Job 17:9
Nevertheless, the just will cling to their ways,
Those with unsoiled hands will become more determined.
At first blush, one may think this is just good people being good people. But in my paradigm, the only ‘just’ and ‘those with unsoiled hands’ are sinners who have embraced Christ as their savior and are following the will of God through the strength He gives. We watched a documentary about fraud within the McDonald’s Monopoly game, and my wife came away changed by how remorseful most of these people were not. Apparently, she had been clinging to the idea that people are good.
‘Nevertheless’ was also ‘yet’ and ‘but’. ‘Just’ was ‘righteous’ the other seven times. ‘Cling’ was ‘hold’ the other seven times.
‘Unsoiled’ was ‘clean’ the other seven times. ‘Determined’ was ‘resolve’ once and ‘stronger’ the other seven times and came from an alternate proposed by one source.
The way I read this verse is that those who are following God will just keep on getting better at following God after failures. This is the attitude I want to have. I restart from scratch everyday, but this idea that I am getting stronger each time is something new to hold on to. Oddly enough, I picture the remnant in Revelations as devote Jews who just kept getting better about daily following God and were not making waves while everyone around them fell to evil.
In Sunday School, we talked about the Jews fleeing from Egypt and I wondered about two things. What God did Abraham, Isacc, and Jacob’s other descendants follow? And What happened to Egypt after God slaughtered their first born, their army, and took away their Jewish slaves?
Abraham had one son before Isaac and many children after. I wondered if they also followed God or if they went chasing after something else? Isaac had Esau and I know the Bible talks about his family some, but I never got the impression that they followed the God of their father and grandfather. And then I wondered about Jacob’s kids. We know he had 12 sons and all about their sons and their interactions with God. But I find it hard to believe that he had only twelve sons. Statistically that is impossible. God could have intervened, but I think the Bible just leaves out how many daughters he had. Are his daughters’ kids not the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob too? Are they not Jews? I feel an urge to research.
The same goes for Egypt. I know things happened in the world before history (writing them down) came along and that things happened that were either not written down or things that were written down were lost, but I think Egypt probably was important enough that history can tell us what happened to them after Moses. Again, an urge to research. Speaking of Moses, I wonder why he was allowed to go live wherever he wanted after leaving Pharaoh’s house and having killed a guard? He must have been special or the whole slave system would have fallen apart with Jews wandering off and killing guards.
One of my main wonders is still whether Moses’s brother Aaron wrote Job. Maybe he was getting his PhD in Hebrew literature and wrote his own God inspired work. Maybe he was writing a play to be performed before the slaves to keep them on target. This verse for sure would have helped that cause trying to get them to keep going. Hopefully it will help me too.
Written 9/8/25, Posted 9/23/25, Job 405/~1070