Job 19:23-29
New Catholic Bible
I Know That My Redeemer Lives[a]
23 “How I wish that my words might be written down
and inscribed on a scroll!
24 How I wish that with an iron chisel and with lead
they were engraved in stone forever!
25 “But I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the end he will stand upon the dust.
26 After my awakening, he will call me close to him,
and then from my own flesh I will see God.
27 I will see him with my own eyes;
my eyes, not those of another, will behold him.
How my heart within me yearns for that moment!
28 “As for you who say,
‘How we will persecute him,
for the root of the trouble lies in him,’
29 beware of the sword that is pointed toward you,
for the avenger of wickedness is the sword,
and then you will know that there is indeed a judgment.”
Footnotes
- Job 19:23 This is regarded as the best-known and most-beloved passage in the Book of Job as well as the culmination of Job’s understanding of his situation and his relationship with God. At the end of his life, Job is convulsed by a cry of hope, which he utters like a challenge, and also by the prospect of meeting his God, whom he will really see with his own eyes (Job 42:5).
God is Job’s defender; originally, a goel was a close relative of somebody slain, who had to avenge that relative’s blood, raise up a posterity to the dead man’s wife, and redeem his property. Job, therefore, expects a liberation.
The Vulgate Latin translation interpreted this as resurrection of the body after death. The direct meaning of the Hebrew text may be extended, in a Christian perspective, to include the resurrection, but the Book of Job does not perceive this so clearly.
