Weighed in the Scale - Job 6:1-2

Job 6:1-2 (ESV)

Job Replies: My Complaint Is Just

1 Then Job answered and said:

2 “Oh that my vexation were weighed,

and all my calamity laid in the balances!

Weighed in a Scale

One of the first things that happens at our birth is we are weighed on a scale.  In the reporting of our birth, our length and weight follows our name.   In reality this seems odd.   But, people seem to be curious about what we weigh.  That trend tends to continue though life.   Our height and weight seem to matter.   The proportion between height and weight seem to really matter.   Another proportion seems to matter in life to mankind and Job mentions it in the above verse.  Job’s friends, who came to comfort him in his affliction, have actually begun their attack on his character.   Eliphaz is the first and he is basically telling Job that the evilness that has come into his life is directly proportioned to the evilness in his heart.   Job, wanting to refute that argument, wishes he could actually have a cosmic scale with his sins on one side and his acts of righteousness on the other.   In later arguments, Job will continue this theme and point out to his friends the “good deeds” he has done to “balance the scales.”   This seems to be a very common denominator in mankind’s thinking and their religious systems.   Man seems to think that this proportionate mindset works with God.  If I do more good than bad I am a good person, so the argument would go.   Yet, God is perfectly holy.  He has no sin.  He is perfectly righteous.   Since mankind is full of sin (Romans 3:23) than everything he does comes from an unholy heart, meaning even his “righteous” acts are contaminated.   Job can do good, but the good is not holy and righteous good.  Only God can make something holy and righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21).  He does this by taking out sinfulness (which include our tainted acts of “being good”) and lays them on Christ.  God then takes Christ’s righteousness and attributes that to those who put their faith in Christ.  That is the ONLY scale God uses.   We can’t do enough “tainted good acts and deeds” to outweigh our sin because our “good acts and deeds” are tainted with evil.   Job is trying to justify himself to his friends.  In his friends eyes, this thought process might be acceptable.   But, in God’s eyes (of Whom Job is actually appealing), this argument is failing.  God does not care what we weigh.   God does not care about the weight of our supposed good acts and deeds.   He only cares about what we do with His Son.   Christ is the only thing that can be placed on the opposite scale of our bad deeds in order to make it not just balanced, but completely weigh out in God’s grace and favor.  When the King of Babylon, Belshazzar, was in the midst of an arrogant celebration God intervened by writing a message with His finger to him on the wall of the room of the giant celebration.  Daniel was summoned to interpret the message.  Here is what he told the king:

Daniel 5:24-28 (ESV)

24 “Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. 25 And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. 26 This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; 27 TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; 28 PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

All will, at one time or another, be “weighed in the balance and found wanting.”   Only Christ balances the scale.