Job 9 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 9 Short Summary:

Job chapter 9 is Job’s response to the accusations of his friend Bildad. Bildad articulated his oversimplified view of the nature of God in chapter 8, and Job refutes it here in chapter 9. Job wanted to bring his case before God and have God vindicate him, but he also knew that God was so great that no man could stand before Him. Job wanted an arbiter, someone who could go between him and God and plead his innocence.

Job 9 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.

• Bildad – In Job 9, Job is responding to his friend Bildad who leveled some accusations against him in chapter 8.  

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:

• GOD IS NOT A MAN WHO CAN BE BROUGHT TO TRIAL (9:1-35):

  • Job was fully ready to agree with Bildad that God did not pervert justice (8:3; 9:2), but he disagreed that God was punishing him because of sin.

  • He longed to make his case before God, he wanted his day in court, to present the facts and have God vindicate him, but who was he to interact with the God of the universe.

  • Job knew how marvelous God was and how unworthy he was to stand before him.

  • In verses 5-13, Job spoke of God’s awesomeness, he described God as the One who moves mountains, shakes the pillars of the earth, who commands the sun to rise and set, who made the heavens and designed the star constellations, as the one who works in secret doing “great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things beyond number” (9:10).

  • He knew that no man has the right to question God as if he were His equal.

  • In a sense, Job wanted God to come down and hear him out, but in another sense, Job knew if God were to come down, he would be so stupefied by His majesty that he wouldn’t even be able to open his mouth.

  • He would be stunned into muteness by the incredible splendor of God, and he wouldn’t dare speak a word to the One who possesses all wisdom and knowledge.

  • God knows our character and heart far better than we know it ourselves, Job was afraid that, while he believed he hadn’t sin, God’s intimate knowledge of him would expose him.

  • His tongue was too careless to speak to God. He wrote, “Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless He would prove me perverse” (9:20).

  • The holiness of God is enough to make even the most righteous human look like a filthy sinner.

  • Job disagreed with Bildad that God always blessed righteous men.

  • Job, probably venting some frustration, said that God treats all men alike and doesn’t mind when calamity befalls the innocent.

  • Job said, "The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He [God] covers the faces of its judges—if it is not He, who then is it?” (9:24). He said this because he, like his friends, were ignorant of the existence of Satan. It was Satan who wanted justice perverted and who was actively trying to spread injustice throughout the earth.

  • Job was frustrated that he didn’t have an arbiter, someone who could go to God on his behalf and plead his case.

APPLICATION

• When our life is over, none of us will be able to stand before God and testify to our own righteousness.

• No arbiter or lawyer, no matter how skilled, can make the case that we aren’t guilty of sin.

• That is why we want Jesus as our arbiter. Jesus will not ask God to save us based on our righteousness but based on His righteousness.

• “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom from all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim 2:5-6).