Job 9

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¹Then Job answered, ²“Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God? ✦ ³If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand. ✦ ⁴God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him, and prospered? ✦ ⁵He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger. ✦ ⁶He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble. ✦ ⁷He commands the sun, and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars. ✦ ⁸He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea. ✦ ⁹He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south. ✦ ¹⁰He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number. ✦ ¹¹Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him. ✦ ¹²Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’ ✦ ¹³“God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him. ✦ ¹⁴How much less shall I answer him, And choose my words to argue with him? ✦ ¹⁵Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge. ✦ ¹⁶If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice. ✦ ¹⁷For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause. ✦ ¹⁸He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness. ✦ ¹⁹If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’ ✦ ²⁰Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse. ✦ ²¹I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life. ✦ ²²“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked. ✦ ²³If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent. ✦ ²⁴The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it? ✦ ²⁵“Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good. ✦ ²⁶They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey. ✦ ²⁷If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;’ ✦ ²⁸I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent. ✦ ²⁹I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain? ✦ ³⁰If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye, ✦ ³¹yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me. ✦ ³²For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment. ✦ ³³There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both. ✦ ³⁴Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid; ✦ ³⁵then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.

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Where this chapter connects

Job 9 ·12 Job 10 ·9 Job 33 ·8 Job 23 ·8 Job 7 ·7 Job 38 ·6 Job 34 ·6 Dan 4 ·5

Christ at the center

Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.

How Job 9 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Resources, by level

Lay

★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical
A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.

Pastoral

SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical
Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.

Commentaries & study tools

VideoBibleProject — Job videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
VideoWatch teaching on Job 9YouTube · Lay · Free
Sermons and chapter teaching from across YouTube.
CommentaryEnduring Word — Job 9David Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical
Readable, verse-by-verse exposition of the whole chapter.
CommentaryMatthew Henry on JobMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
ReferenceBlue Letter Bible — Job 9Blue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free
Interlinear, lexicon, and study tools across the chapter.

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