My Redeemer Lives

Job wanted a chisel. Everything else had been taken: his flocks, his ten children, his health, and now, in chapter 19, the last thing a suffering man usually keeps, the people who love him. His brothers keep their distance, his guests have forgotten him, his servant won’t answer when he calls, and he’s repulsive to his own wife (Job 19:13-17). So he asks for something that can’t walk away. He wants his words cut into rock with an iron tool and filled with lead, so they’ll outlast every friend who stopped listening. Then, with no one left to hear him, he says the most confident sentence in the whole book: “For I know that my Redeemer lives.”

That’s usually the order it happens in. We find out what we actually believe about God on the day there’s nothing left to lean on but God. Everything we hold when life goes well (the reputation, the savings, the circle of people who’d vouch for us) can quietly stand in for him. Today’s Gospel makes the same point from the other direction: Jesus sends seventy-two disciples ahead of him with no purse, no bag, and no sandals, so the only thing they carry into each town is the peace of the one who sent them.

Today the Church keeps the memorial of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who entered a Carmelite convent at 15, never left its cloister, died at 24, and is the patron saint of missionaries. She took the Gospel’s instruction about the harvest more seriously than almost anyone. So here’s the question these readings put to you and me: when everything we lean on is gone, what will we still know?

The Readings

First Reading: Job 19:21-27

Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!

Gospel: Luke 10:1-12

After this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon him; but if not, it shall return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you; heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you; nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

Scriptural Analysis

Chapter 19 is Job’s answer to Bildad, and the Navarre commentators call it the speech that has “received most Christian commentary,” above all verses 25-27, which the tradition reads as a profession of faith in the resurrection of the dead. It’s also the most lyrical passage in the book and the point where Job’s appeals are the most intense.¹ Today’s reading opens right after his list of everyone who has abandoned him, with a plea to the three friends still sitting across from him: “Have pity on me, have pity on me.” Then the charge: “Why do you, like God, pursue me?” They’ve taken God’s side so thoroughly that they’ve started acting like the adversary Job believes God has become.

Job asks for a record that can’t turn on him: a book, then an inscription, then “an iron pen and lead” and “the rock for ever.” Marvin Pope, in the Anchor Bible, explains the odd pairing. A lead stylus wouldn’t dent the softest rock, so the old reading, going back to Rashi, is that iron cut the letters and lead filled them. Pope points to a real case: when George Cameron reexamined the inscription of Darius at Behistun in 1948-49, he found that the symbols spelling the king’s name had been inlaid with lead.² Job wanted to be carved into a cliff like a Persian king. He got something better. His words were written in a book after all, and the Church reads them aloud today.

Verse 25 is the center of the chapter: “For I know that my Redeemer lives.” The Hebrew is go’el (go-EL), the nearest kinsman, bound by law to defend a relative whose rights had been trampled. He bought back lost family land (Leviticus 25:25), redeemed a kinsman sold into slavery (Leviticus 25:47-49), and avenged a murdered relative’s blood (Numbers 35:19-21). Pope calls him “the defender of the widow and orphan, the champion of the oppressed,” and both commentaries note that Scripture gives God this title for bringing Israel out of Egypt and home from exile (Exodus 6:6; Jeremiah 50:34).³

Here’s the strange part: Job appeals to God against God. Navarre says he gives the title to the very one who has “ill-treated and humiliated him,” because “in spite of it being God who has so incomprehensibly inflicted suffering on him, God is still the living God, the only one who can change the situation.” Pope adds a thread from yesterday’s reading. Job has already wished for an umpire “who might lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:33), and the go’el may be that same figure, now named with a family word.⁴ The one Job needs is next of kin. And “at last he will stand upon the earth” is courtroom language: Pope notes that “stand” means to rise as a witness at a trial, and that “at last” can also be read as a title, “the Last,” as Isaiah calls God “the first and the last” (Isaiah 44:6). Navarre draws the conclusion. God’s judgment is the one that matters, and beside it every human verdict is dust, including the one Job’s friends have just handed down.⁵

Saint Jerome rendered go’el in the Vulgate as Redemptor (reh-DEMP-tor), and from then on, Navarre says, Christian tradition read Job’s Redeemer as the risen Messiah who lives forever. Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Only through Christ could mankind be redeemed from that sin, and this is what Job perceived with the eyes of faith.” Saint Gregory the Great turns it into a creed: “I believe with certainty that he lives beyond death; I freely confess that my Saviour, who died at the hands of evil men, lives.”⁶

Verse 26 is harder. Pope calls it “notoriously difficult”; the ancient versions all differ, and the Hebrew can be read “from my flesh” or “without my flesh.”⁷ Navarre grants the uncertainty and makes the more important point. Even if Job isn’t speaking explicitly of the resurrection at the end of time, “he clearly desires to enter into a very close relationship with God,” to see him with his own eyes, “and not another.” It is “a great canticle of hope in everlasting life, spoken from the depths of misery.”⁸ The Church’s faith rests on the one Job was reaching for: “just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ, and he will raise them up on the last day.”⁹

Now the Gospel. Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51), and he appoints a second, larger group. The RSVCE printed above says seventy; the Lectionary says seventy-two. Pablo Gadenz explains that the Greek manuscripts are divided, likely because the table of nations in Genesis 10 lists seventy in the Hebrew and seventy-two in the Greek. Either way, the number counts the nations. The Twelve pointed to the tribes of Israel, and this group “anticipates the mission to the Gentiles.”¹⁰

He sends them in pairs, ahead of him, into every place “where he himself was about to come.” Saint Gregory the Great, quoted in the Catena Aurea, reads both details. Two by two, because there are two commandments of love, and “he who has not love to another, ought not to undertake the office of preaching.” Ahead of him, because “the Lord follows His preachers”: the word goes first, and then the Lord enters the heart it has prepared. Before they take a step, they’re told to pray for more laborers, and Gregory didn’t soften that line for his own clergy: “the world is full of priests, but seldom is there found a labourer in God’s harvest.” So, he concluded, “the people must be induced to pray for their pastors.”¹¹ The Catechism cites this very verse when it teaches that Jesus “calls his disciples to bring into their prayer this concern for cooperating with the divine plan.”¹²

Then the hard sentence: “I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.” Luke Timothy Johnson notes that the verb is apostellō (ah-pos-TEL-loh), to send with a commission, and that here the comparison simply “points to the dangers they face, and the reason for traveling light.”¹³ Saint Ambrose saw a prophecy in it. “The good Shepherd has no fear of wolves for His flock,” and he sends lambs among them so that Isaiah’s word might come true: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together” (Isaiah 65:25).¹⁴ Saint Cyril of Alexandria puts the promise in Christ’s own mouth: “I will change wolves into sheep.”¹⁵

So they go with nothing: no purse, no bag, no sandals. Gadenz says they “are to rely on divine providence at work through those who offer them hospitality,” and the order to “salute no one on the road” echoes Elisha rushing Gehazi on an urgent errand (2 Kings 4:29).¹⁶ When they arrive, the first word is peace. Johnson explains that a “son of peace” simply means a person inclined to peace, and they can’t know in advance who that will be.¹⁷ Saint Augustine turned this into a rule: “Since we do not know who is a son of peace, it is our part to leave no one out, to set no one aside, but to desire that all to whom we preach this peace be saved.” And if the peace is refused, nothing is lost: “Our peace will return to us.”¹⁸ The rest follows. They eat what they’re given, because “the laborer deserves his wages” (1 Timothy 5:18); they heal the sick and announce the kingdom, word and deed together. Gadenz notes that the same announcement, “the kingdom of God has come near,” is salvation for those who receive it and judgment for those who refuse, and that Sodom was the proverbial place of wickedness and of hospitality perverted.¹⁹

Put the two readings side by side, and they answer each other. Job had a go’el he could not see, and no one on earth would take him in. In Luke, the Redeemer is walking the roads, sending people ahead of him with nothing but his peace, to knock on doors and find out who will open. Job wanted his words carved into rock so they would outlive him. Jesus entrusts his words to seventy-two people with no sandals. The Redeemer Job knew was living has come to stand upon the earth, and he’s sending his kin on ahead.

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is to determine what you truly know, and then to travel light enough to carry only it. Job reached verse 25 after he’d lost the argument, the friends and the house; what was left was one sentence he knew was true. The seventy-two were stripped down on purpose, so that the only thing they had to offer at a stranger’s door was Christ. Most of what we carry (the backup plan, the reputation to protect, the need for everyone in the room to approve of us) slowly takes the place of the one thing Job knew.

So start with Job’s sentence. Say it out loud today, especially if you’re somewhere on the ash heap yourself: “I know that my Redeemer lives.” The Catechism opens its teaching on prayer with Saint Thérèse’s own definition: “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”²⁰ Job 19:25 is that cry, spoken from inside the trial. It’s true whether or not you feel it today. He lives, and he’s your next of kin.

Then do what Jesus told the seventy-two to do before they took a single step. Pray to the Lord of the harvest. Gregory said the people must pray for their pastors, so do it by name: the priest who baptized you, your pastor, the deacon at your parish, a missionary you’ve never met. And pray for vocations from your own family, which is harder, because you might get what you ask for.

Saint Thérèse prayed that prayer for nine years without leaving her cloister. Franciscan Media records that she said she came to Carmel “to save souls and pray for priests,” and that shortly before she died she wrote, “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.” The Church made her a patron of missionaries and of priests.²¹ She’d worked out why a hidden nun belongs at the front of the mission. The Catechism quotes her discovery that the Church must have “a Heart BURNING WITH LOVE,” and that if this love ever stopped, “the Apostles would forget to preach the gospel.”²² She understood herself as the heart that sends out the seventy-two.

Finally, be a son or daughter of peace. When someone brings you the peace of Christ today (a spouse, a coworker, the person you’ve been avoiding), receive it. And when you carry it to someone else, keep Augustine’s rule and leave no one out. Sorting the worthy from the unworthy belongs to God. If they don’t receive it, your peace comes back to you, and you’ve lost nothing.

Your Redeemer lives. Pack light, pray for the laborers, and go ahead of him into whatever town he sends you today.

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Notes

1. ↑ The Navarre Bible, Old Testament, commentary on Job, by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre (Dublin: Four Courts Press; New York: Scepter Publishers, 2004), 78.
2. ↑ Marvin H. Pope, Job, 3rd ed., The Anchor Bible (Doubleday, 1973), 144.
3. ↑ Pope, Job, 146; Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 81.
4. ↑ Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 81; Pope, Job, 146.
5. ↑ Pope, Job, 146; Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 82.
6. ↑ Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 81, quoting Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Iob 19, 15, and Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob 3, 14, 54.
7. ↑ Pope, Job, 147.
8. ↑ Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 82.
9. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 989.
10. ↑ Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 199 and n. 16.
11. ↑ Saint Gregory the Great, Homily 17 on the Gospels, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 10:1-2.
12. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2611.
13. ↑ Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 167.
14. ↑ Saint Ambrose, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 10:3-4.
15. ↑ Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Homily 61, in Arthur A. Just Jr., ed., Luke, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 172.
16. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 200.
17. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 167.
18. ↑ Saint Augustine, Admonition and Grace 15.46, in Just, Luke, 172.
19. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 201-202.
20. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2558.
21. ↑ “Saint Thérèse of Lisieux,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed September 30, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.
22. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 826.

Books Cited

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• Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, The Navarre Bible: Wisdom Books (Four Courts Press / Scepter Publishers, 2004)
• Marvin H. Pope, Job, 3rd ed., The Anchor Bible 15 (Doubleday, 1973)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image, 2003)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, four-volume edition (Baronius Press)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Arthur A. Just Jr., ed., Luke, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III (InterVarsity Press, 2003)