Job 9:24

All their talk did not drive him away from the plain fact which they dodged and shut their eyes to. "The earth," he says, "is given into the hand of the wicked." And is that not true?... And further, "He covers the faces of its judges" — that is, He allows them to give completely wrong and unjust verdicts. Somehow their faces are veiled from the light, and they judge by appearances. It is very certain that this is not the way to judge soundly... innocent people suffer; guilty people escape; these things happen every day... Things are out of course, and will be until the Lord takes the reins.

He does speak bitterly of God's patience while judgment delays, as if mocking at the trial of the innocent. This is what no saint should conclude from His allowing wrong and sorrow for a little while. But there is no denying that He veils the faces of judges. The wicked sit in the highest seats of the world's authority. If it is not so, who is it? Can Bildad or Eliphaz contradict the fact, or leave God out of it?

But the words that follow sound almost like the ravings of a madman. He speaks out, but not in the fear of God... God destroys the perfect and the wicked alike; in other words, He is an unjust God. The earth is given by Him into the hands of the wicked; injustice reigns everywhere. If God has not done all this, who then is it? These are horrible words. They must have been whispered into his despairing soul by the accuser. He accuses God to believers just as much as he accuses believers before God.

When we see everything on earth in confusion, it seems to many people that there is no God in control of things at all. In all of these things, if we depend on our own understanding, we shall be left in complete confusion. Job needed the verse written much later in history: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding" (Prov. 3:5).

Job knew that "The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure" (Job 12:6). Eliphaz thought instead that "in prosperity the destroyer will come upon" the wicked (Job 15:21). What Eliphaz thought was sometimes right, but it was not always right, as the writer of Psalm 73 knew, and as we know from what is all around us. God has allowed Satan to become the god and prince of this world. Satan has authority to dispose in some way of the kingdoms of this world (Luke 4:6). Once we realise that, the prosperity of the wicked will not puzzle us.

How clear it is that Job knew he was a sinful creature before his holy Creator. He also knew he had no way in himself of getting right. That being so, his only hope was for a third party to step in; but no such third party, or "daysman," was known to him. His three friends could not play the part, and no other man could either. The daysman must be great enough to lay one of his hands on Almighty God. He must be gracious enough to lay the other on poor diseased and sinful Job.