‘Though He Slay Me’ — Why the Silence on This Verse?
00:00:00.000 | God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
00:00:13.080 | That's what you just heard in Portuguese from our friend Vinny.
00:00:15.440 | What a voice.
00:00:16.440 | Vinny brings this podcast and a host of Desiring God books and resources to the people of Brazil.
00:00:23.000 | You'll hear more about his work in just a moment.
00:00:24.920 | But first, today's question comes to us from a podcast host by the name of Tony.
00:00:31.040 | From me.
00:00:32.040 | I've got a question, Pastor John, that's been on my mind and it's something I'm trying to
00:00:35.480 | figure out.
00:00:36.480 | It's about one of the most remarkable statements in the Bible when it comes to this topic about
00:00:43.200 | God's sovereign design and our suffering.
00:00:47.840 | Job 13, 15 is the text I'm thinking about.
00:00:50.200 | Job says, "Though he slay me, I will hope in him."
00:00:56.160 | Though he slay me, I will hope in him.
00:01:02.080 | A remarkable line made famous in more recent times by Shane and Shane in their incredible
00:01:06.800 | and powerful song by that title, "Though You Slay Me."
00:01:11.720 | Years back, Desiring God partnered with them to record a new edition of the music video
00:01:15.320 | that featured a sermon clip of yours, a remix that we published in ABJ 639.
00:01:20.900 | The music video version of that song now has a whopping nine million views on YouTube and
00:01:27.200 | counting.
00:01:28.200 | That's incredible.
00:01:29.200 | Huge response.
00:01:30.200 | So here's my question about Job 13, 15.
00:01:33.880 | I know you've made passing mentions over the years to this phrase, "Though he slay me,"
00:01:40.120 | but I see only one explicit mention of the text in your entire ministry corpus from one
00:01:45.040 | of your earliest sermons, preached seven and a half years before you even became a pastor,
00:01:50.040 | a sermon titled "Your Calamity" in 1973, preached on New Year's Eve 1972 in Greenville, South
00:01:58.200 | Carolina.
00:02:00.720 | As we approach another new year and the 50th anniversary of that sermon, I see that you've
00:02:06.280 | never mentioned the text again in a sermon, and you've never tweeted the line either,
00:02:11.120 | a text that just seems to be primed for short-form context.
00:02:15.680 | In mid-November, when your annual Bible reading trek takes you through Job 13, you tweeted
00:02:20.400 | a couple other verses from the chapter, like verses 5 and 24, but never Job 13, 15.
00:02:26.280 | The meaning of the text is debated.
00:02:28.360 | So where do you land now?
00:02:30.480 | Are you certain or uncertain of its meaning?
00:02:33.480 | And with such a text that has become synonymous with Desiring God, why the silence?
00:02:38.480 | Wow, Tony with a thorough question today.
00:02:41.880 | I'm laughing here, Tony, because you know too much.
00:02:46.960 | I can't believe that everything I've ever said is searchable.
00:02:50.080 | I'm going to be caught into a thousand contradictions one of these days.
00:02:55.840 | Well, see, you're still with us, so now we can present them to you.
00:02:59.640 | Yeah, that's right.
00:03:00.680 | The first thing to say is that I love the truth, and it is the truth spoken from God's
00:03:08.400 | own mouth that God in His absolute ownership and sovereignty over all life appoints the
00:03:18.240 | time and the kind of every death of every person on this planet, and this fact of God's
00:03:27.400 | right to give and to take life is not a reason to reject Him, but a reason to hope in Him.
00:03:34.320 | I love that truth.
00:03:37.880 | Which means that I love the fact that every Christian owned by the Creator, doubly owned
00:03:45.640 | by the Redeemer, can say and should say, "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him."
00:03:53.040 | Yes, we can say that.
00:03:54.800 | We should say that.
00:03:56.440 | That is the ESV of Job 13.15, virtually the same as the NIV, virtually the same as NASB,
00:04:04.160 | King James Version.
00:04:05.680 | If the declaration that God slays, that is, takes the life of His own precious children—and
00:04:16.760 | I don't doubt that Job was a precious blood-bought child of God, the blood of Jesus going back
00:04:22.800 | over the Old Testament and covering all the saints' sins, as it says in Romans 3.25—I
00:04:29.680 | don't doubt that—if that declaration that God takes the life of His people, and while
00:04:38.880 | He does it, we ought to keep hoping in Him, trusting in Him, loving Him, treasuring Him,
00:04:45.360 | if that declaration seems foreign to us or unbiblical to us or contrary to God's nature,
00:04:54.600 | then we have not been paying attention to our Bibles or thinking rightly about what
00:05:00.920 | we are reading, including the book of Job.
00:05:05.080 | In the very first chapter of Job, God takes the life, takes the life—if you'd use
00:05:14.720 | the word "kills"—all ten of Job's children.
00:05:21.120 | Job saw this.
00:05:22.120 | Job saw this, and he confessed that fact, tore his clothes, shaved his head, fell on
00:05:28.520 | the ground, and said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return.
00:05:37.300 | The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.
00:05:44.120 | Blessed be the name of the Lord."
00:05:47.320 | That's Job 121, a breathtaking statement of worship.
00:05:51.920 | "The Lord has taken my ten children away.
00:05:56.360 | Blessed be His name."
00:05:59.120 | Sometimes people say, "Yeah, but Job was a bad theologian at that point."
00:06:02.680 | No, the inspired writer comments in the next verse that Job did not sin with his lips when
00:06:11.560 | he said that, as if he knew what people would think when they read it.
00:06:16.720 | It was true, godly worship.
00:06:21.800 | Then in Job 12.10, he said, "In God's hand is the life of every living thing and
00:06:31.320 | the breath of all mankind."
00:06:33.600 | God owns all things.
00:06:36.000 | He has absolute rights over all living things.
00:06:41.920 | He gives, he takes, when and how he decides in his infinite wisdom.
00:06:50.320 | This is part of what it means to be God, the creator and sustainer and governor of all
00:06:57.760 | things.
00:06:58.760 | Deuteronomy 32.39 says, "See now," this is God talking, "See now that I, even I
00:07:06.440 | am He, and there is no God besides me.
00:07:10.400 | I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal.
00:07:16.120 | There is none that can deliver out of my hand."
00:07:20.880 | Now, Tony, you know that I wrote a book on Providence recently.
00:07:27.800 | 50 pages, 5-0, 50 pages of that book are devoted to this one single biblical reality, section
00:07:38.200 | 5, called "Providence over Life and Death."
00:07:43.200 | Dozens and dozens of texts say this, like James 4.15, "Don't presume upon tomorrow.
00:07:51.080 | Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live,' and do this or that."
00:07:59.200 | If the Lord wills.
00:08:01.200 | John Piper will live to the end of this podcast.
00:08:04.960 | If the Lord does not will it, then this microphone goes silent and you're going to wonder what
00:08:10.240 | happened.
00:08:11.820 | Another minute of life, and it's the Lord's will or not.
00:08:16.620 | If he wills, we live.
00:08:18.140 | If he doesn't will it, we die.
00:08:21.280 | So whether the text of Job 13.15 has become synonymous with desiring God, the reality
00:08:29.960 | has, and I am glad because it is true, and it is glorious.
00:08:37.760 | I mean, really, whom would you like to be in charge of your martyrdom or your cancer?
00:08:48.460 | Satan?
00:08:49.620 | You want Satan to be in charge of your cancer?
00:08:52.780 | You want fate to be in charge of your cancer?
00:08:55.660 | Meaningless, mindless, purposeless forces of nature?
00:09:00.300 | It is a glorious thing that not a single sparrow falls from the sky apart from our Father in
00:09:10.160 | heaven, and how much more certainly does he govern the death of his precious children.
00:09:19.440 | Even the hairs of our head are all numbered.
00:09:22.040 | "Fear not," Jesus says, "you are of more value than many sparrows."
00:09:28.160 | That's Matthew 10, 28 to 31.
00:09:31.400 | So it is our joy at desiring God to say, "Though my flesh and my heart may fail, God is the
00:09:39.600 | strength of my heart and my portion forever."
00:09:42.680 | Psalm 73.
00:09:44.840 | We love to say, "To live is Christ and to die is gain," Philippians 1.
00:09:51.120 | We love to say, "Apart from the body, at home with the Lord," 2 Corinthians 5.
00:09:58.960 | We love to say, "The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life, better than being
00:10:06.840 | kept alive."
00:10:09.280 | So the sentence, "Though he slay me, yet I will trust him," is a beautiful expression
00:10:16.200 | of reality and biblical faith.
00:10:20.640 | God does take the life of his people, and they have every reason to keep on hoping in
00:10:27.680 | him not in spite of that fact, but because of that fact, that he is the all-wise, all-loving,
00:10:36.400 | purposeful God doing nothing from any mistake or any lack of wisdom or any lack of love.
00:10:46.440 | Satan doesn't have the final power over death.
00:10:49.880 | Disease doesn't have the final power over death.
00:10:52.320 | Natural disasters don't have the final power over death.
00:10:55.920 | Life and death are in the hand of God, finally, and he is our Father and our Redeemer.
00:11:01.680 | By the blood of his Son, he reached back, covered all of our sins, and by the resurrection
00:11:08.440 | of his Son, he has conquered death.
00:11:11.880 | The reason, Tony, that I have not made Job 13.15, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope
00:11:18.400 | in him," the touchstone of my exaltation in this glorious truth of God's sovereignty
00:11:25.640 | and our hope is that I knew that if I put too many eggs in that textual basket, someone
00:11:35.840 | could come along and make a plausible case that I'm building on sand, because the RSV,
00:11:44.160 | for example, translates the verse like this, "Behold, he will slay me, I have no hope,"
00:11:54.800 | which sounds like the very opposite of other translations, "Though he slay me, yet I
00:12:01.640 | will hope in him."
00:12:06.080 | The problem is there is a real textual, Hebrew textual problem in this verse.
00:12:15.880 | There are two Hebrew variants pronounced exactly alike, namely lo.
00:12:23.020 | One variant has the Lamed Holim aleph and means "no," and the other variant has
00:12:30.800 | Lamed Holim vav and means "to him" or "in him."
00:12:37.600 | So the readings are "I have hope in him" or "I have no hope," and I have not
00:12:45.960 | been able to have certainty in my mind as I've worked and worked over the years on
00:12:52.960 | the Hebrew which one the author intended.
00:12:57.360 | If the correct variant is "I have no hope," it doesn't have to mean, I don't
00:13:02.880 | think it would mean, "I have no hope beyond grave," because that would contradict
00:13:08.400 | Job 19.26, "After my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God."
00:13:16.200 | Job I do believe was granted insight into eternal life.
00:13:21.600 | All it would mean is, "If God slays me now, my hope for vindication on the earth
00:13:26.560 | is over.
00:13:27.840 | My hope for restored fortunes is over.
00:13:30.440 | It's gone.
00:13:31.680 | Life here is over.
00:13:33.960 | Not going to have a daughter named Jemima.
00:13:35.880 | It's over."
00:13:37.640 | And that's true.
00:13:38.640 | That would have been true, and it would not have been hopeless.
00:13:42.120 | Just no hope for vindication here and now.
00:13:47.000 | Now, conclusion.
00:13:48.640 | I think the traditional translation, "Though he slay me, I will hope in him," is the
00:13:54.240 | right one.
00:13:55.240 | If you put a gun to my head and said, "You got to vote," I'm voting for the traditional
00:14:00.720 | translation.
00:14:01.920 | I'm glad the ESV translates it that way.
00:14:05.640 | I know - now, I don't just think - but I know that it expresses biblical truth.
00:14:12.120 | The traditional translation expresses biblical truth.
00:14:16.440 | But I have chosen over the years to defend and exalt in that glorious biblical truth
00:14:24.360 | from dozens of other passages where I know the rug won't be pulled out from under my
00:14:30.600 | exegetical feet.
00:14:31.920 | Yeah, I had a sense something was up.
00:14:34.240 | Thank you, Pastor John, for the clarity on Job 15.13.
00:14:37.160 | Well, as you heard at the beginning of this episode, we have a team of friends laboring
00:14:41.480 | to bring Desiring God resources to non-English speakers, and that includes Vinny, who serves
00:14:47.560 | the people of Brazil.
00:14:49.360 | You heard his voice at the beginning of this episode, but we asked him for an update on
00:14:52.320 | his work.
00:14:53.320 | Here's what he said.
00:14:55.440 | My name is Vinny.
00:14:56.440 | I work as an editorial manager at Fiel Ministries in Brazil.
00:15:01.160 | We have 104 articles per year.
00:15:04.400 | We have 52 short clips, videos, and 52 "Ask Pastor John" dubbed in Portuguese every year.
00:15:12.280 | On top of that, the publishing have been doing Piper's book for a long, long time.
00:15:18.080 | I believe we have around 15 to 20 Piper's books.
00:15:21.640 | I know many pastors that they're not trying to emulate Piper, but they've been so enriched
00:15:27.640 | with Piper's message that when you hear them, you can hear echoes of Piper.
00:15:31.680 | I see that in my preaching sometimes.
00:15:34.360 | When we entered the pandemic, and coronavirus and Christ was such a helpful content, many,
00:15:40.960 | many people wrote letters when they were losing relatives in the midst of depression, panic,
00:15:49.920 | anxiety.
00:15:50.920 | And then recently we published Good News of Great Joy, devotionals for Christmas season,
00:15:57.760 | and people were rejoicing in that.
00:15:59.960 | We were giving the book for free.
00:16:02.320 | You know, Desiring God produces a content that is just timely.
00:16:06.360 | You know, how it speaks the perfect timing for coronavirus and Christ, the perfect timing
00:16:11.560 | for Good News of Great Joy.
00:16:13.120 | I feel that many people kind of had their relationship with God just transformed because
00:16:20.880 | of thinking God as our source of our joy.
00:16:23.360 | I want to express my thankfulness for each one of you that has been investing in Desiring
00:16:29.000 | God, because as a partner of Desiring God here in Brazil, I see many of the results
00:16:35.080 | of that content being produced there and being translated here.
00:16:39.920 | And to have those things dubbed to Portuguese, which usually is going to take a lot of effort
00:16:46.760 | and a lot of resources, and because of your donation, people in Brazil can savor that
00:16:53.160 | in their own local language so they can be equipped to live the Christian life in a way
00:16:59.120 | that is both Christ-honoring and biblical.
00:17:02.360 | Amazing testimony.
00:17:04.320 | My wife and I were honored to meet and spend time with Vinny and his wife in Brazil in
00:17:08.120 | June, and they inspire us in gospel ministry.
00:17:11.960 | An amazing couple.
00:17:13.360 | I wish you all could meet them personally.
00:17:16.400 | If you're listening right now and you've already invested in Desiring God, you are impacting
00:17:21.400 | Vinny's life right now by helping to make his gospel labors possible.
00:17:25.400 | All that you just heard is because of you and what you gave in 2022.
00:17:29.240 | So thank you.
00:17:30.240 | And if you're not yet a partner with us and you want to join in what's happening through
00:17:34.020 | Desiring God in the English-speaking world and how that work overflows into Vinny's work
00:17:40.360 | to reach the Portuguese-speaking world in Brazil, join us today.
00:17:44.400 | Become a monthly ministry partner.
00:17:46.520 | Much of our financial support comes from friends of ours who give on average $30 a month to
00:17:52.320 | support all of our work.
00:17:54.280 | To set up monthly giving, go to give.desiringgod.org.
00:17:58.760 | That's give.desiringgod.org.
00:17:59.760 | I'll see you on Wednesday.
00:18:03.320 | you
00:18:05.380 | you
00:18:07.440 | you
00:18:09.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]