believe” or “I am convinced” here as it does in earlier texts (9:2, 28; 10:13; 13:18). In the face of persecution by his friends and his God (v. 22) Job rises to meet his desperate plight with a deep conviction: my Redeemer lives. Job’s choice of the term redeemer (גֹּאֵל, gōʾēl)22 provides us our first clue to what it is that he hopes. In ancient Israelite society the gōʾēl was a near kinsman of some victimized member of the clan who intervened to see that justice was done. His intervention
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