“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me.
Job 17 opens with a man who feels the grave is already waiting, while his friends press him to confess sins he knows are not his. Is that despair — or is faith still alive underneath it?
The Setting of the Lament
One writer ties the verse to Job's body, and to his wish for someone to stand between him and God.
F. B. HoleA 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. His breath was corrupt and the grave ready for him, as he stated in the first verse of Job 17. We probably have little idea of the extreme, long-lasting bodily corruption and misery he had been enduring.
What the Words Say
The line is short and hard, and the writers render its first clause in two ways: "my spirit is broken" and "my breath is corrupt." Kelly takes the parts in turn, then the clause about mockers, where readers differ.
William KellyJob 17 carries on the same line as the close of Job 16. Job speaks of what he naturally could not help expecting under such a weight of overwhelming blows and piercing stabs. His spirit was broken, the light of his days gone out, the graves before him... But others take the sense to be a form of assertion: "Truly mockery is with me." That is, it refers to their effort to make him, a dying man, confess what he knew had no basis. It existed only in their evil suspicions.
Another writer puts the same thing in one line, with the friends still in view.
Samuel RidoutDeath has marked him. His very breath declares the corruption the grave waits for — and "friends" stand by and mock!
The Mockers Around Him
Kelly quotes the next line about mockers in an older wording. He says the mockery went wider than the three men in front of Job. He traces it to a mistaken idea about how God governs now.
William Kelly"Are there not mockers with me?" — surely there were three of them... If that was the case with these three men who had been his friends, what was the feeling of all the people round about who knew? You may depend on it, it would be quite as bad as that of the three friends, or worse. We must not think it was limited to them. It is the natural conclusion of the natural mind, working on the thought that God's moral government is exact now. Such a mind does not know that God, on the contrary, is waiting for His direct government, when Christ shall rule. He alone is able to hold the reins and govern.
Death Wanted, Not Feared
If the friends were right about him, dying should have been the last thing Job wanted. Kelly weighs that longing as evidence about Job's conscience.
William KellyNothing could test a man more completely than that. A bad conscience would have shrunk from death, since death strips away every disguise and means ruin to the soul. Job did the opposite. His earnest desire to depart and be with God proved not only that he was real, but also what state his conscience was in. We see his confidence in God, even while he spreads out his sorrows with no other thought before him than death.
Faith Under the Ashes
Job's wish for someone to stand surety for him is the seed of a confession that comes later in the book.
Samuel RidoutBut the very fact that Job longs for such an intercessor shows the faith hidden in his soul. That faith will soon say, "I know that my Redeemer lives." Meanwhile he looks down to the grave, without a pause for God to speak to him.
Job and Christ
Job's words can sound like Christ's words in the Psalms. Kelly says the likeness is really a contrast.
William KellyHis language may often seem in words to come close to that of Christ in the Psalms. In truth it stands in contrast with His perfection. For He always remained in the love of His Father. He never failed to justify His God, even when abandoned by Him on the cross. Job was never abandoned like that, and neither was any other servant of His who ever lived... We see serious inconsistency not in Christ but in Job. Yet Job had real integrity and unselfishness, whatever his friends or Satan said.
Summary
- Broken. The verse is Job's own account of himself: spirit broken, days gone out, grave waiting. He says it from a body in long and extreme corruption.
- Mocked. The mockery is pressure on a dying man to confess sins that existed only in his friends' suspicions. It grows from the belief that God settles every account in this life.
- Tested. A guilty conscience would flee death. Job asks for it, and that longing exposes the friends' charge as false.
- Reaching. Under the lament runs a cry for someone to stand between him and God — the same faith that later says, "I know that my Redeemer lives."
- Contrasted. Job's complaint sounds close to Christ's words, yet stands opposite them. Christ justified God even when forsaken; Job never was.