CHAPTER 19 Dec. 15 
Job Responds to Bildad
Then Job answered, 2How long will you torment me, and crush me with words? 3You have reproached me ten times. You aren’t ashamed that you attack me. 4If it is true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. 5If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach; 6know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with His net. 7Behold, I cry out because of injustice, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice. 8He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths. 9He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. 10He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. My hope He has plucked up like a tree. 11He has also kindled His wrath against me. He counts me among His adversaries. 12His troops come on together, build a siege ramp against me, and encamp around my tent. 13He has put my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. 14My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me. 15Those who dwell in my house, and my maids, count me for a stranger. I am an alien in their sight. 16I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer. I beg him with my mouth. 17My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother. 18Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me. 19All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me. 20My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 21Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends; for the hand of God has touched me. 22Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh? 23Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! 25But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth. 26After my skin is destroyed, then in my flesh shall I see God, 27whom I, even I, shall see for myself. My eyes shall see it, and not a stranger’s. My heart is consumed within me. 28If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’; because the root of the matter is found in me, 29be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.

Commentary

19:2 Crush me with words- We should never assume that words are harmless. One lesson from the book of Job, as we see his mental agony progressing throughout his responses to the friends, is that words do indeed crush and hurt; they are often remembered for years after they have been spoken or written. God’s law is unique amongst legal codes for criminalizing words and thoughts as much as actions. 
19:4 My error remains with myself- A very true observation. It’s often the case that when someone sins against one individual, others, or indeed a whole congregation, consider that the sin has been against them and that they somehow are called to forgive the sin and in demanding repentance towards them. By doing so they are making the same mistake as the friends. We are to forgive sin against ourselves, and not take upon ourselves other sins as if they were against us personally.
19:8 Num. 22:22 describes how an Angel of God stood in a narrow, walled path before Balaam, so that his donkey fell down beneath him. That Angel is described as a "satan", an adversary, to Balaam. Job comments how the sufferings which the 'satan' brought upon him were God 'walling up my way that I cannot pass'. The connection is clear- and may indicate that Job's satan was a satan-Angel, acting on God’s behalf as an adversary to Job just as such an Angel did to Balaam. Job and Balaam have certain similarities- both were prophets (in Job's case see 4:4; 23:12; 29:4 cp. 15:8; Amos 3:7; James 5:10,11); both had genuine difficulty in understanding God's ways, but they to varying degrees consciously rebelled against what they did understand; both thus became angry with God, and were reproved by God through being brought to consider the Angel-controlled natural creation. Job should’ve learnt from Balaam- or vice versa- that God’s walling us in is because He wants us to go His way, and we shouldn’t try to force our way passed Him. 
19:21 The hand of God has touched me- God put Job into the hand of the ‘satan’ (1:12). Job saw the satan as basically God in action, not as a cosmic being outside of God’s control and not performing His bidding. 
19:26 In 2:4-6 we have the ‘Satan’ commenting that Job’s flesh and skin need to be harmed; but here we have Job stating his faith that even though God destroys his flesh and skin, yet God shall ultimately save him.
19:27 The light at the end of our tunnel is that we will personally see God, with our own eyes we will behold Him, and not through anyone else’s eyes (see too Is. 33:17). Job understood God as a personal being.