Job 31:15 — the ancient argument about employer and worker
15Is not he who created me in the womb, also he who labored to make him? And did not one and the same form me in the womb?
A rhetorical question working as a legal argument. Job does not say he was fond of his servants: he says their origin and his are the same, and that their complaint therefore had to be heard.
Short answer
Job 31:15 is a rhetorical question inside Job’s closing defence: did the one who made me in the womb not also make the person who works for me? The argument rests on shared origin, and it appears in a legal setting — Job is stating that he did not dismiss his servants’ case.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
Chapter 31 is Job’s oath of innocence, sworn item by item against the veiled accusations of his friends.
At this point he deals with how he treated the men and women who worked for him, and notes that he listened to their complaints instead of silencing them.
The argument is not about kindness, it is about origin. The question points to a fact prior to any contract: both people were formed the same way and by the same one. That does not erase the difference in position, but it makes it secondary.
It is one of the oldest texts to ground equality between the one who commands and the one who serves, and it does so without sentiment. The treatment owed appears as justice rather than generosity — a heavier demand, because justice can be claimed.
The question crosses the centuries easily. Whoever cleans the building where you work, whoever delivers your food, whoever looks after your house: do you know their name? Do you know whether their complaint reaches anyone? The verse is not about a gentle tone, it is about giving a grievance a hearing.
Where this verse appears
Chapter 31 is Job’s oath of innocence, sworn item by item against the veiled accusations of his friends.
At this point he deals with how he treated the men and women who worked for him, and notes that he listened to their complaints instead of silencing them.
What it says
The argument is not about kindness, it is about origin. The question points to a fact prior to any contract: both people were formed the same way and by the same one. That does not erase the difference in position, but it makes it secondary.
It is one of the oldest texts to ground equality between the one who commands and the one who serves, and it does so without sentiment. The treatment owed appears as justice rather than generosity — a heavier demand, because justice can be claimed.
What to do with it today
The question crosses the centuries easily. Whoever cleans the building where you work, whoever delivers your food, whoever looks after your house: do you know their name? Do you know whether their complaint reaches anyone? The verse is not about a gentle tone, it is about giving a grievance a hearing.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, help me remember the people who work for me. Let me hear what they have to say, and treat as justice what I am used to calling a favour. Amen.