Job 16:19

_ALSO NOW, BEHOLD, MY WITNESS IS IN HEAVEN, AND MY RECORD IS ON HIGH._ Also now - even now, when I am so greatly misunderstood on earth, God in heaven is sensible of my innocence. RECORD - Hebrew, my witness. Amidst all his impatience, Job still trusts in God....

17-22 Job's condition was very deplorable; but he had the testimony of his conscience for him, that he never allowed himself in any gross sin. No one was ever more ready to acknowledge sins of infirmity. Eliphaz had charged him with hypocrisy in religion, but he specifies prayer, the great act of religion, and professes that in this he was pure, though not from all infirmity. He had a God to go to, who he doubted not took full notice of all his sorrows. Those who pour out tears before God, though they cannot plead for themselves, by reason of their defects, have a Friend to plead for them, even the Son of man, and on him we must ground all our hopes of acceptance with God. To die, is to go the way whence we shall not return. We must all of us, very certainly, and very shortly, go this journey. Should not then the Saviour be precious to our souls? And ought we not to be ready to obey and...

Verse Job 16:19. _MY WITNESS_ IS _IN HEAVEN_] I appeal to God for my innocence....

MY WITNESS IS IN HEAVEN - That is, I can appeal to God for my sincerity. He is my witness; and he will bear record for me. This is an evidence of returning confidence in God - to which Job always returns even after the most passionate and irreverent expressions. Such is his real trust in God, that though he is betrayed at times into expressions of impatience and irreverence, yet he is sure to return to calmer views, and to show that he has true confidence in the Most High. The strength, the power, and the point of his expressions of passion and impatience are against his “friends;” but they “sometimes” terminate on God, as if even he was leagued with them against him. But he still had “permanent” or “abiding” confidence in God. MY RECORD IS ON HIGH - Margin “in the high places.” It means, in heaven. Luther renders this, und der mich kennet, ist in der Hohe - and he who knows me is on hig...

EXPOSITION Job answers the second speech of Eliphaz in a discourse which occupies two (short) chapters, and is thus not much more lengthy than the speech of his antagonist. His tone is very despairing. He finds no help at all in the speeches of the "comforters" (verses 2-6), and turns from them to consider once more the dealings of God with him (verses 7-14). Next, he describes his own proceedings under his afflictions, and appeals to earth and. heaven, and God in heaven, to take up his cause and help him (verses 15-22). In Job 17:1. he continues much in the same-strain, but with an intermixture of the topics, which is somewhat confusing. In Job 17:1, Job 17:2 he bewails himself; in...

ALSO NOW, BEHOLD, MY WITNESS [IS] IN HEAVEN,.... That is, God, who dwells in the heavens, where his throne is, and which is the habitation of his holiness, and from whence he beholds all the sons of men, and their actions, is the all seeing and all knowing Being; and therefore Job appeals to him as his witness, if he was guilty of the things laid to his charge, to bear witness against him, but if not to be a witness for him, which he believed he would, and desired he might: FOR MY RECORD [IS] ON HIGH; or "my testimony"; that can testify for me; who is an "eyewitness" k, as some render it, before whom all things are naked and open; who has seen all my actions, even the very inmost recesses of my mind, all the thoughts of my heart, and all the principles of my actions, and him I desire to bear record of me; such appeals are lawful in some cases, which ought not to be common and trivial on...

CHAPTER S 16-17 JOB'S REPLY TO ELIPHAZ _ 1. Miserable comforters are ye all (Job 16:1)_ 2. Oh God! Thou hast done it! (Job 16:6) 3. Yet I look to Thee (Job 16:15) 4. Trouble upon trouble; self-pity (Job 17:1) 5. Where is now my hope? (Job 17:13) Job 16:1. How masterfully he meets their wrong accusations and how he brings forth his suffering afresh, yet always with that horrible nightmare, God is not for me, but against me! Such things Eliphaz spoke he had h

Job cries to the avenger of blood to avenge his innocence. He is a martyr, and feels that his blood must cry for vengeance (Genesis 4:10 *, Revelation 6:10). Job arrives at the astounding thought that God will be his avenger, though it is God that slays him. We have noticed how in Job's bitter complaint against God, the thought that the God, who had loved him in the past, will one day turn to him once more, had again and again broken through (Job 7:8; Job 7:21; Job 14:13). Job now sets the God of the past and the future against the God of the present, one side of God against anothe

Job 16:18 to Job 17:9. Job, dying a martyr's death, beseeches God that He would uphold his right with God and against men, and give him a pledge that He will make his innocence appear In Job 16:12 Job described the terrible hostility of God, who dashed him to pieces, laid him in ruins and poured out his soul to the ground brought him unto death. Then the other thought rose in his mind that all this befell him though he was innocent both in life and in spirit. Here he comes to the point at which he always loses self-control when he realizes that in spite of his innocence he is held guilty. This is an overwhelming feeling, and under it Job either wildly challenges the rectitude of God, as in the first cycle of speeches; or he flings off from him

DISCOURSE: 467 JOB’S CONSCIOUS INTEGRITY Job 16:19. _Now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high_. GREATLY was this holy man afflicted by his own friends, who came to condole with him; so that he was constrained to say, “Miserable comforters are ye all [Note: ver. 2.]!” Yet was he not wholly destitute of comfort; because he had the testimony of his own conscience, that, to the best of his ability, he had approved himself both to God and man: for neither had there been any injustice in his hands towards man, nor had his prayer been hypocritical before God [Note: ver. 17.]. Had he been guilty of any secret oppression, he wished the earth to disclose it, and his very prayers also to be rejected of his God [Note: ver. 18.]: but he could appeal to the heart-searching God himself for his integrity: “Now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high.”