The Impossible Lawsuit Text: Job 9:1-13
Introduction: The Question on the Ash Heap
We come now to the book of Job, and we find a man sitting on an ash heap, scraping his sores with a piece of pottery. His children are dead, his wealth is gone, his body is wracked with pain, and his wife has told him to curse God and die. And to make matters worse, he is surrounded by three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who have come to comfort him with the theological equivalent of pouring salt in his wounds. Their argument is simple, tidy, and wrong. It is the argument of every tidy-minded religious person who has ever lived: God is just, you are suffering, therefore you must be a secret and spectacular sinner. Repent of your hidden wickedness, and God will restore your fortunes.
But Job, in his anguish, stumbles upon a much deeper, more terrifying, and ultimately more glorious problem. He knows their simplistic formula is wrong. He knows he has not committed some secret, heinous sin to deserve this. But he also knows that God is perfectly just and absolutely sovereign. And so he is caught in an impossible bind. His problem is not, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" That is a sentimental, modern question. Job's question is a thousand times more profound. It is a legal question, a courtroom question. It is this: "How can a man be in the right before God?"
This is the central question of the entire Bible. It is the question that Protestantism was born to answer. It is the question that every man must face, whether on an ash heap in Uz or in a comfortable suburb in America. Job, in the depths of his suffering, is not trying to get God into the dock to question His justice. He is trying to figure out how he, a mere man, could possibly survive his day in God's court. He is not questioning the Judge; he is terrified of the verdict. And in his desperate search for a legal standing, he articulates the very problem that only the gospel of Jesus Christ can solve.
The Text
Then Job answered and said, "In truth I know that this is so; But how can a man be in the right before God? If one desired to contend with Him, He could not answer Him once in a thousand times. Wise in heart and mighty in power, Who has stiffened his neck against Him and been at peace? God is the One who removes the mountains, they know not how, When He overturns them in His anger; The One who shakes the earth out of its place, And its pillars tremble; The One who says for the sun not to shine, And sets a seal upon the stars; Who alone stretches out the heavens, And tramples down the waves of the sea; Who makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south; Who does great things, unsearchable, And wondrous works, innumerable. Were He to sweep by me, I would not see Him; Were He to move past me, I would not perceive Him. Were He to snatch away, who could turn Him back? Who could say to Him, ‘What are You doing?’ God will not turn back His anger; Beneath Him crouch the helpers of Rahab."
(Job 9:1-13 LSB)
The Unwinnable Case (v. 1-3)
Job begins his reply to Bildad by agreeing with his premise, but radically disagreeing with his conclusion.
"In truth I know that this is so; But how can a man be in the right before God? If one desired to contend with Him, He could not answer Him once in a thousand times." (Job 9:2-3)
Bildad had just finished arguing that God does not pervert justice (Job 8:3). Job says, "Yes, I know. That's the whole problem." Job's friends think God's justice is a comfort to Job, a tool he can use to diagnose his own fault and fix it. Job knows that God's perfect justice is the most terrifying thing in the universe for a man like him. It is the very thing that condemns him.
He poses the ultimate question: "How can a man be in the right before God?" The word for "in the right" is a legal term. It means to be declared righteous, to be justified, to win the court case. Job is not asking how to be a nicer person. He is asking how to be declared legally innocent before the Supreme Court of the Cosmos. And he knows it is impossible.
He imagines a legal showdown, a man desiring to "contend" with God. If God were to cross-examine this man, asking him just one thousand questions about his life, his thoughts, his words, his motives, his deeds done and his duties left undone, the man would be speechless. He could not answer even one. He would have to plead the fifth a thousand times, but in God's court, silence is an admission of guilt. This is the doctrine of our radical corruption. It's not that we don't do some good things. It's that even our best things are tainted with sin, and we have no answer for any of it. We stand before God with our hand over our mouth.
The Character of the Judge (v. 4-10)
Job then considers the character of the one he wishes to sue. The case is hopeless not only because the defendant (man) is guilty, but because the Judge and Prosecutor (God) is infinitely powerful and wise.
"Wise in heart and mighty in power, Who has stiffened his neck against Him and been at peace?" (Job 9:4 LSB)
You cannot outwit God, for He is "wise in heart." You cannot overpower Him, for He is "mighty in power." Therefore, to resist Him, to stiffen your neck in pride, is a recipe for absolute ruin. There is no peace for the man who fights God. This is the fundamental insanity of sin. It is a finite creature shaking his fist at his infinite Creator.
Job then piles up descriptions of God's cosmic power. This is not poetry; it is a legal brief on why his case is unwinnable. God is the one who "removes the mountains" and "shakes the earth out of its place." He controls geology and seismology. He commands the sun not to shine and seals up the stars. He controls astronomy. He alone "stretches out the heavens" and "tramples down the waves of the sea." He is the master of cosmology and the tamer of chaos. He creates the constellations, the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades. He is the artist who hangs the stars in their places.
The conclusion is stark: God "does great things, unsearchable, And wondrous works, innumerable." A man cannot bring a lawsuit against a God whose actions are, by definition, beyond his ability to search out and comprehend. To sue God, you would have to be His equal. You would have to be God. And that position is already taken.
The Invisible and Sovereign God (v. 11-13)
The situation gets even worse for Job. This infinitely powerful God is also invisible and utterly sovereign in His actions.
"Were He to sweep by me, I would not see Him; Were He to move past me, I would not perceive Him. Were He to snatch away, who could turn Him back? Who could say to Him, ‘What are You doing?’" (Job 9:11-12 LSB)
God is not a tame God who operates on our level. He moves and acts, but we cannot see Him. His ways are not our ways. This is a profound statement against our empirical age, which demands that God show up in a lab and prove Himself. Job confesses that God's very nature is to be imperceptible to our senses unless He chooses to reveal Himself.
And His actions are unstoppable. If He chooses to "snatch away" Job's children, his health, his wealth, who is there to stop Him? Who has the standing to demand an explanation? The question, "What are You doing?" is the cry of a creature who has forgotten his place. It is the question of a pot telling the potter that he has no right to shape the clay as he pleases. Job understands the sheer audacity of such a question, even as he is tempted to ask it.
He concludes with a terrifying image:
"God will not turn back His anger; Beneath Him crouch the helpers of Rahab." (Job 9:13 LSB)
Rahab here is not the harlot of Jericho. Rahab is the name for a mythical, primeval sea monster, a symbol of chaos and arrogant rebellion against God, often identified with Egypt. The point is that the most powerful, demonic, and prideful forces in the cosmos, the "helpers of Rahab," are utterly crushed by God. They "crouch" beneath Him like beaten dogs. So if God's anger can subdue the greatest cosmic rebels, what hope does a man, a speck of dust from the earth, have? The case is closed. Man is guilty, and God is the omnipotent judge. There is no hope.
The Adjudicator We Have
And yet, this cry of utter hopelessness is one of the most profound expressions of faith in the Old Testament. Why? Because Job is asking the right question. He has correctly diagnosed the human condition. He sees the infinite gulf between a holy God and a sinful man. Later in this same chapter, he will articulate the solution he cannot see: "For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, that we may go to court together. There is no arbiter between us, who may lay his hand upon us both" (Job 9:32-33).
Job is crying out for a mediator. An umpire. An adjudicator. Someone who is both God and man, who can lay one hand on the shoulder of a holy God and the other hand on the shoulder of a sinful man and bring them together. Job is crying out for Jesus.
How can a man be in the right before God? The New Testament thunders the answer. Not by his own righteousness, for he has none. He cannot answer one charge in a thousand. A man can be declared righteous before God only by being clothed in the righteousness of another. God provides the Adjudicator that Job longed for. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, became a man. He stood in our place in the divine courtroom. He answered the thousand questions perfectly. He lived the life of perfect obedience that we have failed to live.
And then, He did the unthinkable. He, the only innocent man, took our condemnation upon Himself. The Judge stepped down from the bench, took off His robes, and went to the electric chair in our place. God's anger, which makes the helpers of Rahab crouch, was poured out upon His own Son on the cross. And because that righteous anger was fully satisfied, God can now be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26).
Job's friends, with their neat and tidy theology, were condemned by God in the end. But Job, who wrestled, who questioned, who despaired, but who refused to let go of the truth of God's justice, was vindicated. He was right about the problem. He just could not see the solution that was standing behind the veil of history. We have no such excuse. The Adjudicator has come. The case has been settled at the cross. And for all who are in Him, the verdict is in: righteous in Christ.