advocacy

Let him take his rod away from me,

and let not dread of him terrify me.

Then I would speak without fear of him,

for I am not so in myself.

Job 9:34-35

Job's wish is for a mediator, a true concerned person able to grasp both Job and God by the hand and settle out the "reasons" for Job's destruction at the hand of God. It is a plea that anticipates the coming of Jesus. Job is poetically prophesying and he doesn't even realize it. He is explaining one way in which Jesus was anticipated in the Old Testament.

Job's need for this is made more apparent by the attacks of his friends. They keep pushing him to consider that he had sinned in a way that made him "deserve" his situation as a punishment from God. Job contends that though he is sinful, God has done what He has, not out of punishment, but for some other mystifying reason that Job cannot discern. Hence his appeal for an arbiter to sort it all out.

Jesus is this advocate. We know that Christians have this assurance (1 John 2:1) that if we sin, Jesus is our "go-between" to the Father. And we should not dismiss that truth. Job would have been a lot less frustrated (and the book of Job a lot shorter) had he had then what we know now.