Job 31:35
Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book. Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book.
The verse belongs to the debate between Job and his three friends over his afflictions, covering chapters 4 to 31 and made up of three circles of speeches by each, as Job's concluding answer to Bildad. It expresses Job's earnest desire for God to hear him, answer him, and manifest Himself while Job defends himself, convinced he has committed no open sins against God and confident his friends cannot identify moral stains in his character, maintaining his integrity and calling for judgment if he is guilty. It expresses Job's wish, when troubled by his friends' groundless accusations, that his adversary would put the charge or case against him in writing in a book so it would be tangible, examinable, and answerable in a clear and definite statement, since a written case would be easier to meet than spoken raillery.
Job's request for God to hear and answer him is granted in that God comes to Job and answers him, rather than Job going to God's throne. Job lived more than 500 years before the children of Israel left Egypt, and his words prove that in his day pens and writing were familiar things to the extent that books were written, so the tables of stone with the decalogue were not the first writing in alphabetical characters ever seen by man. The surrounding chapter presents Job as protesting his integrity and shows that true honesty requires more than merely paying all debts to fellow men and owing no one anything, requiring integrity toward God and not only freedom from liability to others. The surrounding chapter presents Job as one of the richest men of his day who remained holy because he did not trust in his riches nor rejoice because his wealth was great, but trusted in the living God, remembered that God gave him power to get wealth, and regarded his wealth only as a means of blessing the poor, the needy, the fatherless, and the widow.
The verse serves as a pointed call for an opponent to publish in writing the evidence against him, so that the charge can be examined and the opponent's own claims exposed to judgment.