Rereading a Popular Verse in Context

Familiarity need not always breed contempt, but sometimes it perpetuates misunderstanding. When we think we know something well, we stop being curious and asking questions about it. Over-familiarity with beloved phrases of Scripture can become an obstacle to an accurate understanding of those verses.

Understanding hermeneutics (interpretation) is crucial for all believers, because all believers do it whenever they read their Bibles–or anything else, for that matter. Everyone does it whenever they engage in any form of communication. Communication is impossible without interpretation. And accurate interpretation is impossible apart from context. That means that reading contextually is indispensable to understanding accurately what God has communicated to us. But “context” means more than including the verse before and after the one in question.

A Case Study in Job

Take some time to work through an exercise. Read through the following succession of passages and see if you detect a consistent pattern in Job’s present perspective and future expectation.

• Job 3:20-22
• Job 6:8-9, 11
• Job 7:15-16, 20-21
• Job 9:25-26
• Job 10:18-21
• Job 14:1-3, 5-6, 13
• Job 17:1, 11-15

Here’s the pattern: Job is not expecting any change in his circumstances this side of the grave. He is a man waiting—begging, in fact—to die. Job’s friends became increasingly exasperated with him. Guilt is the only theory they have to explain Job’s catastrophes, but they cannot pry out of him any confession that would explain his sufferings. So Eliphaz finally takes off the gloves and levels explicit (and libelous) accusations against Job (22:5-16), ending with a moving appeal to Job to repent and return to God (Job 22:21-30). It is well-intentioned but ill-aimed.

Job’s reply bursts like a torrent through a weak dam. Return to God? I can’t even find Him (Job 23:3)! I wish I could present my case before Him and hear His explanation of all this (Job 23:4-7). I may not be able to find Him (Job 23:8-9), but …

But what? Here is one of the most celebrated texts in the book of Job. Is Job asserting a sudden confidence that, even though he does not understand the reason for his suffering, God knows everything he is going through and is using all these difficulties as temporary trials to make him a better, godlier man? Is Job saying that when these fiery trials have done their work, he will come out like gold that has been refined and made purer by the fire? If that’s the case, it is the first time—indeed, the only time—he says anything like this in all of his speeches.

Or is he affirming something quite different. Is he, in fact, echoing and reaffirming what he has been saying all along up to this point in the book? The Bible certainly teaches that God not only knows but also governs all our troubles, and that trials do have a refining effect on believers. But is that what Job was saying in 23:10?

Job 23:10 is among those verses whose familiar words have taken on a hallowed life of their own—verses used to teach truths that are wholesome, truths that are biblical, truths that have encouraged countless suffering saints, and truths that are as foreign to the context of the verse popularly used to teach them as a piñata at a bar mitzvah.

No verse is an island, entire of itself. It is a mistake to read any statement in Scripture as a devotional atoll, isolated from its context. Not only is it a mistake; it is dangerous. When the familiar language of a passage finds its way into poems and hymns, devotionals and sermons, it naturally conditions our perception of the verse’s meaning. No one bothers to investigate its context or question its interpretation anymore. It may even seem almost heretical to do so. “Read the verse for yourself,” someone may object. “Isn’t it obvious what it means? Who are you to question such clear language?” We become guilty of turning traditional translations and interpretations of men into the commandments of God, nullifying God’s original intent in that passage.

Every time we derive an interpretation or application from a text that is not native to its context—no matter how biblical the truth itself may be—we rob that text of the meaning and application that God intended when He gave it. For some, suggesting a contextual rereading of such a beloved text is immediately suspect. It smacks of intellectual snobbery. But the failure to insist on a contextual reading of any text, of every text, is to leave that text bound and gagged, while the familiar language of the verse is commandeered to a noble but erroneous use. The instant you drop Job 23:10 back into its larger context, the meaning is unmistakable.

The problem in this case really isn’t translation. The translation is fine. The problem is the isolated way we have come to read that translation—the a-contextualized meaning we have attached to it. So the key to understanding Job 23:10 is not some mystical meaning wrapped up in the Hebrew text, available only to a scholarly priesthood. But a literal translation doesn’t hurt, either. Job 23:10 reads literally, “But He knows [the] way [that is] with me; if He should test me, I would come out like gold.” The first line may mean either “my path” (Gordis) or “the path I take” (Hartley), but both convey not “my circumstances” but my lifestyle, my manner of life. The parallel with God’s “way” in the next verse seems intentional: “He knows my way . . . . [I.e., He knows that] my feet have followed his steps; I have kept his way” (Job 23:11). The commentators who know the language explain that the second half of the verse is a hypothetical conditional sentence (cf. Gen. 44:22): “If He tested me, I would emerge pure as gold.”

Put simply, Job is certain of two things. First, God knows my way(s). “Way” refers to one’s behavior (Ps. 1:6; Dt. 32:4). That God knows Job’s path means that He knows Job’s lifestyle through and through—actions, words, and thoughts. In fact, Job already expressed a similar idea in Job 16:19. Second, Job is confident that if God would only test me, I would be shown to be gold—undeserving of the suffering I am enduring. And he’s exactly right, as God already conceded on the front end (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3). More importantly for our purposes, however, he is not viewing his present circumstances as the test, temporary or otherwise.

The Court of Context

Six simple observations from the context clarify exactly what Job meant when he said these words.

(1) Job is certain that if only he could come before God’s court and present his case, he would be vindicated (Job 23:4-7). One of Job’s recurring themes is this confident assertion of innocence and final vindication (Job 9:32-35; 13:3, 18-24; 16:18-19; 19:23-27). Job’s frustration is that he cannot be vindicated as long as God won’t answer him and is nowhere to be found (Job 23:3, 8-9). That undercurrent in Job’s thinking fits with this reading of Job 23:10.

(2) Job’s complaint that he cannot see God (Job 23:3, 8-9) fits with his certainty that God sees him and knows his way of life (Job 23:10a). Job’s star witness is God Himself (cf. Job 16:9). God knows his innocence. That being the case, he is confident of the outcome when his case is finally adjudicated. 

(3) Job is responding in chapter 23 to Eliphaz’s allegations in chapter 22. Eliphaz had just maligned Job’s theology and Job’s “way” (Job 22:13, 15). Job wants a perfect Judge who knows his heart (Job 23:3ff.). Eliphaz may think Job has followed the way of the wicked, but Job appeals to God’s perfect knowledge of him: “God knows my way . . . . “ Job’s words are one more bold declaration to his friends that God knows his innocence, even if they don’t.

(4) Job’s words after 23:10 explain why he expects to be found innocent whenever his case is adjudicated by God. Eliphaz insinuated that Job had rejected God’s law and devalued His words (Job 22:22). But Job protests that he had not departed from God’s ways (23:11); he had treasured God’s words as supremely valuable (Job 23:12). What follows 23:10 doesn’t make sense unless in 23:10 Job is once again asserting his confidence that he will be vindicated when God finally hears his case.

(5) Job never expresses any expectation of surviving this ordeal (see the succession of verses near the beginning of this post). Far from seeing his sufferings as a temporary “test” designed to make him a better man, Job has consistently anticipated only one outcome: death. He does not see himself as a man enduring temporary difficulty to make him more sanctified; he is a man waiting to die so he can finally be vindicated.

(6) Finally, a parallel passage leaves no doubt what Job means in 23:10. Job asserts the same confidence in nearly the same words in Job 31:4-6. Does He not see my ways [same word as 23:10a] and number all my steps? If I have walked with falsehood, and my foot has hastened after deceit, let Him weigh me [synonymous idea to 23:10b] with accurate scales, and let God know [same word as 23:10a] mye integrity (NASB). Job’s meaning here is unambiguous. He draws the same link here between God’s knowledge and his own vindication that he makes in 23:10.

The idea that God knows all I am going through, and when he is done testing me with these temporary afflictions, I will be the better for it, purified like gold is true and biblical—but it is the farthest thing from Job’s mind. 

But What About …?

What about all the sermons and songs and Sunday School lessons and devotional books that have taken this verse in the popular sense—and have been a blessing and encouragement to God’s people? Two points need to be made.

First, those hymns and messages have been a blessing to us not because this verse teaches them but in spite of the fact that it doesn’t, precisely because the truth is a biblical one taught elsewhere. The sentiment that this verse has traditionally been used to express is more accurately reflected in other passages (Ps 66:8-12; Ps 119:67, 71; Zech 13:9; Js 1:12; 1 Pt 1:7). We honor God’s word most by teaching truth from verses that teach it, not from verses that may just sound like it. God does use affliction to refine our faith and purify our character. That’s not what Job meant in 23:10, but we know from other Scripture—interpreted contextually—that this is so.

Second, when we factor in the conclusion of the story of Job (which Job could not have known in 23:10), we know that Job spoke truer than he knew. He had no idea that all his adversity was actually a test of the integrity of his faith, and viewed death as his only release from his suffering. But we know better. Job really was waiting for God to finish him off; but God didn’t. What Job thought was the inexplicable and inescapable dealing of God turned out to be a temporary test after all, through which his spirit was humbled, his faith perfected, and his view of God refined. A contextual reading of Job’s words contains even more comfort for the suffering saint than its popular a-contextual usage. Circumstances that look dark and unfair and even unending to us, as Job’s did to him, really are designed to be a “trial of our faith.” There is an end to the tunnel, and the light of a wise and good and gracious God at the other end—whether that end is in this life or the next.

For a full treatment of the book of Job, see Layton Talbert, Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job