answered,
“Truly I know that it is so, but how can humankind be justified with God? If one wanted to contend with ʜɪᴍ, he can’t answer ʜɪᴍ one time in a thousand. God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against ʜɪᴍ and prospered? Hᴇ removes the mountains without their knowing it, when ʜᴇ overturns them in ʜɪꜱ anger. Hᴇ shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble. Hᴇ commands the sun and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars. Hᴇ alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea. Hᴇ makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south. Hᴇ does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number. Look, he goes by me, and I don’t see ʜɪᴍ. Hᴇ passes on, but I don’t perceive ʜɪᴍ. If he snatches something away, who can hinder ʜɪᴍ? Who can ask ʜɪᴍ, ‘What are you doing?’“God will not withdraw ʜɪꜱ anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him. How much less will I answer ʜɪᴍ, and choose my words to argue with ʜɪᴍ? Even if I were righteous, I wouldn’t answer ʜɪᴍ. I would make supplication to my judge. If I had called and ʜᴇ had answered me, I wouldn’t believe that ʜᴇ listened to my voice. For ʜᴇ breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause. Hᴇ will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness. If it is a matter of strength, look, ʜᴇ is mighty! If of justice, ʜᴇ will say, ‘Who can will summon me?’ Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me. Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse. I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life.
“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked. If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?
“Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away. They see no good. They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey. If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up,’ I am afraid of all my sorrows. I know that you will not hold me innocent. I will be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain? If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye, yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes will abhor me. For ʜᴇ is not a human, as I am, that I should answer ʜɪᴍ, that we should come together in court. There is no mediator between us, that might lay ʜɪꜱ hand on us both. Let ʜɪᴍ take ʜɪꜱ rod away from me. Let ʜɪꜱ terror not make me afraid; then I would speak and not fear ʜɪꜱ, for I am not so in myself.