NOTES for Job 9:1-35

As in the case of Eliphaz, Job has no intention of arguing with Bildad over the substance. He fully agrees that God is in any case right in His judgments. Something else torments him: how can a person be justified before God (vv. 2-3)? To understand the question tormenting Job, it is important to remember that in this case the issue is not simply being right, but righteousness, the righteousness of a person before God, which a person ought to show but is unable to show. Job understands no worse than his friends that God's power over the world He created is absolute and limitless (vv. 4-13).

And this is the full horror of Job's situation: if God is like this, then Job cannot count on proving anything to Him; such a God can only be begged for mercy (vv. 14-15). The most terrible thing for Job is that he does not see justice in God. He sees in Him only power, a power turned even against Job himself (vv. 16-18). In a dispute with God, a person is doomed even if he is right, for God is stronger than any person from the outset and has no intention of stooping to a trial with any human being (vv. 19-20).

Job, it appears, is no less religious than his friends. The greatness and power of God are as well known to him as to them, and he knows no worse than Eliphaz or Bildad that in every respect a person is infinitely far from God. Perhaps for quite a long time Job, like his friends, was fully satisfied with the image of the God of religion, infinitely distant and mighty, the God whose power sustains such righteous people of religion as Job himself and his friends had been all their lives. But now, when God's power has turned against Job and religion has been unable to help him at all, Job has understood that the God known to him through religious tradition, in essence, has no concern for a person. Job is innocent, but God strikes the righteous and the wicked alike (vv. 21-23); He has handed the world over to sinners (v. 24).

Justifying oneself before God is pointless. He will judge either arbitrarily or according to some laws of His own, unknown to human beings, in such a way that it is impossible to be justified before Him (vv. 25-31). The God of religion is no longer enough for Job. He is seeking the God of revelation, the God before whom one could stand face to face as with a human being, because only then can a person hope for God's just judgment (vv. 32-33). But Job does not see such a desire in God, and of course no one can force Him to be merciful toward a person (vv. 33-35).

Job asks an important question: how can a person be justified before God? Does a person have such a possibility before the face of the One with whom no creature can be compared and whose ways surpass all understanding? No one can stand before the judgment of the All-knowing One, who sees the sinner's heart better than the sinner himself does, and no one's judgment is perfect before His judgment, including Bildad's judgment.

For some reason Job's friends very quickly forgot that just recently Job had a reputation as a righteous man. As soon as calamities fell on him, those around him were ready to search out his offenses without mentioning his good deeds at all. In truth, this is a banal story repeated from century to century. But "do not judge, that you may not be judged; for with the judgment you judge, you will be judged" (Matt. 7:1-2).

Job is well read in the books of the sages and can offer many quotations. But these quotations do not solve Job's main problem. The issue is not that God is higher than a human being and unquestionably more righteous. The issue is that God is the foundation of all righteousness, and this is exactly what Tradition testifies to with complete clarity.

It is He who decides who is righteous and who is not. But who, in that case, establishes the rules? And who serves as arbiter? At the foundation of Tradition lies the idea of righteousness as a correlation between God and the human person, a correlation not of essence but, as a modern philosopher might say, of existence. Righteousness is not inherent in a person; it is not his property or quality, even an acquired one, but his state. And it is God who evaluates how far a person's state corresponds to the criteria of righteousness.

But what criteria? By the time the Book of Job was written, no one had long imagined God's judgment the way the Egyptians, for example, imagined the judgment of Osiris, weighing the soul on scales. Scales presuppose something that exists objectively and separately both from the one who weighs and from the one being weighed. In Yahwism, however, already since the time of the prophet Amos, the idea of God's judgment had been established as a person's meeting with God face to face, as a moment of truth that would put everything and everyone in their places. Figuratively speaking, it turns out that the scales are not an objective instrument of measurement, but that same hand of God: God Himself is both player and arbiter at once.

If He, as arbiter, does not favor Himself as player, then everything is all right. But what if He does? Who then can stop Him? Who can act as that impartial third party who could evaluate how right God is in His judgment? And Job doubts precisely God's impartiality with regard to Himself. He does not understand why God is punishing him, a righteous man. Of course, for us as readers, a dim guess is already beginning to appear: God and Job do not understand righteousness in the same way.

Job, it seems, has no suspicion of anything of the sort yet. He is a deeply religious man, and he knows only one measure of righteousness: the measure of the righteousness of a religious person. In this, he has nothing to reproach himself for. So he says: I am righteous, I am ready to stand before God, but He does not want that. He hides and strikes from ambush for reasons I cannot understand. He strikes as if I were not a righteous man, but the worst sinner. So why does He strike me?