Job 23 Bible study: I will come out like gold

"Then Job answered" (23:1). Every word of this chapter is Job's. He is answering Eliphaz, whose speech began, "Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered" (22:1), and his answer runs on through chapter 24; the next heading is "Then Bildad the Shuhite answered" (25:1). Eliphaz had told him, "Acquaint yourself with him now, and be at peace" (22:21), and "If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up" (22:23). Job says, "Even today my complaint is rebellious. His hand is heavy in spite of my groaning" (23:2), and then, "Oh that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat!" (23:3) (tap seat). He would "set my cause in order before him, and fill my mouth with arguments" (23:4), the words of 13:18's "I have set my cause in order". He would "know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would tell me" (23:5). "Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No, but he would listen to me" (23:6). "There the upright might reason with him, so I should be delivered forever from my judge" (23:7) (tap upright, reason). Job doesn't say here whom he means by the upright, and these notes don't say it for him.

Job 23:12→leads toJohn 6:63

Job says, "I haven’t gone back from the commandment of his lips. I have treasured up the words of his mouth more than my necessary food" (23:12). In John 6 Jesus says, "Don’t work for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains to eternal life" (John 6:27), and later, "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63). When many of his disciples left him (John 6:66), he asked the twelve, "You don’t also want to go away, do you?" (John 6:67), and Simon Peter answered, "Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). Jesus doesn't name Job, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: words from God held dearer than food. Some read the two together: Job says he holds the words of God's mouth above his food, and Jesus says his own words are spirit and life, words Peter would not leave. Others read each in its own setting: Job is speaking of his own record before God, in answer to Eliphaz (22:22, 23:11-12); Jesus was speaking to disciples who found his teaching hard (John 6:60-61), and said nothing of Job. Neither reading makes Job a picture of Peter or of Jesus, or says whether Job's words about himself were right.

חֹקchoqsay KHOKE

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "something prescribed", and among its senses "prescribed-portion or allowance of food". Strong's: "an appointment (of time, space, quantity, labor or usage)". "I have treasured up the words of his mouth more than my necessary food" (23:12), and two verses later, "For he performs that which is appointed for me" (23:14): my necessary food and that which is appointed for me are this word with the same ending, my. Job used it before, where the WEB gives it as bounds: "you have appointed his bounds that he can’t pass" (14:5). A prayer in Proverbs has it with bread: "Feed me with the food that is needful for me" (Proverbs 30:8).