Job answers Bildad, but his mind quickly moves past the argument to something far greater — and far more painful.
How can a frail human being possibly stand before the holy God and plead his case?
And out of that ache comes one of the most astonishing cries in the Old Testament — a longing, centuries before Bethlehem, for someone who could stand between God and man and lay a hand on them both.
How Should Man Be Just with God?
Job 9:2
"...but how should man be just with God?"
This is the question beneath all of Job's suffering, and beneath all of ours.
Not merely "why do I suffer?" but the deeper one: how could I ever be right with a God so high and so holy? How does dust stand before glory?
Job feels the infinite distance. God is so great that Job cannot even imagine answering Him, let alone winning an argument with Him.
It is the oldest human question, and we cannot answer it ourselves. How should man be just with God? Job asks it in despair. The gospel will answer it in joy.
He Is Not a Man, as I Am
Job 9:32
"For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment."
Here is the heart of Job's problem.
God is not a man. He is the Almighty who moves mountains and commands the stars. How could Job possibly "come together in judgment" with such a One — sit across the table, plead his case, be heard? The gap is infinite.
Job longs for a God he could meet, a God who would come down to where he is. But he cannot see how that could ever be.
He is aching for exactly the thing the gospel will one day give — a God who became a man, "as I am," so that we could come together at last.
The Cry for a Daysman
Job 9:33
"Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both."
And now the cry that pierces the whole book.
A "daysman" is a mediator — an umpire, an arbiter, one who stands between two parties and brings them together. Job longs for one who could "lay his hand upon us both" — one hand on God, one hand on man, joining what is separated.
And he grieves: there is none. He cannot find such a person anywhere. The gap between God and man has no bridge that Job can see.
But oh, what we can see that Job could not.
For there is now a Daysman. There is One who lays one hand on God, because He is God, and one hand on man, because He became man. "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
The very thing Job wept for because it did not exist — we have been given. The Daysman has come. His hands, stretched out on a cross, reach to heaven and to earth at once, and hold them together.
A Gentle Word for the Reader
Job's deepest cry was for a mediator — someone to close the impossible distance between a holy God and a hurting man.
If you have ever felt that distance — that God is too high, too holy, too far for someone like you to reach — Job felt it first, and felt it without an answer.
But you are not without an answer. The Daysman Job longed for has come. You do not have to bridge the gap to God by your own goodness or your own arguments. Jesus already laid one hand on each side. He is the meeting place. He is how man is, at last, just with God.
So come — not through your worthiness, but through Him. The bridge Job could not find is now a Person, with open hands.
Reflection Questions
- "How should man be just with God?" How would you have answered that question before knowing Christ — and how does the gospel answer it now?
- Job longed for a God who was "a man, as I am," one he could meet. How does it move you that God did exactly that in Jesus?
- Job grieved that there was no daysman. What does it mean to you that the Mediator he wept for has now come, with one hand on God and one on you?
Short Prayer
Lord, the distance between Your holiness and my frailty is more than I could ever cross.
Thank You that I do not have to. Thank You for the Daysman — Jesus, the one Mediator, who laid one hand on God and one hand on man, and joined us forever.
When I feel You are too far for someone like me, remind me that Christ has already closed the gap.
I come to You through Him, the meeting place, the open hands. Thank You that in Him, man is at last just with God.
Amen.
JMS