Job 19:13-29, Job’s Messianic Hope

You may oppose this idea, supposing that there are no Messianic titles in Job and no descriptions of the Messianic Kingdom.  You may think Messianic thought is not developed here and that Job shows no connection with, say, with the Patriarchs and their Messianic line.  Whatever you may think, I have this much assurance, that Job, being a righteous man, was aware of sin (Gen. 3), the need for blood sacrifices (Gen. 4), and the blessing through Shem (Gen. 9).  This knowledge was available worldwide; the righteous had it, the unrighteous suppressed it.

Having said that, here is what I mean by “Messianic Hope” in Job.  He longed for what the Messiah has provided, whether he always knew it or not.  It is a part of his righteousness, that he was waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promise to Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:15).  He longed for Jesus Christ.  Here is what I mean.

·       9:32-33: Job longed for a Mediator, someone to come between him and God, who could “lay his hand on us both,” One able to reconcile God and man.  Jesus is that Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5).  He did not know Jesus’ name; but he longed for Him.

·       10:2-5: Job complains that the eternal God cannot understand the mortal human.  “Do you have eyes of flesh … are your years like the days of a mighty man?”  Job is pleading for God to be in his place, to understand his frailties.  He was pleading for the Incarnate Word of God, our sympathetic High Priest (Heb. 4:14-16).

·       14:10-14: Here Job mourns the finality of death.  “Man breathes his last and where is he?”  Job wishes that God would hide him in the grave and then bring him back out of grace after His “wrath is past.”  Job is asking for the resurrection, and in Jesus Christ “all shall be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22).

·       16:18-22: Now Job pleads for an Advocate, a “witness” in heaven who can bring about ultimate justice for him.  Jesus is that Advocate (1 John 2:1-2), the propitiation for Job’s sins, One who takes upon Himself the wrath of God.

·       17:10-16: Again, Job is overcome by the finality of death.  “If I say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘You are my mother and my sister,’ where then is my hope?”  Again, he longed for the resurrection.  “Hope” (v15) is “tiqvah” used of the scarlet chord that Rahab hung from her house in Jericho (Josh. 2:18).

·       19:23-27: In this passage, Job not only longs for the resurrection, he is assured of the resurrection.  When he speaks of his “Redeemer” (v25) he uses “ga’al”, first used by Jacob (Gen. 48:15), then given its significance in Lev. 25 (laws of redemption), powerfully illustrated in the story of Ruth and Boaz, and fulfilled in the Son of God (Rom. 3:21-26).  The “book” Job desires (v23) is also bound up in the ministry of Christ (Mal. 3:16-18; Rev. 20:12,15). 

What Job longed for deeply, as a righteous man, would require God coming to earth in full humanity, and dying in our place a substitutionary death, and being raised from the dead so that death would be defeated.  It took Jesus Christ!