If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’
Job's reply to Bildad ends here, just after the famous burst of confidence that his Redeemer lives. From that height he turns back to his three friends. He asks one question about how they are treating him, and adds one warning about what is coming to them.
Where the verse falls in Job's answer
One writer maps Job's whole reply in six parts. Our verse belongs to the last one:
Samuel RidoutThe response in its six parts balances the address of Bildad. (1) Reproach (Job 19:1-6). (2) God's hand (verses 7-11). (3) The scorn of man (verses 12-20). (4) The plea for pity (verses 21-24). (5) The triumph of faith (verses 25-27). (6) The close (verses 28, 29).
"The root of the matter" — a living root of faith
Most writers read the pursuit in this verse as persecution, and the root as Job's claim about himself. Something living is in him, and their arguments cannot destroy it.
Samuel RidoutSo he turns to his friends and asks why they should persecute a man who has this living, indestructible root of faith in him. Instead, he tells them, they should ask themselves why they pursue him so relentlessly.
The force of it is sharpened by what the friends had just heard from a man they had written off:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinHis friends must have been astonished at this wonderful outburst from his lips. Only a few moments ago those same lips had almost blasphemed God. He asks them why they persecute him, since the root of true faith is in him. He warns them that there is judgment.
Commentators differ here, and the wording is why. Older translations read "the root of the matter is found in me," which makes the line Job's own claim. Read as the friends' words, it becomes their verdict — that the root of Job's troubles lay in Job himself:
Leslie M. GrantIn verses 28 and 29 Job turns back to warn his friends. He thought they were looking for ways or words to persecute him, because they believed the root of Job's troubles was really in himself.
Either way, the reply is the same: stop the pursuit, and fear for yourselves.
The warning attached to the question
Job does not stop at asking why they hound him. The hope of resurrection he has just voiced carries a second edge:
William KellySo he warns his friends. If they persecuted him and tried to pin a moral cause on his troubles, they should dread an avenging sword for themselves. If that is the day of resurrection power, it will also be a day of repayment and wrath, when the sins that escape man await God's sword. There will be no mistake then about judgment. This was a cutting reproof for his friends. Faith rests on God's word. Unbelief will accept nothing less than the facts themselves, once fulfilled, to explain that word. But the fulfilment, in fact, will be the sure punishment and utter ruin of the unbelieving in that day.
Another writer sets Job's two claims side by side — one about himself, one about God:
F. B. HoleJob's discourse in this chapter ends with a warning to his friends. He claimed that "the root of the matter" was found in himself, and that the judgment of God is impartial, so that they themselves should be afraid of it.
Why the root outlasts everything else
What his accusers could not see was the one thing that outlasted every loss. One writer points out that Job's hope reached past his own death:
Samuel RidoutDoes Job not speak here of seeing the Lord with his own eyes, and does this not require a resurrection? It does not seem that he was looking for the Redeemer to act for him in this present life, but after his death — in a glorified body. So, as has been beautifully said, "he plants the flag of victory upon his own grave."
The phrase as a test for any profession
The same phrase works as a test elsewhere. One writer uses it of a faith that never took root:
Leslie M. GrantA person may be responsive and eager at first, and still not have the root of the matter in him. He can be a stranger to the living work of the Spirit of God. When a little heat of opposition or persecution comes, he may give up his profession as readily as he first took it up.
Job is the opposite case. The heat came in full, and the root held.
Summary
- Root. Job's defence rests on one hidden thing: a living, indestructible root of faith his friends could not see or destroy.
- Timing. The claim comes straight after "I know that my Redeemer lives." The root is hope in a Redeemer who will act after death.
- Question. Instead of defending his record, Job asks his accusers to examine their own motive for hounding him.
- Warning. The day of resurrection power is also a day of repayment, and it is impartial. So the persecutors should fear the sword they were pointing at Job.
- Test. Without the root, a little heat of opposition ends the profession. With it, as in Job, the heat only proves it real.