Job 13 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 13 Short Summary:

In Job 13, Job makes it clear that he is frustrated with his friends. He calls them worthless physicians and accuses them of misrepresenting God. Job didn’t want to hear from his friends anymore, he wanted to hear from God. He wanted to speak to God face to face and get real answers to his questions. Job wrote, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him; yet I will argue my ways to His face.”

Job 13 Bible Study

SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

• Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan

• Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution

• Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.

• Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost

WHEN:

• The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).

• I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.

• Job’s Friends – Job rebuked his 3 friends for being unhelpful and misrepresenting God.

WHERE:

• Job lived in the land of Uz. Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.

OUTLINE:

• JOB’S FRUSTRATION WITH HIS FRIENDS (13:1-12):

  • Job had had enough of his friend’s accusations and his response to them in chapter 13 has more bite to it than his previous responses.

  • Job told them that he knew as much as them and his wisdom was in no way inferior to theirs.

  • There was no point for Job to argue with them, what he really wanted was to speak to God. God would have real insights to offer him, unlike his friends.

  • Job called his friends worthless physicians who pretended to speak for God but were actually misrepresenting Him.

  • He told them they would appear wiser if they stopped talking. He told them that if God were standing with them, He would rebuke them.

  • Job said to them, “Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay” (13:12).

• JOB’S DESIRE TO SPEAK WITH GOD (13:13-28):

  • Job was going to speak his mind because he believed he was in the right. He was ready to accept the consequences and put himself in God’s hands, saying, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him; yet I will argue my ways to His face” (13:15).

  • After trying to undermine his confidence one after the other, Job’s friends had failed to shake his belief that he was a righteous man (13:18). He had heard the arguments against him, yet he remained steadfastly convinced.

  • Job asked God to do 2 things for him so he could bring his case before Him. First, he wanted God’s hand to be removed from him. He needed the oppression and illness to stop so he could be of good body and mind to present his case. Second, he asked God to conceal His glory so he could stand in front of Him without being overwhelmed by his terrifying majesty.

  • He wanted to talk to God and hear His reply. If God convicted him of sin, so be it, Job was ready to accept it, but he wanted to hear it from God’s mouth, not the mouths of his friends.

APPLICATION

• Job sets a good example for us of a person who took a stand in the minority for truth.

• He wasn’t willing to change his mind just because his friends were ganging up on him.

• He wasn’t going to be pressured into accepting something that he didn’t believe was true.

• Many churches and Christians cave to pressure, whether its pressure from the inside or cultural pressure from the outside. They adopt views that they used to stand against because they don’t want to stand against friends, co-workers, or societal norms.

• Like Job, we should always be willing to hear other viewpoints, but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be pressured into accepting what isn’t true just because a lot of other people are promoting it.