Albert Barnes Commentary Job 13:8

"Will ye show partiality to him? Will ye contend for God?" — Job 13:8 (ASV)

Will you accept his person?—That is, will you be partial to him? The language is like that used in courts of justice, where a judge shows favor to one of the parties on account of birth, rank, wealth, or personal friendship. The idea here is, “Will you, from partiality to God, maintain unjust principles and defend positions that are really untenable?”

There was a controversy between Job and God. Job maintained that he was punished too severely and that the divine dealings were unequal and disproportioned to his offenses. His friends, he alleges, did not do justice to the arguments he had presented but had taken sides with God against him, no matter what he urged or what he said. So little disposed were they to do justice to him and to listen to his vindication, that no matter what he said, they set it all down to impatience, rebellion, and lack of submission.

They assumed that he was wrong, and that God was wholly right in all things. No one could reasonably complain about this position that God was right, and in his sober reflections Job himself would not be disposed to object to it. However, his complaint is that though the considerations he presented were of the greatest weight, they would not allow their force, simply because they were determined to vindicate God. Their position was that God dealt with people strictly according to their character, and that no matter what they suffered, their sufferings were the exact measure of their ill desert. Against this position, they would hear nothing Job could say, and they maintained it by every kind of argument at their command—whether sound or unsound, sophistical or solid.

Job says that this was showing partiality for God, and he felt that he had a right to complain. We need never show partiality even for God. He can be vindicated by just and equal arguments, and we need never injure others while we vindicate him. Our arguments for him should indeed be reverent, and we should desire to vindicate his character and government; but the considerations we present need not be those of mere partiality and favor.

Will you contend for God?—This language is taken from a court of justice and refers to an argument in favor of a party or cause. Job asks whether they would undertake to maintain the cause of God, and he may mean to intimate that they were wholly disqualified for such an undertaking.

He not only reproves them for a lack of candor and impartiality, as in the previous expressions, but he means to say that they were unfit in all respects to be the advocates of God. They did not understand the principles of his administration. Their views were narrow, their information limited, and their arguments either commonplace or unsound.

According to this interpretation, the emphasis will be on the word “you”—“Will you contend for God?” The whole verse may mean, “God is not to be defended by mere partiality or favor. Solid arguments only should be employed in his cause. Such you have not used, and you have shown yourselves to be entirely unfit for this great argument.”

The practical inference we should draw from this is that our arguments in defense of the divine administration should be solid and sound. They should not be mere declamation or mere assertion. They should be such as will befit the great theme and such as will stand the test of any proper trial that can be applied to reasoning. There are arguments that will “vindicate all God’s ways to men,” and to search them out should be one of the great employments of our lives.

If ministers of the gospel would always abide by these principles, they would often do much more than they do now to commend religion to the sober views of mankind. No other people are under greater temptations to use weak or unsound arguments than they are. They feel it is their duty at all hazards to defend the divine administration.

They are in danger—whether from an inability to explain the difficulties of the divine government, from indolence in searching out arguments, from presuming on the ignorance and dullness of their hearers, or from a pride that will not allow them to confess their ignorance on any subject—of attempting to hide a difficulty they cannot explain, or of using arguments and resorting to reasoning that would be regarded as unsound or worthless anywhere else.

A minister should always remember that sound reasoning is as necessary in religion as in other things, and that there are always some people who can detect a fallacy or see through sophistry.

With what diligent study, then, should the ministers of the gospel prepare for their work! How careful should they be, as the advocates of God and his cause in a world opposed to him, to find out solid arguments, to meet every objection with candor, and to convince people by sound reasoning that God is right!

Their work is to convince, not to denounce; and if there is any office of unspeakable responsibility on earth, it is that of undertaking to be the advocates of God.