Job 27:3

In the next chapter (Job 27) it would have been Zophar's turn; but although Bildad had very little to say, Zophar had nothing. He is out of the debate... Job had answered all their foolish talk, and there they were silent. It is not that they were yet convinced they were wrong; but they do what many people do — they shut up, and have not a word to say, and still hold the same opinion.

He still holds that all their imagining was false. He said now more solemnly than ever — it was a kind of swearing to it — As God lives, this is true... Now he turns on them; he says, "You are the culprits, not I."

Some argue that the Spirit of God is in the nostrils, and so is only the principle of life in every living thing, because Job 27:3 in the older common translation speaks that way. I can only say the argument is worthy of men who quote Greek and Hebrew freely when they choose. Here they are pleased to ignore that one of the commonest renderings of ruach is "breath." They also ignore that the expression refers to Genesis 2:7, where the word for "breath of life" is a word never applied to the Spirit of God at all.

It is quite true that man's breath in his nostrils marks how soon he passes away. Isaiah appeals to it in this way (Isaiah 2:22). But that does not touch the meaning of the words "God breathed" — that, as Elihu says, the "inspiration of the Almighty gave him life" (Job 33:4) [ESV: "the breath of the Almighty gives me life"]. The language may be figurative, and full of a mystery that has not yet shown itself. Still, it should be plain that God gives man something that puts him in kinship with God as the beast never is.

Verse 3 has been translated in different ways. The older English version has Job saying that as long as his breath is in him, he will keep insisting on his righteousness. But many take the verse as an explanation in parentheses: "for still all my breath is in me," and so on. He is fully aware of what he is saying, and speaks the truth deliberately, as he believes it. Such a rendering and explanation seems to agree with the original.

This "righteousness," as Job 29 will show us, had to do with his outward conduct, for the searching light of God had not yet entered his soul. He had been charged with being a deceiver and a hypocrite. He knew he was not, and he was not going to plead guilty to it for a moment. We too know that he was not — but outward correctness does not by itself count as righteousness in the presence of God. Job's own words here prove it, for the way he complains of God in verse 2 shows that his heart was not right in His sight.

There is a sound of self-righteousness here that does not fit with knowing yourself in the presence of God. Job is not there yet. It is the cry of an honest soul that does not yet fully see the light.