Job 23 · a question people ask
"When he has tried me, I will come out like gold" (23:10). Is Job saying God was refining him?
Read what the verse says: "But he knows the way that I take. When he has tried me, I will come out like gold" (23:10). Tried is bachan (Brown-Driver-Briggs: "examine, try"), the verb Job had used in complaint to God: "and test him every moment" (7:18). The verse has tried and gold, and speaks of what Job will be when the trying is done; it has no word for refine. The next verse goes on: "My foot has held fast to his steps. I have kept his way, and not turned away" (23:11). Other scriptures set testing and gold side by side: "The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests the hearts" (Proverbs 17:3), and "will test them like gold is tested" (Zechariah 13:9) (see go deeper). The book itself doesn't call Job's suffering refining. Its opening shows Satan's question, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" (1:9), and the LORD's words to Satan, "although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause" (2:3). These notes set 23:10 beside those verses and don't add a reason the book doesn't give.
The verses
“But he knows the way that I take. When he has tried me, I will come out like gold. My foot has held fast to his steps. I have kept his way, and not turned away.”
“that you should visit him every morning, and test him every moment?”
“The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests the hearts.”
“I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, ‘It is my people;’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’””