Job 16:20

Unless we look at what goes on in our own hearts, we can hardly measure the heartbreak these accusations must have caused Job. They turned him in the wrong direction; they took him up with himself. He could not deny that he was afflicted. Measuring himself against other people, he could not see that he had done anything to bring such great affliction on himself. And his friends kept badgering him, directing and confining his mind to this one point: that God's dealings always match what a man has done, and therefore, since Job suffered so much, he must have been wicked to an extraordinary degree.

But was it true that he had given up prayer before God? Listen to his own words: "My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is deep darkness, although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure." Eliphaz had completely wronged him... Only God Himself could judge whether Job had given up prayer. Job seems to act on that here. If I am not mistaken, this is exactly his appeal: "My witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. My friends scorn me: but my eye pours out tears to God." It was completely false to say that he did not cry to God.

Job therefore calls on the earth not to hide his blood... and, for the same reason, that his cry should find no resting place here below but go straight on high. So his eye turned upward. He speaks in confident faith that his witness is in heaven — God Himself — there to testify for him on high, in spite of disasters he cannot explain, or rather that have not been explained yet. His friends were only mockers. They completely misunderstood his case and rushed to judge him instead of admitting their ignorance. So he can only weep out his sorrow and his prayer to God.

Some translate the opening words of verse 21 as, "Oh that there were arbitration for a man with God!" So his mind went back to the umpire he had wished for at the end of Job 9. A man might plead for his neighbour or friend. But Job felt there was no one to step in between God and himself, and he could only expect a short time before his end.

Poor Job fails to see God in His unchanging love through all these sufferings. Each pang he endures, every tear he sheds, every humiliation he suffers, is a fresh charge against God. And yet, not altogether, for there is real faith in his heart... deep down he knows there is a just God in heaven who holds the record of his life. He can appeal to Him against the false charges of his friends. He knows, though not fully, since he has not yet seen it, that there is One who pleads for him before God. What he longs for, we know that we have — One that pleads for us with God as a man pleads for his neighbour. We know a High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, who "ever lives to make intercession for us."

His record was on high; his witness was in heaven; he clung to God. "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him." That was Job's language; that was his spirit. He had far more faith than any one of the three.