Miserable Comforters (2 of 2)

In context

Job says his brothers, relatives, friends and servants have turned away from him, and even his wife finds his breath offensive (Job 19:13–19). He says, “I have escaped by the skin of my teeth” (Job 19:20), the verse the English saying comes from.

Then come some of the best-known words in the book: “I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25). In Israel a redeemer was a close relative who stood up for family in trouble, buying back the land of a relative who had become poor (Leviticus 25:25; Ruth 4:4–6). Christians have understood Job’s words in different ways, and Handel set them to music in Messiah.

Zophar answers that the joy of the wicked lasts only a moment, and pictures their end in grim images of poison and an arrow (Job 20:5, 14–25). Job replies that the wicked often grow old and powerful, and go down to Sheol “in an instant” (Job 21:7–13). Jeremiah asks the same question, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jeremiah 12:1), and Psalm 73 sees the same thing, “the prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73:3). Job closes the second round by calling his friends’ comfort “nonsense” (Job 21:34).