I become afraid of all my suffering, for I know you will not hold me innocent.
In this verse Job tries a new tactic: drop the complaint, cheer up, put on a brighter face. It fails in one line, because his real dread is not his pain but his standing before God — the question this whole chapter circles.
The smile that will not hold
Job's problem is not a lack of will to smile. He reads his own suffering as a verdict.
Leslie M. GrantCould he force himself to put off his sad face and wear a smile? How could he do this when his painful sufferings left him in fear? He feels that God does not hold him innocent or he would not be suffering as he was (v.28).
Forgetting is no escape
Job tests one option after another and throws each away. Here he tests the option of refusing to think about the question.
F. B. HoleIn verse 27, we find his third "If …" He could not defy the God of heaven, and he could not prove himself right. So should he give up hope, stop looking for the answer, and give himself over to careless enjoyment? Human nature has not changed. Many of us have followed the very line of thought Job showed here. But he threw the idea out at once, because he saw how empty it was. If we carelessly forget, God does not forget. The sinner will not escape the judgment of God by refusing to face the question.
A clean conscience is not the same as acquittal
Job is not confessing hidden crimes. He is admitting something worse. Even a good conscience would not survive God's examination.
William KellySo trying to cheer up was as useless for him as trying to scrub himself clean with the strongest soap. His conscience was not bad. But he sees that if God brings His servant to judgment, no one alive can be justified. God's light would find every fault, so that a man's own clothes would shrink from him in horror.
Standing before God as Judge
The dread in this verse is not one ancient sufferer's private mood. Commentators put the same question to every believer.
C StanleyHe gets before God as Judge; and his perplexity is very great. He cannot answer God one time in a thousand… Poor Job! He does not know now which way to turn. And is not this the case with every believer the moment he gets before God as Judge? How can he or you be just before God? Would not one sin of a thousand utterly condemn you? … Can you look up in the face of God as Judge, and say you have been innocent since your conversion? Impossible.
Why an upright man is still miserable
Why does an honest man still carry this fear? One writer traces it to what the honest man cannot fix in himself.
J. N. DarbyThe harder a man works at being good, the more he finds he cannot change himself, any more than a man can change the colour of his skin. The evil is in his nature, and he cannot get rid of it. When there is real integrity of heart, there is struggle. To know you are upright, while you do not know righteousness, causes much misery in the heart. Job says, "let not dread of him terrify me." He had that dread. God has taken the fear away in Christ, and there is now an umpire between us, the very one Job felt the need of.
The umpire Job did not have
Job longed for someone to stand between himself and God. Commentators name who that is, and what it means to rest on Him.
William KellyIf you are resting on yourself, you are resting on ground that God does not approve. If you are resting on Christ, you have the only solid ground that no one can ever take from you… Christ became the mediator between God and men. And not just a mediator: a mediator who is as fully divine as the God before whom He acts as mediator for us… The same God who condemned under the law saved under grace, because of Christ.
Summary
- Fear — Job's dread is not of pain but of a verdict; he reads his sorrows as proof that God will not acquit him.
- Forgetting — dropping the complaint and cheering up will not work. Refusing to face a question does not cancel it.
- Failure — a clear conscience is not enough. God's light finds every fault, and no one's own record can justify him.
- Longing — a truly upright man who does not know righteousness suffers most. So Job cried out for an umpire.
- Found — what Job lacked has come. Christ is a Mediator who is Himself divine, and no one can take that ground from you.