Job: There Is No Umpire Between Us
21 I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life. 22 “It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked. 23 If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent. 24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it? 25 “Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away. They see no good. 26 They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey. 27 If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up,’ 28 I am afraid of all my sorrows. I know that you will not hold me innocent. 29 I will be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain? 30 If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye, 31 yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes will abhor me. 32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment. 33 There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both. 34 Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid; 35 then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.
Job says the thing the friends cannot allow, that the blameless and the wicked meet the same end, and asks for a mediator who could hold both sides.
I am blameless Job 9:21. He says it flatly, and he is right; the narrator and God have both said it already.
What follows is the sentence the friends exist to deny. It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked Job 9:22.
That is an observation about the world rather than an accusation of malice, and it is true. The innocent do die in disasters and the guilty do die old. Every reader of the book knows it, and the friends' whole system requires that it not be said aloud.
Job goes further than the evidence in the next verses, and the book does not pretend he is careful here. He says God will mock at the trial of the innocent and that the earth is given into the hand of the wicked Job 9:23–24. Then the clause that shows he knows how far he has gone: if not he, then who is it?
He is not asserting God's cruelty as a settled position. He is saying that he can see no other candidate, and inviting one. It is a question with an accusation inside it, and thirty chapters later God will answer without ever conceding the terms.
The speed of his ruin is caught in three figures — a runner, swift ships, an eagle stooping on prey Job 9:25–26. And the attempt to cheer up is described and dismissed in the same breath, because I know that you will not hold me innocent Job 9:28.
The washing image sharpens it. Snow and lye are the strongest cleaning agents he can name, and they are useless: yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes will abhor me Job 9:30–31. No amount of actual innocence can produce a verdict of innocence, because the verdict is not being reached by evidence.
The diagnosis is then given exactly. He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment Job 9:32. The problem is not guilt and not power. It is that the two parties are not the same kind of thing, so there is no common ground on which a case could be heard.
And out of that comes the request the whole book is bending toward. There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both Job 9:33.
The figure is precise. Someone who could put one hand on each party — reaching God and reaching a man, belonging to both sides at once. Job names the need and states that no such person exists. He asks only for the terror to be lifted so that he could speak Job 9:34–35, which is a smaller request and the most he thinks possible.
He returns to the same idea twice more, asking for a witness in heaven Job 16:19 and declaring that his vindicator lives Job 19:25. What the New Testament later says about one mediator between God and men 1 Timothy 2:5 answers a question this chapter is the first to ask properly.
held with reason What this mark means