Job 17:3

3 Lay down [suwm] now, put me in a surety [`arab] with thee; who is he that will strike [taqa`] hands [yad] with me? KJV-Interlinear

3 'Lay down, now, a pledge for me with Thyself; Who is there that will be my guarantor? NASB

Jobs friends have become a representation of the world, a world without God, without resources, without solutions, without a guarantee of any kind for ones future.

They offer no hope, no certain hope, they offer no reward, no certain reward, they offer no alternative.

Job is a representation of humanity lost in a world without God. He has no hope, no cure, no future unless someone comes along, someone greater than the world, and provides a hope, a cure, and a future.

Job speaks again to God, and he distinguishes two separate persons in the deity.

To the Father, he requests his petition. To the Son, he finds the mechanism of his petition. Only God can stand before God and conclude a matter. Man cannot make such a presentation. Only man can stand with man and offer mans petitions in his behalf.

Therefore, the one to whom Job petitions through as his advocate, and now as his surety, must be both man and God. One equal with man in order to deal with mans condition, and one equal with God in order to receive a hearing in behalf of man.

The surety requested by Job is in the form of a deity, offering guarantees in Jobs behalf, to another deity.

A surety is one who sets himself up as a guarantor of another's debt. If you go to a store with your child, where the child is buying something on credit, the store will require you, the parent, to sign a guarantee in behalf of the child. If the child is unable to pay the debt, then the store looks to you for payment.

In like manner, Jesus Christ, in eternity past stood up before God, as it were, and offered His signature as a guarantee for the payment of our sins. Man cannot pay his debt, and when the debt was called due, Christ went to the Cross, at the appropriate time in human history, to pay off our debt.

Job makes his statement, in confidence, that there is none other than God, who will be his surety. His friends offer nothing but criticism. That is the very best that the world can do. No one beyond his friends in this world can offer anything better. God and God alone is able to take up the guarantee which Adam was promised in the Garden, perhaps eighteen or twenty centuries prior.

Man cannot appoint the surety, man cannot offer any guarantee of any kind in this world, man cannot offer any contract better than that offered by God. The first covenant recorded by Moses many years later will become a testament to man's flaws and inabilities. The new covenant of Christ will present the better contract, one in which Christ fulfilled and one by which we are to live our spiritual lives.

Now is the time to post a prayer.