Job 33 · a question people ask

Elihu quotes Job: "I am clean, without disobedience" (33:9). Did Job say that?

In the text

Elihu gives Job's words as "I am clean, without disobedience. I am innocent, neither is there iniquity in me" (33:9). In the WEB, Job's own speeches never say "I am clean", "without disobedience", "I am innocent" or "iniquity in me". Job had said, "I am blameless" (9:21), "you know that I am not wicked" (10:7), "I know that I am righteous" (13:18), "there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure" (16:17), and "Until I die I will not put away my integrity from me" (27:5); in Hebrew 16:17's pure is 33:9's clean (tap clean). He had also said to God, "I know that you will not hold me innocent" (9:28), where innocent is another Hebrew word. Zophar had given Job's words as "My doctrine is pure. I am clean in your eyes" (11:4), where pure is that word again. Job had also spoken of "my disobedience": "Why do you not pardon my disobedience, and take away my iniquity?" (7:21), and "Make me know my disobedience and my sin" (13:23). The word behind 33:9's innocent comes nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Elihu gives the words without disobedience as Job's again later: "For Job has said" (34:5), "though I am without disobedience" (34:6). The two lines after 33:9 are much closer to Job's own words (see above). The book doesn't say whether Elihu's summary is fair, and these notes set the verses side by side without deciding.

The verses

“‘I am clean, without disobedience. I am innocent, neither is there iniquity in me.”
Job 33:9 · World English Bible
“I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life.”
Job 9:21 · World English Bible
“See now, I have set my cause in order. I know that I am righteous.”
Job 13:18 · World English Bible
“Although you know that I am not wicked, there is no one who can deliver out of your hand.”
Job 10:7 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Job 33

Job 33: God speaks once, yes twice

Elihu's "He puts my feet in the stocks. He marks all my paths" (33:11) is, in Hebrew, Job's own 13:27 with you turned to he, and his "when deep sleep falls on men" (33:15) is Eliphaz's (4:13). And the pit he comes back to five times in this chapter is where, he says, God keeps a man's soul back from, and brings it back from (33:18, 33:30).

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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