The Righteous Accused Text: Job 13:20-28
Introduction: The Audacity of Faith
We come now to a portion of Job’s plea that is uncomfortable for the modern, domesticated Christian. We prefer our saints to be serene and our sufferers to be quietly submissive. We want faith to look like a placid acceptance of whatever comes, with a gentle smile and a pious platitude at the ready. But that is not the faith of the Bible, and it is certainly not the faith of Job. What we have here is a man on the rack, a man being crushed by the hand of God, who refuses to let go of God. He is in an argument with the Almighty, but it is a covenantal argument. This is not the insolent back-talk of a rebel; it is the desperate, audacious plea of a son who knows his Father's character, even when he cannot understand his Father's actions.
Job is done with his friends. He has called them physicians of no value, worthless comforters. Their tidy theological boxes cannot contain the whirlwind of his reality. They operate on a simple, and ultimately cruel, retribution principle: God is just, you are suffering, therefore you are a great sinner. They are defending God, they think, but they are doing so with cheap, flimsy lies. Job knows better. He knows God is just, and he knows he is righteous. And because both of these things are true, he is in an agony of confusion. So he turns from his miserable counselors and addresses God directly. He demands a day in court.
This is a profound lesson for us. When you are in the depths, when God's providences seem to contradict His promises, the temptation is to either curse God and die, as Job's wife suggested, or to defend God with bad arguments, as his friends did. Both are forms of unbelief. The first rejects God's goodness. The second rejects God's sovereignty over the details of your life by insisting on a simplistic formula that makes you the master of your fate. Job does neither. He clings to God's goodness while simultaneously challenging the apparent injustice of his situation. He is wrestling with God, like Jacob at Peniel, and he will not let go until he gets an answer. This is the audacity of a true faith, a faith that takes God at His word so seriously that it will argue with Him on the basis of that word.
In this passage, Job lays out the terms for his legal confrontation with God. He is filing a motion in the heavenly court, asking for the conditions that would make a fair trial possible. He is not questioning whether God has the right to do what He is doing; he is questioning whether what God is doing aligns with the justice that God Himself has revealed.
The Text
"Only two things do not do to me, Then I will not hide from Your face: Move Your hand far from me, And let not the dread of You terrify me. Then call, and I will answer; Or let me speak, then respond to me. How many are my iniquities and sins? Make known to me my transgression and my sin. Why do You hide Your face And think of me as Your enemy? Will You cause a driven leaf to tremble? Or will You pursue the dry chaff? For You write bitter things against me And make me to possess the iniquities of my youth. You put my feet in the stocks And kept watch over all my paths; You set a limit for the soles of my feet, While I am decaying like a rotten thing, Like a garment that is moth-eaten."
(Job 13:20-28 LSB)
Terms of Engagement (vv. 20-22)
Job begins by setting his conditions for this divine encounter. He is not making demands of an equal, but rather pleading for the terms that would make fellowship, and a fair hearing, possible.
"Only two things do not do to me, Then I will not hide from Your face: Move Your hand far from me, And let not the dread of You terrify me. Then call, and I will answer; Or let me speak, then respond to me." (Job 13:20-22)
Job’s first request is for a cessation of hostilities. "Move Your hand far from me." He is saying, "I cannot present my case while I am being actively crushed." The sheer weight of God's afflicting hand is so heavy, so overwhelming, that it prevents any kind of rational discourse. This is not the complaint of a man who wants to escape discipline, but of a man who wants to understand it. He is asking for a moment of relief, not so he can run, but so he can reason.
His second request is related: "let not the dread of You terrify me." This is not just about the physical pain, but the existential terror. Job is experiencing the raw, unveiled terror of a holy God's apparent wrath. This is the dread that made Adam and Eve hide in the garden (Gen. 3:8). Job knows that if he is to stand before God, he cannot be paralyzed by fear. He is asking God to temper His fearsome majesty so that a conversation can occur. In essence, he is asking for what we have been given in Christ: a mediator. He is asking for a way to approach the throne of judgment as a throne of grace.
If God grants these two conditions, Job promises not to hide. He will stand his ground. He then proposes the courtroom procedure: "Then call, and I will answer; Or let me speak, then respond to me." He doesn't care who goes first. God can be the prosecutor, and Job the defendant. Or Job can present his complaint, and God can respond. The point is that he wants a genuine dialogue. He wants charges, evidence, and a verdict. He is not looking for an escape from justice; he is desperately seeking it. He is so confident in his fundamental integrity before God that he is willing to stand trial, provided the trial is fair.
The Demand for Charges (vv. 23-24)
Having set the terms, Job now issues his direct challenge, demanding to know the specific sins for which he is being punished.
"How many are my iniquities and sins? Make known to me my transgression and my sin. Why do You hide Your face And think of me as Your enemy?" (Job 13:23-24 LSB)
This is the heart of Job's legal case. If his suffering is punitive, as his friends insist, then there must be a crime. "Show me the evidence," he says. "Read the charges." This is a righteous demand. A just God does not punish without cause, and He does not leave the accused in the dark about his offense. Job is not claiming sinless perfection; he is asking for a specific accounting. He wants to see the ledger. This is the cry of a man with a clear conscience who is being treated like a criminal.
Then the cry becomes more personal, more wounded. "Why do You hide Your face and think of me as Your enemy?" For a man of God, the affliction is not the worst part. The worst part is the divine silence, the sense of abandonment. The hiding of God's face is one of the most terrible curses in Scripture (Deut. 31:17). It is the opposite of the Aaronic blessing, where the Lord makes His face shine upon His people. Job is experiencing the terror of a broken relationship. He, who once walked in fellowship with God, is now treated as an enemy combatant. The pain of the boils is nothing compared to the pain of being considered God's foe.
The Accusation of Disproportion (vv. 25-26)
Job then argues that God's actions are wildly out of proportion to his own creaturely weakness, and seem to be based on sins long past.
"Will You cause a driven leaf to tremble? Or will You pursue the dry chaff? For You write bitter things against me And make me to possess the iniquities of my youth." (Job 13:25-26 LSB)
Here Job employs masterful rhetoric. He paints a picture of his own frailty. He is a leaf, blown about by the wind. He is dry chaff, weightless and insignificant. He asks, is it fitting for the omnipotent Creator of the universe to bring the full force of His power against something so fragile? It is like using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. There is a profound disproportion, he argues, between God's might and his own weakness. The attack seems unworthy of God's majesty.
Then he offers a possible explanation for this assault. Perhaps God is dredging up old sins. "You write bitter things against me and make me to possess the iniquities of my youth." This is a fascinating insight into the nature of sin and memory. Job is saying, "I know I wasn't perfect as a young man. But are you now, in my old age, bringing all those foolish sins to bear against me?" He feels as though God is holding a magnifying glass to his past, prosecuting him for things that should have been long forgotten. It is a bitter decree, a sentence written in stone, that forces him to re-inherit the guilt of his past. This is what it feels like to be under the accusation of the law without the comfort of the gospel.
The Sentence of Decay (v. 27-28)
Finally, Job describes his current state as that of a prisoner under strict confinement, wasting away under God's unblinking gaze.
"You put my feet in the stocks And kept watch over all my paths; You set a limit for the soles of my feet, While I am decaying like a rotten thing, Like a garment that is moth-eaten." (Job 13:27-28 LSB)
The imagery is stark. He is a prisoner. His feet are in stocks, unable to move. God is the jailer, watching his every path, ensuring there is no escape. God has drawn a line around his feet, a boundary he cannot cross. This is a picture of total confinement and meticulous, hostile scrutiny. There is no freedom, no relief, no place to run. He is hemmed in by God's afflicting providence.
And the result of this imprisonment is decay. He is not just confined; he is disintegrating. "I am decaying like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten." His body is wasting away with disease, a living picture of corruption. The comparison to a moth-eaten garment is powerful. It speaks of a slow, silent, internal process of destruction. From the outside, the garment might look intact for a time, but it has no substance, no strength. One touch and it falls to dust. This is how Job sees himself: a man being un-created, returned to the dust from which he was made, under the relentless, judicial gaze of God.
The Courtroom of the Gospel
Job's plea is raw, honest, and filled with anguish. He wants a fair trial, but he cannot get one under these conditions. He is right to demand that God reveal the charges against him. He is right to feel the terror of being treated as an enemy by the one he loves. But what Job could only long for, we have been given freely.
Job asked for God to remove His heavy hand. For us who are in Christ, God has removed His hand of wrath and placed it squarely on His own Son. The full weight of our sin, the crushing blow of justice, fell upon Jesus at the cross. Because of this, we can now approach God with confidence, not terror.
Job asked for the dread of God to be taken away. We are told to "come boldly to the throne of grace" (Hebrews 4:16). Why? Because our High Priest, Jesus, has gone before us. He is the mediator Job longed for, the one who can stand between sinful man and a holy God. He does not just temper God's majesty; He clothes us in His own righteousness so that we can stand in that majesty unafraid.
Job demanded to know his sins. The gospel does something far better. It tells us that for all our sins, "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). The list of charges that Job demanded to see was nailed to the cross of Christ (Colossians 2:14). God took the record of our debts, the "iniquities of our youth" and our adulthood, and He cancelled it. He does not hide His face from us; He makes His face to shine upon us in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).
Job felt like a driven leaf, pursued by God. But the gospel tells us that God is the one who pursues us, not with wrath, but with goodness and mercy all the days of our lives (Psalm 23:6). Job felt like a prisoner in stocks, decaying. But the Son has set us free, and we are free indeed (John 8:36). We are not decaying garments, but are being renewed day by day, being transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 4:16). Job's righteous plea finds its ultimate answer not in the whirlwind that is to come, but at the cross that has already come. His covenantal lawsuit with God is settled out of court, in our favor, paid for by the blood of the Lamb.