Job 23 · a question people ask
"My foot has held fast to his steps" (23:11). Was Job right to say that about himself?
These are Job's words: "My foot has held fast to his steps. I have kept his way, and not turned away. 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" (23:11-12). He is answering Eliphaz, who had asked, "Isn’t your wickedness great? Neither is there any end to your iniquities" (22:5). In this chapter Job doesn't take up Eliphaz's charges one by one (22:6-9), and the book doesn't answer them here. The book says of Job, "That man was blameless and upright" (1:1), and the LORD says to Satan, "there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man" (1:8; again in 2:3). When the LORD answers Job, he asks, "Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (38:2), and Job says, "I have uttered that which I didn’t understand" (42:3). The LORD also says to Eliphaz that he and his two friends "have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7). The book doesn't say which words 38:2 or 42:7 has in view. These notes set the verses side by side and give no verdict on 23:11-12.
The verses
“My foot has held fast to his steps. I have kept his way, and not turned away. 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.”
“Isn’t your wickedness great? Neither is there any end to your iniquities. For you have taken pledges from your brother for nothing, and stripped the naked of their clothing. You haven’t given water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. But as for the mighty man, he had the earth. The honorable man, he lived in it. You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.”
“There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God, and turned away from evil.”
“The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant, Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil.””