Job 31 · a question people ask

Job lists wrong after wrong that he says he hasn't done. Is he saying he has never sinned?

In the text

Job 27 asks this of his oath, "My heart will not reproach me so long as I live" (27:6), and sets beside it his earlier words about his own disobedience and iniquity (7:21, 13:26, 14:17). This chapter adds words of its own. Its ifs name particular things: falsehood and deceit (31:5), a neighbor's wife (31:9), his servants' cause (31:13), the poor, the widow and the fatherless (31:16-21), gold (31:24), the sun and the moon (31:26-27), the fall of one who hated him (31:29), the foreigner and the traveler (31:31-32), and his land (31:38-39). One if is about wrong itself: "if like Adam I have covered my transgressions, by hiding my iniquity in my heart" (31:33), "because I feared the great multitude" (31:34). What that if names is covering and hiding. These are all Job's words about himself. The chapter doesn't join them into one statement, and these notes don't either.

The verses

“I hold fast to my righteousness, and will not let it go. My heart will not reproach me so long as I live.”
Job 27:6 · World English Bible
“Why do you not pardon my disobedience, and take away my iniquity? For now will I lie down in the dust. You will seek me diligently, but I will not be.””
Job 7:21 · World English Bible
“For you write bitter things against me, and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.”
Job 13:26 · World English Bible
“My disobedience is sealed up in a bag. You fasten up my iniquity.”
Job 14:17 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Job 31

Job 31: Here is my signature

Job asks to be weighed in "an even balance" (31:6), in Hebrew the law's own "just balances" (Leviticus 19:36). He signs his case, "Behold, here is my signature!" (31:35), adds one more if, about his land (31:38-40), and then the book, not Job, says, "The words of Job are ended" (31:40).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions