Read Job 10 and 11 at Bible Gateway.
Hebrew paragraph divisions
For the series of speeches from Job 3:2-28:10, the Hebrew paragraph divisions for each man’s speech are like the divisions in the Psalms that we studied in 2014. There is an understood {s} division at the end of each numbered line, with an {n} marking where a new line begins within a numbered line. There are two {n} divisions in the speeches from Job 10:1-11:20:
10:15a If I am wicked, woe to me; Even if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head. {n}
11:6a That He would show you the secrets of wisdom! For they would double your prudence. {n}
Job 9:1-10:22 chiastic structure, Job’s reply to Bildad
1a) Job 9:1-20, Even the righteous are not righteous before God;
1a) Job 9:1-3, How can a man be righteous before God, or contend with Him;
central axis) Job 9:4-13, God, the Creator of all;
1a) Job 9:4, God is wise in heart + mighty in strength; who has hardened himself against Him and prospered?
1b) Job 9:5-6, He removes the mountains/ they do not know when He overturns them in His anger;
central axis) Job 9:7-10, He commands the sun, and it does not rise; He seals off the stars. He alone spreads out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea. He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south; He does great things past finding out, yes, wonders without number;
2b) Job 9:11-13a, If He goes by me, I do not perceive Him/ God will not withdraw His anger;
2a) Job 9:13b, The allies of the proud lie prostrate beneath Him;
2a) Job 9:14-20, Though I were righteous, I could not answer Him;
1b) Job 9:21-31, Who else could it be but He who is behind my suffering?
1a) Job 9:21-24a {n} I am blameless, yet I am destroyed;
central axis) Job 9:24b, If it is not He, who else could it be?
2a) Job 9:25-31, If I am condemned, why then do I labor in vain;
1a) Job 9:25-26, My days flee from me;
1b) Job 9:27-28a, If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I am afraid of my sufferings;
1c) Job 9:28b, I know that You will not hold me innocent;.
central axis) Job 9:29, If I am condemned, Why then do I labor in vain?
2c) Job 9:30, If I wash myself with snow water + cleanse my hands with soap;
2b) Job 9:31a, Yet You will plunge me into the pit;
2a) Job 9:31b, My own clothes will abhor me;
central axis) Job 9:32-33, “For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both;”
2b) Job 9:34-35, Let Him take His rod away from me/ but it is not so with me;
2a) Job 10:1-22, Though I am righteous, I cannot lift my head before You;
1a) Job 10:1-7, Though you know I am not wicked, there is none to deliver from Your hand;
central axis) Job 10:8-12, God, Job’s Creator;
1a) Job 10:8a, Your hands have made me + fashioned me, an intricate unity;
central axis) Job 10:8b, Yet You would destroy me;
2a) Job 10:9-12, You have clothed me with flesh/ You have granted me life;
2a) Job 10:13-22, Even if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head.
Zophar’s speech is in chapter 11, and I could not find its chiastic structure if there was one.
Job comes right to the heart of man’s problem. Even the most righteous of men cannot stand on his righteousness before God. The central axis is a back door prophecy of Messiah, for God indeed became a Man as we are, in the Lord Jesus Christ, who then is our Mediator between God and man. Through Jesus Christ, God extends right-standing as a free gift of grace, since even the most righteous of men cannot stand on his righteousness before God.
This the heart of Job’s struggle: he has evidence of God’s care for him (Job 10:12) and knows that He does not laugh at the calamity of the innocent, and yet how to explain his suffering and what has happened to him?
The answer is, which eluded Job because the Mediator had not yet come: God is just and cannot be accused of injustice in His dealings with men. He has extended mercy, He did put on flesh, He provided for Himself a Mediator. He triumphed over all the power of the enemy, and the troubles of this life are temporary, having been overcome. There is an end in sight!
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