Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?
God answers Job out of the storm, and He does not explain Job's suffering. He asks a question instead. Behind all Job's protests lay a quiet assumption: if Job was right, God must be wrong. This verse drags it into the open.
The charge inside the question
"Put me in the wrong" is the first half of the charge. One writer traces it back to what lay underneath Job's complaints.
Samuel RidoutGod is not crushing His poor foolish servant. He is appealing to his reason as well as his conscience. But the present appeal is especially to his conscience. Will he annul and deny God's righteous judgment? Will he condemn God so that he may set up a petty human righteousness? This is what lay at the bottom of Job's complaints. He was suffering affliction he did not deserve. He was a righteous man, treated as though he were unrighteous. The conclusion was then unavoidable — the One afflicting him was unjust!
Then take the throne
God then offers Job the seat his reasoning had claimed, with the robes and the wrath that go with it.
Samuel RidoutIf he is truly qualified, Jehovah as it were invites him to take his seat on the throne of divine judgment. Let him put on his robes of pomp and dignity. Let him dress himself in grandeur and majesty. Let his wrath pour out on everyone who is proud, and bring him low. What awful, holy irony! And yet how divinely just. If Job can sit in judgment on God, he is qualified to run all His affairs better than God does! He can put down the proud rebellion of every evildoer and bring men into the dust before him. Has he done that with his own proud and rebellious heart? Has he humbled even his friends? How much less the whole world.
Why this is not only Job's problem
The verse exposes a rule that reaches far past one man's story.
The Christian's FriendWhenever anyone pleads for the flesh, for anything merely human — righteousness, wisdom, or strength — the plea can only stand by condemning God.
Two options, and only two
If God's verdict on us stands, our own verdict on ourselves must fall. One writer shows where the wrong answer leads.
Frederick W. GrantHow pointless to think God is at fault! How impossible to find anything but perfection in the Holy One! Do that, and you will indeed silence all the harps of heaven, darken its blessed light, and bring disaster and ruin everywhere... But it is an old argument, and a common one: "Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?" We must do that, or else submit to that judgment of God ourselves. For it is written of us, "None is righteous, no, not one." It is written too that "whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God."
What Job repented of
Job's later repentance is often misread as sorrow over scandalous sin. His own life rules that out.
C. StanleyWas he deeply sorry for a life of open sin and immorality? Oh no, this was not Job's case at all. He was a true man of God, and had lived one of the most moral and upright lives on record. Like Paul, as far as his life among men went, he was blameless, in a way that not one in ten thousand can speak of. Then what did he repent of? He repented of this — his striving to establish his own righteousness. God was now revealed to him, and he hated himself.
The right thing, said at last
God's question aims at a reversal, and Job makes it in the end.
William KellyJob had said what was right in his last words, his answer to Jehovah's appeal to him. There God brought him into His presence... Now Jehovah brings the depths of his heart to light. Now he himself had got there at last... Job justifying God at his own expense. Job maintaining, not his righteousness now, but his own nothingness and vileness in dust and ashes before God. He owns without reserve that God is perfectly right.
Summary
- The charge. Job's complaint hid a conclusion: undeserved suffering meant an unjust God. To keep his own righteousness, Job had to deny God's.
- The mirror. God answers by offering Job the throne: if he can judge God, let him dress in majesty and humble every proud man on earth.
- The rule. Any plea built on human righteousness, wisdom or strength can only stand by putting God in the wrong.
- The choice. Either we condemn God, or we accept His verdict — that no one is righteous and every mouth is stopped.
- The turn. Job's repentance was not about gross sin. It was about trying to establish his own righteousness. He ends by justifying God at his own expense.