Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 131 · May 11
No Daysman
“Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.”
If you had to stand and answer for your life, who could go in with you? Somebody with standing on both sides of the room, able to put a hand on your shoulder and a hand on his.
Job has just conceded his friends' whole case about God's power and drawn a conclusion they did not expect. If I speak of strength, lo, he is strong: and if of judgment, who shall set me a time to plead? He cannot get a hearing date. He knows what would happen if he argued: If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me. The case is impossible for a reason that has nothing to do with Job's guilt. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.
Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both. Daysman is old English for an arbitrator, the man who appointed the day and heard both parties; other versions print umpire, or mediator. Be honest about one thing. The Hebrew can be read as a flat denial or as a wish, and several modern versions print the wish, if only there were someone to mediate. That changes the tone and leaves Job where he is. Denied or longed for, he has not got one, and the chapter runs on the absence.
He keeps returning to it. Seven chapters later: Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. Then immediately, O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour. The book never gives him it. When God finally answers, out of the whirlwind, he speaks to Job directly and nobody stands in between.
Which returns us to the hand. One of the church's oldest summaries of Jesus borrows Job's job title, though not his word for it: there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Job died without that sentence. He asked for a hand laid on both of them and was never told there would be one. What he wanted and did not get is on the page in front of you, in a book he never read.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 131 is He Goes Before (Deuteronomy 31:8).