Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Job · About this commentary
Job: Oh That I Knew Where I Might Find Him
Job 23:1-17
1 Then Job answered, · WEB
Job wants an address rather than an answer, and states that a hearing would go in his favor before admitting he cannot get one.
The wish is for a location. Oh that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat! Job 23:3.
Not for relief, and not for an explanation delivered at a distance. He wants the courtroom, and he has his material ready: I would set my cause in order before him, and fill my mouth with arguments Job 23:4.
Then the sentence that separates him entirely from his friends. Asked what such a hearing would be like, he answers: would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No, but he would listen to me Job 23:6.
Job expects to be heard. After everything — the losses, the disease, the silence, twenty chapters of being told he is a criminal — he still believes that if he could get in front of God, God would not simply overwhelm him. That is a higher estimate of God's character than anything the three friends have managed, and they have spent the whole book defending him.
The search is described in four directions and comes up empty each time. East, west, north, south: he is not there... I can't find him... I can't see him... I can't catch a glimpse of him Job 23:8–9.
And immediately after that, without any relief from it, the most confident thing Job says in the book: but he knows the way that I take. When he has tried me, I will come out like gold Job 23:10.
He cannot find God and asserts that God is watching him. He is being crushed and calls it assaying. The figure is from the refiner's fire, where heat separates metal from the rock around it and destroys nothing worth keeping — and Job applies it to himself while sitting in ashes, without being told anything.
That is the closest anyone in the poem comes to the truth of chapters 1 and 2, and it is reached by a man who has no information at all.
What he offers as his record is not a claim to sinlessness but to fidelity: his foot has held fast to his steps, he has not turned away, and he has valued the words of his mouth more than my necessary food Job 23:11–12. Scripture more than bread, said by a man who is hungry.
The chapter does not end there, and it should not be quoted as if it did. The confidence gives way: he stands alone, and who can oppose him? What his soul desires, even that he does Job 23:13. And then terror — I am terrified at his presence... God has made my heart faint Job 23:15–16.
The same man holds both within seven verses. He expects to come out like gold and he is afraid of the one doing the refining, and the book records both without deciding which is the real Job.
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