Job 31 Bible study: Here is my signature

Every word of this chapter is Job's until the last words of 31:40. His speech began, "Job again took up his parable, and said" (29:1), and this chapter is its end. Much of it is built on one pattern. Job names a wrong with if, and then calls a loss down on himself with then let: "If I have walked with falsehood, and my foot has hurried to deceit" (31:5) … "then let me sow, and let another eat" (31:8). Again and again: "If I have despised the cause of my male servant" (31:13), "If I have withheld the poor from their desire" (31:16), "If I have made gold my hope" (31:24), "If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him who hated me" (31:29). Some of his then lets are about his own body and land: "then let my shoulder fall from the shoulder blade, and my arm be broken from the bone" (31:22), and "let briers grow instead of wheat, and stinkweed instead of barley" (31:40). Inside his first if he asks to be weighed: "let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know my integrity" (31:6) (tap integrity). He had said, "Until I die I will not put away my integrity from me" (27:5).

Job 31:24→leads toMark 10:24

Job says, "If I have made gold my hope" (31:24), "If I have rejoiced because my wealth was great" (31:25), and says that would mean "I would have denied the God who is above" (31:28). Jesus said to his disciples, "Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter into God’s Kingdom!" (Mark 10:24). Mark doesn't name Job, and Jesus says nothing of him, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: trust in riches, set against God. Some read the two together: what Job disowns here, Jesus names as a danger for those who trust in riches. Others keep each in its own setting: Job is speaking of himself, and Jesus was speaking to his disciples about entering God's Kingdom. Neither reading makes Jesus' words a verdict on Job's words, or Job a picture of Jesus.

תֻּמָּהtummahsay toom-MAH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "integrity". Strong's: "innocence". "let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know my integrity" (31:6). It is the word of the LORD's "He still maintains his integrity" (2:3), of Job's wife's "Do you still maintain your integrity?" (2:9), and of Job's "Until I die I will not put away my integrity from me" (27:5). It comes five times in the Hebrew Bible, four of them in Job, and 31:6 is the last of the four; the fifth is "The integrity of the upright shall guide them" (Proverbs 11:3).