05/06/2022 – Day 068 – Job 19 – 20 // Over two millenium prior to the Incarnation, Job testifies to His Redeemer!
Better late than never, in this case I am over five weeks late. I found it through our 1 Corinthians 15 – 16 research today.
Job was most likely a contemporary of Abraham, Lot , and Isaac, or 2200 b.c. Let’s look at Job’s amazing testimony in 19: 23 – 27: “Oh, that my words were recorded that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever! I know that My Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skins has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes … I , and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”
Amazing, all the more since there was not a belief in immortality. From my William Barclay I Corinthians commentary, check this out: “J.E. McFadyen, a great Old Testament scholar, says that this lack of a belief in immortality in the Old Testament is due ‘to the pwoer with which these men apprehended God in this world’ He does on to say, ‘There are few more wonderful things than this in the long story of religion, that for centuries men lived the noblest lives, doing their duties and bearing their sorrows, without hope of future reward; and they did this because in all their going out and coming in they were very sure of God.’
And Barclay goes on:
It is true that in the Old Testament there are some few, some very few, glimpses of a real life to come. There were times when a man felt that, if God be God at all, there must be something which would reverse the incomprehensible verdicts of this world. So Job cries out,
“Still I know One to champion me at last, to stand up for me upon earth. This body may break up, but even then my life shall have a sight of God. (Job 19: 25-17)
Soli Deo Gloria indeed!