Job 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Job answers his three friends. He says he knows everything they know, calls them liars who patch up wounds like worthless doctors, and warns them that speaking falsely on God's behalf will not go unpunished. He asks them to be quiet while he takes his case straight to God, saying that even if God kills him he will still hope in him and defend his own conduct. In the second half he speaks to God directly, asking for two conditions, asking to be told what his sins are, and asking why God treats him as an enemy.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • Job says his eye has seen all this
   • Job says his ear has heard it
   • Job says his ear has understood it
2. 13:2
   • Job says that what his friends know, he knows also
   • Job says he is not inferior to his friends
3. 13:3
   • Job says he would speak to the Almighty
   • Job says he desires to argue his case with God
4. 13:4
   • Job tells his friends they plaster things over with lies
   • Job tells his friends they are all worthless physicians
5. 13:5
   • Job wishes his friends would be completely silent
   • Job says their silence would count as wisdom for them
6. 13:6
   • Job tells his friends to hear his argument
   • Job tells his friends to listen to the pleadings of his lips
7. 13:7
   • Job asks whether his friends will speak wickedly on God's behalf
   • Job asks whether they will speak deceitfully for God
8. 13:8
   • Job asks whether his friends will show partiality to God
   • Job asks whether they will argue the case for God
9. 13:9
   • Job asks whether it would go well if God examined them
   • Job asks whether they would mock God as one man mocks another
10. 13:10
    • Job says God will surely rebuke them
    • Job says the rebuke comes if they secretly show partiality
11. 13:11
    • Job asks whether God's majesty will not terrify them
    • Job asks whether the dread of God will not fall upon them
12. 13:12
    • Job says his friends' sayings are proverbs of ashes
    • Job says their defenses are defenses of clay
    • The Hebrew word for their defenses can mean either bulwarks or bodies
13. 13:13
    • Job tells his friends to be silent and leave him alone
    • Job says he will speak
    • Job says let come upon him whatever will
14. 13:14
    • Job asks why he takes his flesh in his teeth
    • Job asks why he puts his life in his own hand
15. 13:15
    • Job says that though God slay him, he will hope in him
    • The Hebrew of this line is ambiguous: it can read either that Job will hope in God or that Job will not wait
    • Job says he will defend his own ways to God's face
16. 13:16
    • Job says God will also be his salvation
    • Job says a godless man will not come before God
17. 13:17
    • Job tells his friends to listen carefully to his words
    • Job tells his friends to let his declaration be in their ears
18. 13:18
    • Job says he has set his case in order
    • Job says he knows he will be vindicated
19. 13:19
    • Job asks who it is that will contend with him
    • Job says that if there is such a one, he will be silent and die
20. 13:20
    • Job asks God not to do two things to him
    • Job says that then he will not hide from God's face
21. 13:21
    • Job asks God to remove his hand far from him
    • Job asks that God's terror not frighten him
22. 13:22
    • Job says God should call and he will answer
    • Job says alternatively he will speak and God should answer him
23. 13:23
    • Job asks how many are his iniquities and sins
    • Job asks God to make known to him his transgression and his sin
24. 13:24
    • Job asks why God hides his face
    • Job asks why God counts him as an enemy
25. 13:25
    • Job asks whether God will frighten a driven leaf
    • Job asks whether God will pursue dry stubble
26. 13:26
    • Job says God writes bitter things against him
    • Job says God makes him inherit the iniquities of his youth
27. 13:27
    • Job says God puts his feet in the stocks
    • Job says God watches all his paths
    • Job says God marks out the soles of his feet
    • The Hebrew of the last line is ambiguous: it can mean God traces a mark on his feet or sets a limit for them
28. 13:28
    • He wastes away like something rotten
    • He wastes away like a garment eaten by a moth
    • The subject of this verse is unclear

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1

Job is answering three friends who came to visit him after he lost his children, his animals, and his health. They keep telling him that suffering like his must be a punishment for something he did wrong.

13:2

"Ye" in the King James is always plural, so Job is answering all three of his friends at once rather than any one of them. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar have each spoken once by this point, and their argument has been the same every time: suffering on this scale must be evidence of hidden sin.

13:3

From here on Job talks like a man taking a lawsuit to court, and the chapter keeps that vocabulary: "reason with" (v. 3), "pleadings" (v. 6), "contend" (v. 8), "reprove" (v. 10), "ordered my cause" and "justified" (v. 18), "plead with me" (v. 19). He is not asking for a religious conversation; he wants a legal hearing with God as the opposing party. "The Almighty" translates Shaddai, an old title for God used constantly in Job and rarely elsewhere; its exact original sense is uncertain.

13:4

"Forgers of lies" is not about forged documents. The Hebrew pictures someone smearing plaster or whitewash over a cracked wall to hide the damage. "Physicians of no value" continues the thought: Job's friends are healers whose treatment does nothing for the patient.

13:5

"Hold your peace" is older English for "stay silent." It carries no idea of peacemaking.

13:6

"Hearken" is an old word that means listen.

13:8

"Accept his person" translates a Hebrew idiom, literally "lift the face", the gesture of a judge raising up a favored party's face in court. It means showing partiality, deciding for someone because of who they are rather than the facts. Job's accusation is that his friends are rigging the trial in God's favor, which is exactly the corruption an honest judge is forbidden. The same idiom lies behind "accept persons" in v. 10.

13:10

The same idiom as verse 8. Job's argument is that taking God's side dishonestly is still perjury, and that God is the last judge who would want a witness lying on his behalf.

13:11

"Excellency" in 1611 English meant exalted rank or overwhelming majesty, not excellence in the modern sense of high quality.

13:12

"Remembrances" means the sayings the friends keep repeating (inherited proverbs and maxims. Ashes are what is left when something has burned away: worthless residue. The word behind "bodies" more likely means shields or defensive earthworks, so the second half reads "your defenses are defenses of clay") fortifications made of unfired mud, which collapse the moment they are struck.

13:13

"Hold your peace" means stop talking and be quiet.

13:14

Two idioms for deliberately courting danger. "Take my flesh in my teeth" is obscure even in Hebrew, but seems to mean carrying one's own body as prey in the mouth. "Put my life in mine hand" is a common Hebrew phrase for risking your life, holding it out in the open where it can be snatched away.

13:15

This is the most disputed line in the book. The Hebrew as written reads "I will not wait" or "I have no hope"; a scribal reading-note preserved alongside it changes one identically-sounding word and yields "I will hope in him." Both readings are ancient. The KJV and the rendering follow the second; on the first, the line means "Though he slay me, I have no hope, yet I will still argue my case to his face." The defiant second half is the same either way.

13:16

"Salvation" here means rescue or acquittal in the case Job is bringing, not salvation in a later religious sense. "Hypocrite" translates a Hebrew word meaning godless, profane, or irreligious, not, as in modern English, someone who fakes goodness. Job's point is that a godless man would never dare demand a hearing before God, so his very willingness to appear is evidence for him.

13:18

"Ordered my cause" is courtroom language for having laid out the case in proper order, the way a party arranges arguments before a hearing. "Justified" means declared to be in the right by the court, acquitted, not made good or morally improved.

13:19

"Plead with me" means bring a charge against me, as an accuser in court, not beg. "Give up the ghost" is old English for breathing one's last; "ghost" here means breath or life, with no suggestion of a spirit that lingers.

13:20

From here to the end of the chapter Job stops addressing his friends and speaks directly to God, the KJV signals this only by the shift from "ye" (plural, the friends) to "thou" (singular, God). The two requests are spelled out in v. 21.

13:21

"Withdraw thine hand" asks God to stop the physical affliction; the hand is a standard image for a striking or pressing power. Job's two conditions are the ordinary conditions of a fair trial: the stronger party must stop beating him, and must stop terrifying him, so he can speak.

13:23

Hebrew uses three distinct words here, and Job piles them up deliberately: one suggests going crooked or astray, one missing the mark, one rebellion or breach of trust. He is demanding an itemized charge sheet, not a general admission that he is a sinner, but a list of counts he can answer.

13:24

"Hide thy face" is a set idiom for withdrawing favor or refusing to grant someone an audience, as a king turns away from a petitioner he will not receive. It is the opposite of the blessing in which God makes his face shine on a person.

13:25

"Stubble" is the dry stalk left standing after harvest, or the chaff blown off the threshing floor, the standard biblical image for something weightless and worthless. The point of both images is the mismatch: an armed pursuer chasing something the wind already carries wherever it likes.

13:26

"Writest bitter things" pictures a formal written indictment being drawn up against him. "Makest me to possess" uses the language of inheritance: God is making Job the legal heir of his own youthful offenses, handing them down to him as an estate he cannot refuse.

13:27

Stocks were a wooden frame that clamped a prisoner's feet, holding him fixed in one place. "Lookest narrowly" means watches closely, keeping surveillance. The last clause is genuinely unclear in Hebrew: it either means God scratches a boundary line around Job's feet that they may not cross, or that he marks or brands the soles themselves, as an owner marks a slave, so that every step Job takes leaves a traceable print.

13:28

"He" appears without warning and no one is certain who is meant; most read it as any human being, Job included. Clothing was expensive and kept for years, so a moth quietly eating a garment from the inside was a familiar image of loss you do not notice until the thing falls apart in your hands.