Bible Commentaries
Job 19

Verse 28

Job 19:28

"But you should say, Why are we persecuting him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?" Job 19:28

It is at the root that disease begins, in almost every plant. If ever you see even a plant in a flower-pot unhealthy, depend upon it there is something wrong at the root. It is overwatered or underwatered, or from some other cause the root has become diseased—and the root growth is suspended or unhealthy. So it is in religion—if there is anything wrong with a man, it is almost sure to be something wrong at the root. "The root of the matter," Job said, "is found in me." Job could appeal unto God that the root of his religion was right.

If "the root" had been wrong, "the matter" would not have been right; but as long as the root was sound, like "the teberinth tree" of which the prophet speaks, though "it cast its leaves, the substance would still be in it," to put forth in due time boughs like a plant (Isa 6:13). If a man’s religion has no root, or if the root be injured by disease, it will be sure to discover itself in his profession. He cannot have a prosperous soul—prosperous inwardly and prosperous outwardly—unless the root be deep in the soil, and unless it be full of active fibers, drawing up secret nourishment from that river the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Then he shall be "like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they go right on producing delicious fruit." (Jer 17:8).