Job 19 and 20

Read Job 19 and 20 at Bible Gateway.

The Hebrew paragraph divisions for each man’s speech are like the divisions in the Psalms that we studied in 2014. There is an understood {s} division at the end of each numbered line, with an {n} marking where a new line begins within a numbered line.

Job 19:1-20:29 {s} Division at the end of each numbered line; with these {n} divisions within lines:
Job 20:26a, Total darkness is reserved for his treasures. {n}

Zophar repeats the same theme as Eliphaz and Bildad. Repetition is a teaching tool of Scripture, although I am not yet sure what the lesson is. And with Zophar’s speech, each of the three friends have spoken twice, in turn.

Job’s speech in chapter 19 forms a reverse parallelism:

1a) Job 19:1-3, You have reproached me ten times, tormenting my soul + are not ashamed of your harshness;

1b) Job 19:4, And if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me;

1c) Job 19:5-22, Job recounts his persecutions, of God and his friends;

1d) Job 19:23-24, Oh that my words were permanently written in a book / inscribed in stone;

1e) Job 19:25, For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall rise up at the last on the dust;

2e) Job 19:26-27, After my skin is destroyed, I know that in my flesh my own eyes shall see God;

2d) Job 19:27b, How my heart yearns within me!

2c) Job 19:28a, If you should say, ‘How shall we persecute him?’—

2b) Job 19:28b, Since the root of the matter is found in me;

2a) Job 19:29, Be afraid of the sword for yourselves (for your harshness calls forth wrath).

The E pair is the central axis.

1E: Even in the JPS, “Redeemer” is capitalized, indicating that the Redeemer referred to is God, and He shall arise up and stand on the dust. “Dust” is meant, Strong’s H6083, aphar, as in, God formed man of the dust of the earth; and not “earth” more commonly rendered from Strong’s H776, eretz, as in, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. It matters that it is dust, because it is to dust that men return when they die, so that Job is prophetically speaking of the resurrection of the Redeemer.

2E: Again Job’s subject is resurrection, but this time he is speaking of his own, for after his skin is destroyed, after he himself goes to the dust, he knows as surely as he knows his Redeemer lives, that in his flesh he shall see God. He is not talking about his spirit seeing God’s Spirit, or something similarly ethereal in the spiritual realm, for the phrase emphatically included, “in my flesh,” only ever speaks of the flesh and bones of this physical creation.