Job 31: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Job finishes his defense with a long oath of innocence. Point by point he lists things he has not done (looking at a young woman with desire, lying, cheating, ignoring the complaints of his servants, refusing the poor and the widow and the orphan, trusting his wealth, secretly honoring the sun and moon, gloating over an enemy's ruin, hiding his own sin, shutting his door to a traveler, or taking crops from his land without paying) and after many of them he calls down a matching punishment on himself if he is guilty. In the middle of it he asks that the Almighty answer him and that his accuser put the charge in writing, saying he would carry that document openly and approach God like a prince. The chapter closes with the line that Job's words are ended.

Claim by Claim

1. 31:1
   • Job made a covenant with his eyes.
   • Job asks why, having done so, he should gaze at a young woman.
2. 31:2
   • Job asks what portion God allots from above.
   • Job asks what inheritance the Almighty gives from on high.
3. 31:3
   • Job asks whether calamity does not come upon the unjust man.
   • Job asks whether disaster does not come upon those who do iniquity.
4. 31:4
   • Job asks whether God does not see his ways.
   • Job asks whether God does not count all his steps.
5. 31:5
   • Job puts the case: if he has walked with falsehood.
   • Job puts the case: if his foot has hurried to deceit.
6. 31:6
   • Job asks to be weighed in honest scales.
   • Job asks this so that God may know his integrity.
7. 31:7
   • Job puts the case: if his step has turned aside from the way.
   • Job puts the case: if his heart has followed after his eyes.
   • Job puts the case: if any blemish has stuck to his hands.
8. 31:8
   • Then let Job sow and another man eat.
   • Then let what Job brings forth be uprooted; the word covers both his offspring and his crops.
9. 31:9
   • Job puts the case: if his heart has been enticed toward a woman.
   • Job puts the case: if he has lain in wait at his neighbor's door.
10. 31:10
    • Then let Job's wife grind for another man.
    • Then let other men bow down over her.
11. 31:11
    • That would be a wicked, shameful act.
    • That would be an iniquity for the judges to punish.
12. 31:12
    • It is a fire that consumes down to destruction.
    • It would root out all Job's produce.
13. 31:13
    • Job puts the case: if he rejected the legal claim of his manservant or his maidservant.
    • The case is when those servants had a dispute with him.
14. 31:14
    • Job asks what he would do when God rises up.
    • Job asks what he would answer God when God calls to account.
15. 31:15
    • Job asks whether the one who made him in the womb did not also make his servant.
    • Job asks whether one and the same fashioned them both in the womb.
16. 31:16
    • Job puts the case: if he withheld from the poor what they desired.
    • Job puts the case: if he caused the eyes of the widow to fail.
17. 31:17
    • Job puts the case: if he ate his morsel alone.
    • Job puts the case: if the fatherless did not eat of it.
18. 31:18
    • From Job's youth the fatherless one grew up with him as with a father.
    • From his mother's womb Job guided the widow.
19. 31:19
    • Job puts the case: if he saw anyone perishing for lack of clothing.
    • Job puts the case: if he saw a needy man with no covering.
20. 31:20
    • Job puts the case: if that man's loins did not bless him.
    • Job puts the case: if that man was not warmed by the fleece of Job's sheep.
21. 31:21
    • Job puts the case: if he raised his hand against the fatherless.
    • The case is that he did so because he saw he had support in the gate.
22. 31:22
    • Then let Job's shoulder fall from its blade.
    • Then let his arm be broken off at the socket.
23. 31:23
    • Calamity from God was a terror to Job.
    • Job could not endure God's majesty.
24. 31:24
    • Job puts the case: if he made gold his confidence.
    • Job puts the case: if he said to fine gold, You are my trust.
25. 31:25
    • Job puts the case: if he rejoiced because his wealth was great.
    • Job puts the case: if he rejoiced because his hand had gained much.
26. 31:26
    • Job puts the case: if he looked at the sun when it shone.
    • Job puts the case: if he looked at the moon moving in splendor.
27. 31:27
    • Job puts the case: if his heart was secretly enticed.
    • Job puts the case: if his hand kissed his mouth.
28. 31:28
    • That also would be an iniquity for the judge to punish.
    • By it Job would have denied God who is above.
29. 31:29
    • Job puts the case: if he rejoiced at the ruin of the man who hated him.
    • Job puts the case: if he stirred himself up when evil found that man.
30. 31:30
    • Job did not allow his mouth to sin.
    • Job did not ask for that man's life with a curse.
31. 31:31
    • Job appeals to what the men of his tent said.
    • What they said is ambiguous: either that no one went unsatisfied by the meat Job gave, or that they wished for his flesh and were not satisfied.
32. 31:32
    • No stranger had to spend the night in the street.
    • Job opened his doors to the traveler.
33. 31:33
    • Job puts the case: if he covered his transgressions; the comparison is ambiguous, either as Adam did or as men do.
    • The case is that he hid his iniquity in his bosom.
34. 31:34
    • Job asks whether he feared a great multitude.
    • Job asks whether the contempt of families terrified him.
    • Job asks whether he kept silent because of it.
    • Job asks whether he stayed in and did not go out the door.
35. 31:35
    • Job wishes for someone to hear him.
    • Job puts forward his signature mark.
    • Job calls on the Almighty to answer him.
    • Job wishes his adversary had written out a document of accusation.
36. 31:36
    • Job would carry that document on his shoulder.
    • Job would bind it on himself as a crown.
37. 31:37
    • Job would declare to God the number of his steps.
    • Job would approach God like a prince.
38. 31:38
    • Job puts the case: if his land cries out against him.
    • Job puts the case: if its furrows weep together.
39. 31:39
    • Job puts the case: if he ate its produce without payment.
    • Job puts the case: if he made its owners breathe out their life; whether this means killing them or breaking their spirit is ambiguous.
40. 31:40
    • Then let thorns come up instead of wheat.
    • Then let stinkweed come up instead of barley.
    • The words of Job are ended.

Words Worth Explaining

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

31:1

A covenant was a formal, binding pact, the kind of thing made between kings or between parties to a contract, a far stronger word than a private resolution. Job says he made one with his own eyes, as if they were a party he had to hold to terms.

31:2

"Portion" and "inheritance" are words from the dividing of land: the share allotted to a person, marked out and handed over. Job is asking what share God deals out to a man who lives the way he has just described.

31:3

"Strange" in 1611 English usually means foreign or alien rather than odd. Here it stands for a Hebrew word meaning disaster or calamity.

31:5

From here to the end of the chapter Job speaks in the form of a sworn oath of innocence: "If I have done such a thing, then let such a punishment fall on me." These are not confessions. Each "if" is a charge he is daring anyone to prove, and the curse attached to it is what he accepts if it is true. Some of the sentences break off before the curse arrives, which is normal in this kind of oath, leaving the punishment unspoken made it more, not less, binding.

31:6

The picture is a merchant's balance: a beam with a pan hanging at each end, the goods in one and standard weights in the other. Rigged weights were the classic form of fraud, so "honest scales" was a stock phrase for a fair test.

31:7

"If any blot hath cleaved to mine hands" pictures a stain stuck to your hands, like a thief caught holding what he stole.

31:8

The Hebrew word behind "my crops" can mean either what a man grows or the children he fathers; the older English "my offspring" takes it the second way. Both senses fit an oath about losing what you have produced.

31:9

Waiting by a neighbor's door means watching for the husband to leave so the man outside can go in to the wife. Houses stood close together and everyone knew everyone's movements, so this is a picture of patient, deliberate scheming, not a sudden impulse.

31:10

Grinding grain by hand at a stone mill was the day-long drudgery of the lowest women in a household, usually slaves. The line also carries a sexual sense, which the second half of the verse makes explicit. The curse matches the crime: a man who takes another man's wife loses his own.

31:11

Adultery was not treated as a private grievance to be settled between households. It was a criminal matter that came before the town's judges, and in the law codes of the region it could carry the death penalty.

31:12

The Hebrew names the destination of this fire: Abaddon, "Destruction," a name for the realm of the dead deep below the earth. The image is of a fire that burns all the way down and leaves nothing.

31:13

These are household slaves or bonded servants. In most of the ancient world a slave had no standing to bring a case against his own master; Job's claim is that when his servants had a grievance against him, he heard it out and did not simply dismiss it.

31:16

Widows and fatherless children appear together all through these chapters because they were the two classes of person with no adult male to speak for them, no one to defend their land, press their case in court, or feed them. Eyes that "fail" is an idiom for watching and waiting for help until the hope goes out of you.

31:17

"Fatherless" means an orphan. Without a father, a child had nobody to hold the family's land, press his claim before the elders, or stop an adult who wanted to take it from him.

31:18

This verse is one of the hardest in the book to construe; the Hebrew literally says "from my mother's womb I guided her," which cannot be meant flatly, since Job would then be caring for widows as an infant. It is usually taken as a way of saying "for as long as I can remember."

31:19

A poor man often owned only one coat. He wore it all day. At night he slept under it like a blanket.

31:20

The Hebrew says his loins blessed me, the lower body, the part a woolen cloak wraps and warms. To "bless" someone here means to thank them and speak well of them publicly, not to pronounce a religious blessing.

31:21

The open space just inside a town's gate was where the elders sat and lawsuits were heard. To "see your help in the gate" was to know you had the men who decided cases on your side, so that you could push a defenseless person around and win any dispute that followed.

31:22

The punishment is shaped to match the crime: the arm raised against a helpless child is the arm torn off. "Shoulder blade" and "the bone" point at the joint where it would come away.

31:24

The Hebrew uses two different words here, ordinary gold and refined or pure gold. "Thou art my confidence" is the language of trust normally aimed at a god or a powerful protector, which is why it sits next to the sun and moon worship in the following verses.

31:26

The sun and the moon were worshiped as gods across the ancient Near East, and Job's world is full of that practice. He is denying that he ever joined it, even privately, even by a gesture nobody saw.

31:27

Bringing the hand to the mouth and blowing a kiss toward a god or its image was a standard act of homage, the physical gesture of worship. Doing it toward the sun or moon was worship of them.

31:28

Like adultery, turning to another god was handled as a public crime with a judge attached to it, not as a private matter of preference.

31:29

Gloating over a fallen enemy was ordinary and expected behavior, not something a man would normally think to deny. Job lists it among the wrongs he could be charged with.

31:30

A curse was not merely an insult. Words spoken against a person's life were believed to work, to be released and to do real damage, so calling down a curse counted as an act, not just speech.

31:31

The Hebrew of this line is disputed. Read one way, Job's household staff are saying they could never get enough of his meat; read another, they are saying that no one who came to the door ever went away unfed. Either way the point is the open table Job kept, described in the next verse.

31:32

There were no inns for ordinary travelers, so a stranger arriving at nightfall depended entirely on someone taking him in. Sheltering and feeding him was a recognized obligation across this world, and failing it was a public disgrace.

31:33

"As Adam" translates a Hebrew phrase that can equally mean "like Adam," hiding in the garden, or "the way people do", since the same word is both the name Adam and the ordinary word for a human being. Ancient and modern readers have gone both ways.

31:34

"Families" here means clans, the extended kin groups that made up a town and whose collective opinion carried real weight. Staying behind your own door meant withdrawing from the gate, where public business and lawsuits were conducted.

31:35

The Hebrew word here is taw, the last letter of the alphabet, used as a signature mark. The King James reads it instead as "my desire".

31:36

Documents were carried rolled or on a tablet. Hoisting the charge onto his shoulder and wearing it like a crown is the opposite of hiding it: he would parade the accusation in public, confident that reading it out would clear him.

31:37

A prince approaches a king upright, as someone with standing, rather than face-down in the dust like a petitioner or a condemned man. Job says he would come to God that way.

31:38

Land "crying out" draws on an old idea that ground soaked in blood, or worked by people who were cheated, calls out against the man responsible. The furrows are the long cut rows a plow leaves behind.

31:39

"Those who owned it" are the people with a prior claim on the land, earlier owners or the tenants and hired hands who worked it. To eat its produce without paying meant taking the harvest while cheating the men whose labor or land it was.

31:40

Wheat and barley were the two staple grain crops; the weeds named are thorny scrub and a foul-smelling plant, worthless growth of exactly the kind that takes over abandoned fields. The closing sentence is not Job speaking but a note by whoever assembled the book, marking the end of his speeches.