BELIEF, DESIRE AND WISH IN JOB 19.

23-27:
CLUES FOR THE IDENTITY OF JOB’S ‘REDEEMER’*

23 O that my declarations were written,

that they could be inscribed on a monument,
24 with an iron chisel and with lead
graven into the rock in perpetuity!
25 But I know my gō'ēl lives
and that he will rise last to speak for me on earth,
26 even after my skin has thus1 been stripped from me.
Yet to behold Eloah while still in my flesh—that is my desire,
to see him for myself,
27 to see him with my own eyes, not as a stranger.
My inmost being is consumed with longing!
(Job 19.23-37)

The question, Who is Job’s gō'ēl?, has only ever been thought to admit
of two possible answers: God, or another heavenly being. In this paper
I will argue that it is neither.
The interpretation of these celebrated and much debated verses can
be materially assisted by making distinctions between what Job knows
or believes, what he desires, and what he wishes. These are distinctions
that can be discerned throughout Job’s speeches. Of course, it is theo-
retically possible that here he should make a decisive break with all he
has said previously and take a great leap into the unknown, claiming
now to know something he has never before claimed or even hinted at.
But it is more convincing to read these words in the light of what we

*Originally delivered at the Congress of the International Organization for the

Study of the Old Testament in Jerusalem, 1986, and published in «Wünschet
Jerusalem Frieden.» Collected Communications to the XIIth Congress of the
International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Jerusalem 1986 (ed.
M. Augustin and K.-D. Schunk; Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments
und des antiken Judentums, 13; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988), pp. 363-70.
Reprinted with the permission of Peter Lang in On the Way to the Postmodern: Old
Testament Essays, 1967–1998, vol. 2 (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Supplement Series, 293; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 762-69.
1. Taking zō’t as an adverb (to which admittedly there are no parallels), or else
emending to kāzō’t.
2 Belief, Desire and Wish in Job 19

have already heard from him and along the lines of his argument hither-
to. Coherence within the literary work does not mean that no character
can ever develop, that no argument can ever be modified; but we are
well justified in seeking first an explanation of our text that coheres
with the trend of the texts that surround it.
What Job has known, or believed, hitherto, is that God is his enemy
(6.4; 10.8-14; 13.23; 16.7-14; 19.7-12), that he will never again see
good (7.7), that he will soon be dead (7.21; 10.20; 16.22), that he will
be murdered by God (12.15; 16.18), that although he is innocent of any
wrong for which he could be suffering (6.10c, 29; 9.15, 17, 20, 21;
12.4; 13.18) he can have no hope of wresting vindication from God
(9.2-3, 20, 28-33; 13.15; 19.7), and that his own innocence—which is
known to God even if unacknowledged by him—is the one thing in
which he can have confidence (13.16; 16.19-21). What he actually says
he ‘knows’, using the verb yāda‘, is that he is in the right (13.18), that
God will not count him innocent (9.28), that God’s whole purpose
throughout Job’s life has been to mark him down as a sinner (10.13),
that it is impossible to compel God to vindicate anyone (9.2). Obvi-
ously, the fact that Job ‘knows’ something does not prove it is true.
But, right or wrong, these are all fundamental convictions of his—
which is perhaps all that ‘knowledge’ can mean in the field of ethics or
religion.
What Job has desired hitherto, on the other hand, is quite different.
Initially, his desire had of course been to be put to death immediately
(6.8-9) and then in chs. 9–10 he has voiced his misgiving that any kind
of desire on his part would be simply futile. But thereafter the desire
that develops within him is to enter into dispute with God (13.3, 22) in
the hope of winning vindication before his death. When once that
protestation of his innocence stands in the heavenly court as his wit-
ness, advocate, spokesman, and pledge, prepared to argue his case
before God (16.19-20a, 21; 17.3), Job’s part in the dispute has been
fulfilled, and his desire now becomes one that God should in turn play
his part by responding to him. The shape of that desire has been
expressed in its most strongly emotional form at 16.20: ‘sleepless I wait
for God’s reply’.
And what Job has wished for hitherto have been impossibilities. His
previous wishes introduced by ‘O that . . . (mî yittēn)’ have all been
futilities, in 6.8-9 that God would kill him as a sign of the aimlessness
of his existence: in 13.5 that his friends would keep their peace; in
 Belief, Desire and Wish in Job 19 3

14.13 that God would hide him in Sheol until his wrath was past, and
then revivify him.
So this is what we know of Job prior to this strophe in ch. 19. What
Job knows is that he is innocent and God is attacking him, what he
wishes is that the whole universe should be different, what he desires is
that he should have a personal legal confrontation with God that would
establish his innocence.
Here in ch. 19 his desire is exactly the same. It is that he should ‘see’
God as the respondent in his court-case while he is still alive (‘to
behold Eloah while still in my flesh—that is my desire’, 19.26). And
the next time also that he will speak of his desire, it will be in the same
terms: in 23.3-7 he will wish that he knew where he could find God,
that he could reach his judgment seat and lay his case before him so as
to receive the vindication he deserves. The desire remains constant.
Here too, what he knows or believes is also of a piece with what he
has said before and will say again, though what he says here does make
an advance. Hitherto he had never expressed any conviction that he
would in the end be vindicated. Of course, his unquenchable desire for
vindication and his confidence in the ineluctable rightness of his cause
have been unmistakable, but he has never yet said straight out that he
‘knows’ that he will in the end actually be vindicated. Once he has
decided to argue his case with God (13.3), he affirms, ‘I know that I am
in the right’ (13.18), and ‘This is what I take refuge in: a godless man
does not approach him’ (13.16). And he believes that his declaration of
innocence will go on arguing his case before God as a man argues for
his friend (16.21). But he never has said that he believes he will in the
end be successful in his lawsuit; that is the advance here. And that is
what he still believes in ch. 23 also: ‘When he has tried me, I shall
come forth as gold’ (23.10). It is important to see that Job has no
beliefs about any future act of salvation or mercy on God’s part, only
about an inevitable and ultimate recognition of his blamelessness. The
person (if person it is) who will declare him innocent is of less
significance than the fact of his innocence which alone will make that
declaration possible.
And what Job wishes now is no less a forlorn hope than those previ-
ous utterances introduced by ‘O that’. There is no likelihood that any-
one is going to inscribe his protestation of innocence on a rock face
(19.24), but nevertheless he utters the wish. He needs his innocence to
be inscribed in some permanent medium that will last beyond his death;
4 Belief, Desire and Wish in Job 19

for he has no real hope of vindication before his death, however much
he desires it. To be sure, he believes that his protestation stands written
into the heavenly record, but heavenly accounting is an enigmatic busi-
ness, and he would feel more secure that his case will some day be de-
cided if he knew that his words were preserved imperishably on earth.
He does not, frankly, expect that he will be vindicated before his death,
so despite his conviction that he will ‘in the end’ be adjudged innocent
(v. 25) he voices the wish that the record of his case should be com-
mitted to permanent writing (vv. 23-24). Such enduring written words
would then serve a similar function to the earth’s refusal to cover up his
murder in 16.18; earth and inscription would alike keep his cause alive.
Now, given that such are Job’s belief, desire and wish, who (or,
what) can be Job’s ‘champion’ (gō'ēl), who ‘lives’ and whose assis-
tance will establish Job’s innocence in the end? It can hardly be God, as
Ringgren puts it succinctly: ‘Since the lawsuit here stands in the con-
text of a dispute with God, it seems unlikely that God himself would
appear as vindicator and legal attorney against himself’.2 Nor is it a
heavenly being. Eliphaz has warned Job in ch. 5 that none of the holy
ones would hear him if he called (5.1), and Job has not demurred, but
has simply bewailed the absence of any mediator between himself and
God (9.33). What I propose is that we should recognize that the simi-
larities between this passage and 16.18-21 must make those verses fun-
damental to the interpretation of ch. 19:
18 O earth, cover not my blood,
and let my outcry find no rest.
19 Even now my witness is in heaven,
my advocate is on high.
20 It is my cry3 that is my spokesman;4
sleepless5 I wait for God’s reply.
21 That cry will argue a mortal’s case before God
as a man argues for his friend.
It ought to be unmistakable that the gō'ēl of ch. 19 is the same as the

2. H. Ringgren, in G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (eds.),

Helmer Ringgren, ‘la'G: gā’al; laeGO gō’ēl; hL;auG“ gë’ullāh’, TDOT, II (1975), pp. 350-
55.
3. Taking rē'āy from rēa‘ III, not ‘purpose, aim’ (BDB), but rather the equiva-
lent of re'ût, ‘longing, striving’ (Eccl. 1.14; etc.), and revocalizing rē'î.
4. Reading melîßî ‘my spokesman’ for MT melißay ‘my spokesmen’.
5. Taking dlp not as ‘leak’ (as in Eccl. 10.18), but as ‘be sleepless’ (cf. Akk.
dalāpu); so also KB3.
 Belief, Desire and Wish in Job 19 5

‘witness’ (‘ēd), the ‘advocate’ (śōhēd) and the ‘spokesman’ (mālªß) of

ch. 16. In that place it is Job’s ‘cry’ (rēa‘) that is explicitly said to be
his ‘spokesman’ and so also by implication his ‘witness’ and
‘advocate’. That means to say, there is no personal being in heaven to
represent Job; only his cry, uttered in the direction of God, speaks on
his behalf. If in ch. 16 his ‘cry’ is personified as his witness, advocate
and spokesman, it is perfectly intelligible, though it remains a bold
metaphor, that it should here be called his ‘kinsman’ or ‘champion’. So
the affirmation here, ‘My champion lives’, is nothing different from the
asseveration of 16.19: ‘Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven’.
The question may well be asked, But why should Job here call his
deposition of character (which is the content of his ‘cry’) his gō'ēl ,
when in ch. 16 he had used more exclusively legal terms, ‘spokesman’,
‘witness’, ‘advocate’? The reason is the present context. It is here in ch.
19 that Job has most extensively elaborated his desertion by his rela-
tives and acquaintances (vv. 13-19). Not one of them wants anything to
do with him, and he is bereft of any personal gō'ēl who might defend
his cause. God is his enemy, so he has no one to rely on except himself.
He has to be his own gō'ēl just as in 17.3 he had to be his own surety:
Keep my pledge6 close by you, [O God,]
for there is no one who will stand surety for me.

But why, next, we might ask, should Job use such personal language in
saying that his cry ‘lives’ (ḥay)? We may note that the adjective and the
verb ‘to live’ (ḥāyâ) are not used in the Old Testament exclusively of
animate beings, though of course that is the most normal sense. Water
is often called ‘living’ (Gen. 26.19; Lev. 14.5, 6, 51, 52; 15.3; Num.
19.17; Cant. 4.15; Jer. 2.13; 17.13; Zech. 14.8), so is ‘raw’ meat (1
Sam. 2.15); God’s ‘work’ can be ‘made to live’ (Hab. 3.2), as can the
stones of a city (Neh. 3.34 [Eng. 4.2]) or a city generally (1 Chron.
11.8) or grain (Hos. 14.8 [Eng. 7]). But these references are not wholly
relevant, for what we are dealing with here is not a special denotation
of the verb ‘lives’. ‘Lives’ becomes an appropriate term once Job’s cry
is personified as a living being, a kinsman-champion: obviously a
‘living’ kinsman is one who will take up his cause effectively. But an
even more compelling reason for the presence of the term ‘lives’ is
Job’s conviction that he himself will soon be dead (cf. v. 10) and that to
have any chance of being vindicated he needs some testimony to him-

6. Reading ‘ērebōnî ‘my pledge’ for MT ‘orbēnî ‘take me on pledge’.

6 Belief, Desire and Wish in Job 19

self to survive his death. Only after ‘[his] skin has thus been stripped
from [him]’ (v. 26a), that is, after his death, can there be vindication for
him, for, to be realistic, there seems little chance of it this side of a
death that looms imminently.
But now, in the sharpest contrast to Job’s expectation of a post-
mortem vindication is his desire: What he wants is to see his name
cleared while he is still alive. ‘From my flesh’ (mbśry) is by anyone’s
reckoning a rather strange way of saying ‘while I am still alive’; but the
only alternative meaning, ‘without my flesh’ (RSV mg, etc.), that is,
after my death, not only contradicts Job’s frequently expressed desire
but raises the problem of how Job can ‘see’ if he has no body. The
‘imperfect’ verb ’ḥzh, conventionally translated ‘I shall see’, should be
taken either as a modal imperfect (GKC, §107m-n) or as a cohortative
(GKC, §48b-e), expressing a will or desire rather than a simple predic-
tion (thus also NJPS: ‘But I would behold God while still in my flesh’;
Tur-Sinai: ‘I want to see [my] God’; Habel: ‘I would behold Eloah’;
Fohrer: ‘I would see God’).
It is true that Job has nowhere previously said he wants to ‘see’ God
in so many words, but such a desire is plainly implied by his previously
expressed ambition to come to trial with God (9.32), by his regret that
there is no arbitrator who could lay his hands on both Job and God
(9.33),7 his wish to speak to the Almighty (13.3), and especially his
ambition to defend his behaviour ‘to [God’s] face’ (13.15), his promise
not to ‘hide [himself] from [God’s] face’ (13.20), and his complaint
that God ‘hides [his] face’ (13.24). This sounds quite like seeing, as if
seeing God has been an important part of his desire. Now that he has
come out with the unambiguous word ‘see’ (ḥzh), he can say it again
more openly and expansively in ch. 23 where he wishes he could find
the way to God’s ‘seat’ (23.3) and bewails the fact that he cannot per-
ceive (byn), see (ḥzh) or behold (r’h) God. Such an encounter, however
difficult or hazardous, is his desire. The metaphor of the lawsuit is
entirely sufficient to account for this language of ‘seeing’ God (it is not
a question of a theophany, as Fohrer).
The next line says in the most emphatic manner that it is with God
that he desires to treat (we note the emphatic ly, ‘for myself’, as well as
the emphases in ‘my eyes’, and ‘no stranger’). Even if the ‘kinsman-

7.Lit. ‘who will be struck with my hand?’ The gesture of striking hands is a
ratification of an agreement to stand surety in Prov. 11.15; 17.18; 22.26; the niphal
is niphal tolerativum.
 Belief, Desire and Wish in Job 19 7

champion’ were a personal thing, and not, as argued here, simply a per-
sonification of Job’s plea, such a being fades immediately into the
background. The champion has no significance in himself, but func-
tions only to keep Job’s cause alive before God. It has to be God’s vin-
dication if it is to be vindication at all. And of course if Job himself,
and not someone else (‘a stranger’), is to witness God vindicating him,
Job himself has to be alive.
The last line of the strophe (v. 27c) somewhat enigmatically conveys
the emotion with which this desire has been expressed. Andersen’s
despairing translation, ‘my kidneys have ended in my chest’, shows the
extent of the difficulty. But if we allow that the kidneys, as a most sen-
sitive part of the anatomy (cf. 16.13) and as the seat of the emotions
and affections, stand for the feelings in general (Ps. 73.21; Prov.
23.16); that ‘come to an end’ (klh) means particularly to be exhausted
by longing (as of the npš, ‘soul, vitality’ in Ps. 84.3 [2]; 119.81); and
that ‘in my chest, bosom’ (ḥq) means simply ‘within me’ (which is
more commonly bqrby, Jer. 23.9; 1 Sam. 25.37)—then Job means that
he is emotionally exhausted, psychically drained, by the intensity of his
feelings (cf. NAB ‘my inmost being is consumed with longing’).

Conclusion

What Job desires is to see God vindicating him before he dies. What he
knows (that is, has the firmest conviction about) is that he will be vindi-
cated ultimately but not before he dies, and not because God is just but
because his cause is just. What he wishes is that his protestation of
innocence could be preserved permanently on earth, since heaven is an
unreliable quarter from which to seek vindication.
On the understanding here presented, the centre of gravity in the
strophe before us (vv. 23-27) is therefore not the hopeless wish of vv.
23-24, nor yet the unshaken conviction that he will eventually find
vindication even though it may be after his death, but the reiterated
desire than ‘from [his] flesh’, that is, while he is still alive, he should
come face to face with God, the two of them parties in a legal contest
that will issue in Job’s full vindication.
It needs finally to be said that the foregoing exegesis has proceeded
on the basis of ‘the story so far’, and has presented a reading ‘as if for
the first time’, a reader-response orientation. A second reading, in
which the end of the book is allowed to resonate here also, super-
8 Belief, Desire and Wish in Job 19

imposes a new level of meaning above the meaning intended in these

lines by the character Job. It is an irony, though not at all a bitter irony,
that Job’s words have a meaning other than he envisages. The truth is
that, though he expects God to be the last person who would vindicate
him, God does indeed in the end become his vindicator, and that on
earth (42.10, 12). Job’s desire to ‘see’ God is fulfilled to the letter
(42.5), and the belief and the desire of these verses, here so antithetical
to one another, are shown in the end to be identical. In the end, Job
does not see his hope fulfilled, for he has no real hope; but he sees his
words, hopeless but desirous, fulfilled with unimaginable precision.