He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
Job answers Bildad by tracing every loss straight to God's hand, and this line is the lowest point: the wreckage is total, and even his hope is gone, roots and all. Was Job right to read his suffering this way, and what does a man have left when his last hope is torn away?
No way out left
The verses just before build the picture: first darkness, then the loss of everything Job had.
Leslie M. GrantJob felt so hemmed in that he was like a prisoner with no way out, with darkness closing round him (v.8). His prosperity and dignity had been stripped away. He says God has broken him down on every side, leaving him not even a path of hope (vv.9-10).
Faith speaking, even in protest
His friends said God was against him. Job agreed that the blow came from God, and one writer counts that admission itself a mark of faith — though not the highest kind. The words quoted are verse 6 in an older translation.
William Kelly"Know now that God has overthrown me." How boldly he speaks out. And this, as far as it goes, could not have come without real faith. Yet it fell far below the meek submission of our blessed Lord. Did they say that God was against Job? "God has overthrown me," he acknowledges.
The uprooted tree
Start with what a cut-down plant can still do.
William KellyA plant is different. You may cut it right down until nothing shows, and yet it may shoot up again, especially if there is water to help it.
Of himself Job says the opposite. He is no stump waiting for rain — the roots are out of the ground.
Samuel RidoutLike an uprooted tree, he lay flat and helpless under the fierce wrath of God.
Where the reading was wrong
Job was right that God's hand was in it. He was wrong about what that hand meant, and the next verse shows how far wrong.
Leslie M. GrantSo he thinks he is the subject of God's bitter anger, and that God counts him as His enemy (v.11). How completely wrong Job was in all this. But when one is bound up in "self" he will always think of God in this accusatory way. Yet in all the trouble Job was experiencing, God was acting toward him in genuine love and compassion. At the moment Job could not see this, as later he would.
Why every prop had to go
If God was not punishing Job, what was He doing? One writer sees a purpose behind the stripping.
Samuel RidoutEvery prop must be removed and every joy on earth taken away, and still Job will hold to the God he has trusted, even if his trust is dim. And on the other side, through the very trials he must pass through, Job will learn the lesson of all lessons, for all eternity: that God is all in all. As a step toward that knowledge, he will see that he is nothing.
The severity, another writer says, was necessity.
C. H. MackintoshGod saw that His servant needed to learn a lesson. He also saw that there was no other way, no other means, to teach it than to put him through an ordeal whose bare record fills the mind with solemn awe. God will teach His children, even if it means stripping them of all that the heart clings to in this world.
Hope uprooted, a Redeemer found
Fifteen verses later Job says he knows his Redeemer lives. The hope God tore up was hope in this life; what takes its place is a Person.
Samuel RidoutAnd then, in the middle of all this mourning, he speaks those magnificent words of faith: "I know that my Redeemer lives." But this was the very God he had just been charging with injustice! How good it is to see Job's faith in all this turmoil, turning to the very One he was speaking against!
Summary
- Hand. Job refuses to blame chance or people; he says God broke him down. Owning God's hand in the blow is faith, even when the words are bitter.
- Hope. A cut tree can sprout again; Job says God tore his up by the roots. His complaint is that nothing is left in the ground to grow.
- Wrong. He read the stripping as anger, as if God had made him an enemy. God was acting in love, and Job would later see it.
- Purpose. Every prop had to go so that Job could learn God is everything and he himself is nothing.
- Redeemer. The hope uprooted was hope in this life. In the same speech Job turns to the God he had been accusing and says his Redeemer lives.