Previously in Job:

How you have enlightened my stupidity!
    What wise advice you have offered! (Job 26:3)

(so much sarcasm)

Job 27 is the second part of Job’s 5 chapter closing rant I mean argument, so let’s recap a few chapters so we remember where we’re coming from here:

Job’s friends: Bless your heart. Clearly you are stupid and don’t know who God is or how to do the right thing. Let us help you be smarter so you won’t be such a screw up next time.

Job: Aw, guys. You really know how to make a guy feel better, don’t you? (again, sarcasm) Actually, I’m not stupid, you are. I do know who God is, believe it or not. Do you?

Job begins the next part of his closing rant I mean argument with a vow:

I vow by the living God, who has taken away my rights,
    by the Almighty who has embittered my soul—
As long as I live,
    while I have breath from God,
my lips will speak no evil,
    and my tongue will speak no lies. (Job 27:2-4)

I don’t think we appreciate vows enough in our culture. Promises, vows, oaths. Giving our word means so little in a culture that prioritizes pleasing the self. Words are cheap here. But that is not the kind of vow Job is making.

When our translation says, “I vow by the living God,” it means the Hebrew means something like, “As sure as God lives.” We might say something like, “I swear, I will NEVER…” but this is stronger than that. He was putting his honesty on the same level of certainty as the existence of God. If he lies, that is tantamount to denying God exists. To them, a lie at this point would be blasphemy of the most reprehensible kind. The strength of Job’s words leaves no room for compromise, no room for diplomacy. The ‘peace talk,’ of sorts, in which Job’s friends are trying to persuade him to be reasonable, is over. At this point, he CANNOT back down, or he will be guilty of, in his friends’ minds, an irrecoverable sin – blaspheming God. If they were hearing him clearly, they would have heard him say, “I will not lie just to make you feel better.” Instead, they most likely heard him say, “I am incorrigible. You cannot save me now.”

And even in his vow, Job maintains that the God who exists, the very same God whose power he so eloquently admitted in chapter 26, has “taken away [his] rights.”

The word for “rights” here is mishpat. Mishpat is a beautiful word, a beautiful concept, and absolutely worth more study and discussion. It is the underlying concept of fairness in the Hebrew construct of justice, but it has more to do with restorative justice than retributive justice. This is not about getting someone back for what they have done – it is not vengeance. It is restoration, the return of things to the way they should be so relationship can continue. It is about balancing, equalizing, and making sure everyone in the community is receiving their fair due. It is a beautiful kind of communal justice meant to multiply kindness, mercy, and awareness of others’ needs.

I imagine mishpat a little like making change. If I buy a bouquet of roses from you that we have agreed is worth $15, and I hand you a twenty dollar bill, you will hand me the roses and a five dollar bill. Now I have $20 worth of a combination of roses and bills, and you have $20 worth of bills. The equation is balanced. Both sides have the same value. That is mishpat – everyone walks away with the same value, though with the product that best suits their needs.

When Job says God has taken away his mishpat, he is saying he got shorted. The value he received is not the same value he gave. He believed they had a deal, they were in agreement about the value of the product and the payment he would receive for it, he handed over the product, and God did not keep up his end of the bargain. That often happens when we try to barter with God without his actual consent. We tend to misunderstand his terms.

When Job has thus thoroughly asserted his honesty, he goes on to carry his argument to his main point.

I will never concede that you are right;
    I will defend my integrity until I die.
I will maintain my innocence without wavering.
    My conscience is clear for as long as I live. (Job 27:5-6)

Still, Job holds onto the one thing. The ONE THING he still has: his integrity.

Why?

This is the question his wife asked him at the beginning. Why bother to do what’s right if you won’t get what you deserve for it?

Job just tells her she’s talking “like a foolish woman.” He continues to choose honesty, integrity, and the right thing even when nothing goes his way. Some part of me wants to know why he would do that, too.

But there is part of me that does understand. There is no burden on the human soul like the burden of guilt, is there? It is HARD to carry the weight of an unjust tragedy, but the weight of a self-induced tragedy? That is crushing. There is nothing, nothing worse than being responsible for your own suffering – or, even more, the suffering of those you love. That is why, when bad things happen, we are so quick to point the finger somewhere else. To have to bear loss is hard enough without the unbearable knowledge it came from our own doing. “It wasn’t your fault,” we say to comfort the grieving. Facing our own culpability is one of the bravest, most difficult things we ever do. That is the stumbling block that trips so many people on the way to salvation. It requires looking in the mirror and confessing what is really there. So few of us have the strength to confess.

Job knows that if he lies now, after all those years he spent doing the right thing, he will have to carry the blame for what happened to him. Is that not what the Accuser wanted in the first place? Did he not want to break Job, make him act in a way deserving of his suffering, tarnish his spotless conscience with the misery of guilt? But Job is still wise. He is unwilling to add that burden to the one he already carries. No, he says. If God insists I suffer, I insist I will not suffer the blame for it.

If only, friends, am I right? If only I had been as wise as Job.

Job has nothing left but his clear conscience, and he intends to keep it.

For the rest of Job 27, Job is agreeing with the point that the wicked should be punished. Look at what he says:

May my enemy be punished like the wicked,
    my adversary like those who do evil. (Job 27:7)

Please, do, God! He says. Please do punish the wicked! He describes in detail what should happen to those who don’t follow God, those who lie and steal and cheat and hurt others. He says they should have consequences; he is refuting the argument that he believes there should be no consequences for harmful actions. Not true! He says. I want God to give them what THEY deserve! He wants mishpat, for the scales to be equal. He wants the things the wicked take for themselves by hurting others to become the reward of those who did right. He wants the people who have callously taken the lives of others to watch their children be taken by disease, by famine, by war. It is good and right, he says, for those who have arrogantly disdained the kindness of God to feel what it is to be on the other side of their cruelty. It is balanced. It makes people think twice and maybe even change their minds before they do something cruel, and that preserves relationship, preserves community.

Job has never strayed from the belief that God is good to be just, to restore balance in the way he sees fit. This is what so frustrates Job about what his friends are saying. They know him, they know what he believed and what he did. And yet they accuse him of doing and believing otherwise.

I will teach you about God’s power.
    I will not conceal anything concerning the Almighty.
But you have seen all this,
    yet you say all these useless things to me.

He tells them he has faithfully taught others about God’s power and justice and he has never hidden the truth about God from someone. He invokes the testimony of their own eyes – they have seen it themselves! They know it is true.

So to recap, Job has responded to two of his friends’ accusations in this way:

1 – You think I don’t believe God is powerful, but I do,

and

2 – You think I believe God is wrong to punish the wicked, but I don’t,

And, because we are finite beings and Job’s argument is a little long, this is not an episode in two parts, but five, so I guess we have reached the point where we must say

to be continued…