Job 17 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 17 Short Summary:

Job continues to struggle with despair in chapter 17, returning to the idea that he longs to find rest in death and the grave. At the same time, he had questions about whether there really was any rest to find in death. He asked God to stand up for him sense his friends were devoid of wisdom, understanding, or even a willingness to hear him out.

Job 17 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 foolish 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 DISPAIR CONTINUES (17:1-16):

  • Job falls back into expressions of despair in chapter 17.

  • He was ready to die and escape his suffering.

  • He was surrounded by people who mocked and provoked him.

  • Job asked God to stand up for him sense all his friends lacked understanding and stood opposed to him (17:3-4).

  • He felt like God had made him a byword in his community. A byword is a proverb or phrase used to allude to something of general reproach. Mother’s may have said to their children, “Don’t become rebellious or your life will turn out like Job’s.” Preachers may have said, “Don’t be a Job and be too stubborn to repent of your sins.” An example from the New Testament of a man’s whose name turned into a byword is Judas Iscariot.

  • Job was shocked by his own suffering, and he said other righteous men were as well. There were other righteous men who sympathized with him.

  • He resolved to hold to his convictions because he believed righteousness was the path to strength.

  • He preferred the company of wise righteous men to that of his friends, who he said possessed no wisdom at all (17:10).

  • Job’s final expression in the chapter is again one of despair.

  • He felt that good days were behind him and he had nothing to hope for. 

  • He could wish for death, but what hope was there in that? He was miserable on earth, but he wasn’t sure his hope of rest would be fulfilled in death either.

APPLICATION

• I found Job 17 hard to understand. It’s hard to understand the connection between Job’s expressions and what exactly he was intending to say.

• After reading several commentaries, I found my difficulty was shared with other Bible interpreters.

• There are parts of the Bible, big parts sometimes, that are hard to understand.

• I feel this is important to state because I’ve often heard teachers say, “The Bible is easy to understand and anyone can understand it,” as if its as easy as picking up a children’s picture book and grasping the plot.

• I think teachers say things like that because they want people to pick up their Bibles and study for themselves and not be afraid of the text, and that is a good thing!

• But while some of the Bible is easy to understand, those statements can give people a false impression of what they’re really getting into when they pick up a Bible.

• The Bible is a complex book that requires dedicated study to understand.

• We don’t want to present the Bible as overly simplistic, or else people will become discouraged when they study it and can’t understand it.  

• On the other hand, we don’t want to present the Bible as overly complex, or else we’ll scare people from ever attempting to understand it.

• When presenting the Bible to someone else, let’s do our best to give people a realistic expectation of what they are going to encounter in the Bible.