(5) God forbid that I should justify you.—To admit the wickedness with which his friends charged him would have been to justify them—to say that they were right and he was wrong. This he resolves not to do.

Job 27:5-6. God forbid that I should justify you — In your opinion concerning me, and censure of me; till I die, &c. — Never hope that I will yield to your judgment, which I know to be false: no, I abhor the thought of it, and will sooner die than confess the guilt which you charge upon me. My righteousness I hold fast — You shall never extort that from me, but I will resolutely maintain my uprightness, and not be persuaded by any reason to desert its defence. My heart shall not reproach me, &c. — With betraying my own cause and innocence; my conscience doth not hitherto accuse me, and it shall not upbraid me hereafter.

27:1-6 Job's friends now suffered him to speak, and he proceeded in a grave and useful manner. Job had confidence in the goodness both of his cause and of his God; and cheerfully committed his cause to him. But Job had not due reverence when he spake of God as taking away his judgment, and vexing his soul. To resolve that our hearts shall not reproach us, while we hold fast our integrity, baffles the designs of the evil spirit.God forbid - לי חלילה châlı̂ylâh lı̂y. "Far be it from me." Literally, "Profane be it to me;" that is, I should regard it as unholy and profane; I cannot do it.

That I should justify you - That I should admit the correctness of your positions, and should concede that I am an hypocrite. He was conscious of integrity and sincerity, and nothing could induce him to abandon that conviction, or to admit the correctness of the reasoning which they had pursued in regard to him. Coverdale (1535 a.d.) has given this a correct translation, "God forbid that I should grant your cause to be right."

Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me - I will not admit that I am insincere and hypocritical. This is the language of a man who was conscious of integrity, and who would not be deprived of that consciousness by any plausible representations of his professed friends.

5. justify you—approve of your views.

mine integrity—which you deny, on account of my misfortunes.

That I should justify you, i.e. your opinion and censure concerning me, as one convicted to be impious or hypocritical, by God’s unusual and severe dealing with me.

I will not remove, to wit, declaratively, as real words are frequently understood; or by renouncing or denying my integrity, of which God and my own conscience bear me witness. I will not, to gratify you, say that I am a hypocrite, which I know to be false.

God forbid that I should justify you,.... Not but that he counted them righteous and good men God-ward; he did not take upon him to judge their state, and to justify or condemn them with respect to their everlasting condition; but he could not justify them in their censures of him, and say they did a right thing in charging him with wickedness and hypocrisy; nor could he justify them in all their sentiments and doctrines which they had delivered concerning the punishment of the wicked in this life, and the happiness that attends all good men; and that a man by his outward circumstances may be known to be either a good man or a bad man; such things as these he could not say were right; for so to do would be to call evil good, and good evil; and therefore he expresses his utmost abhorrence and detestation of showing his approbation of such conduct as theirs towards him, and of such unbecoming sentiments of God, and of his dealings, they had entertained; and to join in with which would be a profanation and a pollution, as the word used by him signifies; he could not do it without defiling his conscience, and profaning truth:

until I die one will not remove my integrity from me; Job was an upright man both in heart and life, through the grace of God bestowed on him; and he continued in his integrity, notwithstanding the temptations of Satan, and his attacks upon him, and the solicitations of his wife; and he determined through the grace of God to persist therein to the end of his life; though what he chiefly means here is, that he would not part with his character as an upright man, which he had always had, and God himself had bore testimony to; he would never give up this till he gave up the ghost; he would never suffer his integrity to be removed from him, nor remove it from himself by denying that it belonged to him, which his friends bore hard upon him to do. So Jarchi paraphrases it,

"I will not confess (or agree) to your saying, that I am not upright;''

the phrase, "till I die", seems rather to belong to the first clause, though it is true of both, and may be repeated in this.

God forbid that I should {c} justify you: till I die I will not remove mine {d} integrity from me.

(c) Which condemns me as a wicked man, because the hand of God is on me.

(d) I will not confess that God does thus punish me for my sins.