Will it be well with you when he searches you out? Or can you deceive him, as one deceives a man?
Job is answering friends who claim to be arguing God's case against him. Here he turns that claim around. What would happen if God examined them?
The charge behind the question
His friends were not just wrong about him. They were putting words in God's mouth.
Leslie M. GrantHe was trying to reason and plead with them, but they were not listening. Instead they were speaking wickedly on God's behalf, using deceit in claiming to speak for God. Job knew that God was fully aware that his friends' charges were not true. So God was certainly not backing them up. Job knew that God was not deceitful, as his friends were proving to be. When the time came, God would search them out and would surely rebuke them.
Their method was to take truths nobody disputed and bend them into a verdict against one man.
Samuel RidoutNext, Job boldly charges his friends with being false witnesses for God. They took well-known truths that everyone already knew and used them to confirm their charge that Job was wicked. What kind of physicians were they to treat a case like this? They have decided what his disease is. Then they misrepresent his symptoms to confirm their diagnosis! And they bring in their theory that God always punishes sin in this life, to prove that Job is a sinner!
Searched out
Job cannot search anyone out himself. He asks his friends how they would fare if God turned the examination on them.
William KellyThey had assumed to speak for God, but was it right to speak dishonestly or presumptuously? God did not want their favouritism any more than their false arguments. When their time came to be searched out, they would speak very differently.
Flattery that God refuses
The second half of the verse asks whether God can be handled the way people handle each other. The friends offered God honour, but built it on a false charge against Job.
Samuel RidoutBut God does not accept honour at the expense of truth. It is His glory that all His attributes blend into one harmonious light. So can He accept a defence of His character and His ways that rests on a false charge? Such a defence brands as wicked and hypocritical the very man about whom He Himself had said, "There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil."
Taking sides with appearances
The verse sets deceiving God beside showing partiality — taking a side because of how things look. What Job warned them about actually happened.
William Kelly"Will you show partiality toward Him? Will you plead the case for God? Will it be well with you when He searches you out?" Well, that is what He did. "Or can you deceive Him, as one deceives a man? He will surely rebuke you." How remarkably that was fulfilled! "He will surely rebuke you if in secret you show partiality" — and that is what they were doing. They were showing partiality falsely, going by appearance.
(Older translations read "will you mock Him?" where the ESV has "can you deceive Him".)
Commentators agree that Job read his friends rightly on this point.
F. B. HoleHe felt they had talked as though speaking on God's behalf, and in so doing had misrepresented Him. In this, no doubt, Job judged rightly.
The warning Job did not apply to himself
Job's sharpest words are true, but he does not stand outside the problem. He holds the same wrong theory of suffering that his friends hold — he has just applied it in the other direction.
Samuel RidoutPoor Job is the victim of that same false theory. He is in danger of charging God with injustice, which would be blasphemy. He seems to feel his danger, but he must speak. So he turns away from man's unfair guesses to God.
So what Job urges on them is not a better argument. It is silence.
William KellyAnd it often is a man's wisdom when he sits quiet and holds his tongue. But as soon as he starts to speak about what he does not understand — well, what then? That is exactly where they were.
Summary
- Searched — Job's question moves the spotlight. Men who sit in judgment on a sufferer will face God's examination themselves. Their confident speeches will not survive it.
- Deceived — You cannot handle God the way one man handles another. Partiality, flattery and a case that only sounds good get nowhere with Him.
- Honoured — He refuses praise built on a lie. A defence of God that has to brand an innocent man as a hypocrite is no defence at all.
- Rebuked — Job's warning that God would rebuke them was not bluster. It came true, and it proved he had read them rightly.
- Silent — When you do not understand what God is doing, the safe response is silence, not a louder speech. Job saw this about his friends; he had yet to learn how much of it applied to himself.