Job 19:29

He turns to his friends. He asks why they should persecute someone who has this living, indestructible root of faith in him. Instead, he tells them, they should ask themselves why they pursue him so relentlessly. His reply to Bildad is about the same length as the words that provoked it. He closes it with a solemn warning, so that they will not fall under the stroke they wrongly imagined was laying him low.

Think how astonished his friends must have been at this wonderful outburst from his lips. Only a few moments earlier he had almost blasphemed God. He asks them why they persecute him, seeing that the root of true faith is in him. He warns them that there is judgment.

In verses 28 and 29 Job returns to admonish his friends. He considered that they were looking for means or words to persecute him, because they thought the root of Job's troubles was really in himself. But he tells them to be afraid of holding such an attitude — afraid of a punishing sword. For God's wrath would bring such punishment, so that they might know there is a judgment.

So he warns his friends: if they persecuted him and tried to pin a moral cause on his sufferings, they should dread an avenging sword for themselves. For if that is the day of resurrection power, it is also a day of repaying and of wrath. Then 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 take nothing less than the facts themselves, once they happen, to explain it. But the fulfilment, in fact, will be the sure punishment and utter ruin of the unbelieving in that day.

He sees too that in that day divine judgment was coming. It was not merely that there was a Kinsman-Redeemer in prospect to vindicate His own people, but in that day, as all Scripture shows, there would be a time of judgment. "Be afraid of the sword: for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment."

Job's discourse in this chapter ends with a warning to his friends. He claimed that "the root of the matter" was found in himself. He also claimed that God's judgment is impartial, so that they themselves should be afraid of it.

Job's three friends stood condemned. They had not spoken rightly, and they had not humbled themselves as Job had, vindicating God and condemning themselves. They were told to go to Job, offer up sacrifices, and ask him to pray for them. Without doubt this was a most humbling process for them. They had come to Job to sympathise and console him. But the course of the argument led them into hurling accusations and reproaches at him. As they did so, they developed a self-righteous spirit. So, because they had not humbled themselves as Job had, God humbled them in public.

Again, we must warn God's people of the trap Eliphaz fell into. All pious calls to repent, to give up sin, or to judge a course of evil are only insults if they are not based on known facts. They smell of a pharisaic spirit, and that spirit, as with Eliphaz and his friends, must itself be repented of.