Bible Commentaries

CHAPTER 27 Job’s Closing Words in Self-Vindication

1. My righteousness I hold fast (Job 27:1-6)

2. The contrast between himself and the wicked (Job 27:7-23)

Job 27:1-6. Zophar, the third friend, no longer speaks. Perhaps Job paused after his remarks in answer to Bildad and waited for Zophar’s criticism. Perhaps that young hot-head hid his inability of advancing another argument under an assumed disgust. Critics have assigned Job 27:7-10 and Job 27:13-23 to Zophar and claim that Job did not speak them at all. But other critics, like Wellhausen, Kuenen and Dillman say that these verses are a later insertion. We do not need to waste our time by examining these claims of the inventive genius of these scholars. There is nothing to them. Job now becomes bolder, knowing that his friends had spent their last arrow against him. He still accuseth God that He has taken away his right and wronged him. And he is determined, more so than ever before, not to give in to the abominable logic of his friends. “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go; my heart does not condemn me as long as I live.” It is the vindication of himself.

Job 27:7-23. And this self-vindication he pursues when he pictures the godless and contrasts them with himself, showing that he cannot be identified with these. How could this description of the godless ever be applied to himself? True, he had suffered like the wicked suffer, but will his end be like theirs? Thus he tries to show them that they had done him an injustice, for he was an upright man, who in spite of his misery held on to God.