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Job: How Can I Contend with God?
In Job 9, Job answers with a hard question: how can a person contend with God? This wisdom dialogue follows Job’s thoughts step by step as he speaks of God’s greatness, his own weakness, and his longing to speak without fear.
Understanding the passage
Listening in context
These verses are Job’s reply in a dialogue. Within this passage, Job first speaks about God’s wisdom, strength, and power over creation. He then turns to his own case, saying he cannot answer God, describing his suffering, and voicing his anguished complaint about innocence, justice, and fear.
Job 9:1–35Main takeaway
Job 9 presents Job’s honest words about God’s unmatched power and his own inability to defend himself before him.
Look closely at the words
Open a card to explore the full explanation and its Bible references.
01Job’s opening questionJob begins by agreeing that God is rightfully above people, yet he asks how a human can be just with God.
Explanation
Job begins by agreeing that God is rightfully above people, yet he asks how a human can be just with God. If God were to contend with someone, that person could not answer properly. Job’s question rests on God’s wisdom and mighty strength, which no one can resist successfully.
02God’s power in creationJob then lists striking images of God’s rule. God removes mountains, shakes the earth, commands the sun, seals the stars, stretches out the heavens, and treads on the sea.
Explanation
Job then lists striking images of God’s rule. God removes mountains, shakes the earth, commands the sun, seals the stars, stretches out the heavens, and treads on the sea. He also made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades. These descriptions show works beyond searching out and beyond numbering.
03Job cannot answer or trust his own caseJob says God passes by unseen and cannot be hindered or questioned. Because of that, Job cannot imagine choosing words to argue.
Explanation
Job says God passes by unseen and cannot be hindered or questioned. Because of that, Job cannot imagine choosing words to argue. Even if he were righteous, he says he would plead to his judge. Even if God answered, Job says he would still not believe God had listened, because he feels crushed and bitter.
04Strength, justice, and Job’s anguished complaintJob says that if the matter is strength, God is mighty, and if it is justice, no one can summon him.
Explanation
Job says that if the matter is strength, God is mighty, and if it is justice, no one can summon him. Job adds that even if he is righteous or blameless, his own mouth would condemn him. In his anguish, Job then says that God destroys blameless and wicked alike, and asks who else could explain wicked rule on earth.
05Swift days and the wish to speak without terrorJob says his days rush past without good, like swift ships or an eagle diving on prey. Even if he tries to set aside his complaint, he still expects condemnation.
Explanation
Job says his days rush past without good, like swift ships or an eagle diving on prey. Even if he tries to set aside his complaint, he still expects condemnation. Washing himself cannot change that, because he says God would still plunge him into the ditch. Since God is not a man like him, Job longs for fear to lift so he could speak.
Questions to explore
Pause, look back at the verses and talk together.
01How does Job move from speaking about God’s greatness in creation to speaking about his own inability to answer?
02What does Job say about his own righteousness or blamelessness, and why does that still not settle his case?
Read the Bible passage
World English Bible ClassicScripture quotation · Public domain
Job 9:1–35
1Then Job answered,
2“Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?
3If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.
4God is wise in heart, and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against him and prospered?
5He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger.
6He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.
7He commands the sun and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars.
8He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
9He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south.
10He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.
11Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.
12Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’
13“God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.
14How much less will I answer him, and choose my words to argue with him?
15Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.
16If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice.
17For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.
18He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
19If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’
20Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me. Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse.
21I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life.
22“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
23If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.
24The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?
25“Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away. They see no good.
26They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.
27If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up,’
28I am afraid of all my sorrows. I know that you will not hold me innocent.
29I will be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?
30If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
31yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes will abhor me.
32For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.
33There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.
34Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;
35then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.