Job 27

Job answers his friends with an oath. He will not give up his claim to honesty, even though he believes God has treated him unjustly. He then describes the end of the wicked in words much like his friends’ own, and says they have seen it for themselves.

Job 27:1

Job speaks again, and the Hebrew calls his words a mashal, a kind of poem or wise saying. This is not just a complaint. It is a solemn, weighty statement, and the friends have fallen silent and are not answering him.

BSA: discourse (“parable, a wise saying, proverb”): Job’s words are shaped as a weighty, poetic saying, not a casual outburst.

Job 27:2

Job swears by the living God, yet in the same breath says God has denied him justice and made his soul bitter. His faith and his anguish sit side by side. He still takes God seriously enough to swear by him, and he does not walk away.

BSA: embittered (“made bitter, provoked”): Job feels God himself has poisoned his inner life with sorrow. Almighty (“Shadday, all-powerful”): He names God by the title of supreme power, even while complaining of him.

See also: Job 34:5.

Job 27:3-4

While Job has life in him, he will not lie. He sees his breath as God’s own gift, so as long as he breathes he will speak truthfully. He will not buy peace with his friends by confessing sins he has not committed.

BSA: breath (“spirit, life-giving air”): Job’s life is on loan from God, which makes honesty a debt owed to him. deceit (“slackness, treachery”): Pretending to be guilty would be a kind of treachery against the truth.

See also: Genesis 2:7; Job 33:4.

Job 27:5

Job flatly refuses to say that his friends are right in blaming his suffering on hidden sin. He will hold to his integrity until death. His stubbornness here is not pride for its own sake but loyalty to the truth as he knows it.

BSA: integrity (“innocence, moral purity”): The word means a wholeness of life, the very quality God himself had praised in Job.

Hebrew: תֻּמָּה (tummah, H8538) — “completeness, blamelessness.” It is the same word used of Job in the opening chapters. It describes a life that is whole and undivided, not a sinless one.

See also: Job 2:3.

Job 27:6

Job grips his righteousness like something he will never let go. He says his heart has no accusation against him for his days. This is not a claim to be sinless but a claim that he has not lived the hidden wickedness his friends charge him with.

BSA: cling (“not slacken, abandon”): He pictures himself holding on with a firm grip. conscience (“heart, inner self”): The Hebrew speaks of the heart, the inner person that would testify against him if he were guilty.

See also: 1 John 3:21.

Job 27:7

Job wishes that whoever stands against him would be treated as the wicked are. It is a bitter turn that shows how deeply the false charges hurt. He is saying that those who accuse him falsely are the ones who deserve the judgment they speak of.

BSA: enemy (“hater, adversary”): He sees his accusers as opponents of an innocent man, not as comforters.

Job 27:8-10

Job asks what hope the godless have when God finally takes their life. When trouble comes, will God hear their cry? Those who never loved God cannot expect to find him when they suddenly need him. Real faith delights in God and prays at all times.

BSA: hope (“expectancy, cord of attachment”): The godless hold onto a cord that snaps when it is pulled at death. delight (“take pleasure, be soft”): True faith enjoys God. It does not merely run to him in emergencies.

See also: Proverbs 1:28; Psalm 37:4.

Job 27:11-12

Job promises to teach his friends about God’s power and to hide nothing of the Almighty’s ways. Then he reproaches them gently: they have seen life for themselves, so why talk such empty nonsense? They have mistaken a general truth for a rule that fits every case.

BSA: power (“hand, strength”): The Hebrew speaks of God’s hand, the way he acts in the world. empty (“vain, meaningless”): Job calls their speech as hollow as a breath, a word that echoes the book of Ecclesiastes.

Hebrew: הֶבֶל (hevel, H1892) — “breath, vapor, emptiness.” The word for ’empty’ literally means a puff of breath. Job says his friends’ talk is all wind with nothing solid in it.

Job 27:13

Job now describes the fate of the wicked. His words sound very much like those of his friends. The wicked person’s inheritance from God is judgment. Job accepts that God does judge evil. What he denies is that every sufferer is therefore wicked.

BSA: portion (“inheritance, share”): Judgment is pictured as an allotted share handed down to the wicked.

See also: Job 20:29.

Job 27:14-15

Even a large family cannot save the wicked. His sons fall to the sword, his children go hungry, and those who survive die of plague. Even the widows are too stunned or too frightened to mourn them. The picture is of a household wiped out.

BSA: sword (“cutting instrument, warfare”): Violent death in war is the end appointed for the wicked man’s line. weep (“cry, mourn”): Even the honor of a proper mourning is denied them.

See also: Psalm 78:64.

Job 27:16-17

The wicked man piles up silver like dust and clothes like clay, yet others will enjoy it. The righteous will wear his garments and share his silver. Wealth gathered without God is not truly his and cannot be kept.

BSA: righteous (“just, upright”): In the end the upright inherit what the unjust had hoarded.

See also: Proverbs 13:22; Ecclesiastes 2:26.

Job 27:18

The wicked man’s house looks solid but is as fragile as a moth’s cocoon, or the flimsy hut a watchman puts up in a field for a season. What he builds for himself will not last.

BSA: hut (“small shelter, booth”): A watchman’s booth is temporary, thrown up for a season and then left behind.

See also: Matthew 7:26-27.

Job 27:19

He goes to bed rich, but wakes to find everything gone. In one night, all that he trusted in disappears. The verse shows how suddenly wealth can vanish, and how little it can promise.

BSA: gone (“has disappeared, is no more”): What he thought was secure is simply no longer there.

See also: Luke 12:20.

Job 27:20-21

Terror falls on him like a flood, and a storm snatches him away at night. The east wind, a fierce and scorching wind in that region, carries him off and sweeps him from his home. Judgment arrives with a force no one can resist.

BSA: east (“the direction of the rising sun”): The east wind came from the desert and was known as harsh and destructive. flood (“rushing waters, overwhelming force”): Nothing can stand against a sudden rush of water.

See also: Psalm 90:5.

Job 27:22-23

The storm throws itself on him without pity as he runs for safety. Then it claps its hands and hisses at him as he is driven from his place. The wind is pictured like a crowd mocking a fallen man. There is no escape from God’s hand.

BSA: mercy (“pity, compassion”): The judgment shows no softness at all. hisses (“whistles, to express scorn”): It is the sound of mockery, a sign that he has become a thing of shame.

See also: Lamentations 2:15.