What It Means
Môkîaḥ is a participle of the verb yākaḥ, which means “to set right,” “to decide a case,” or “to reprove.” The môkîaḥ is the one who hears both sides and settles the matter: an arbiter, an umpire, a judge between parties.
When Laban accuses Jacob of theft, Jacob tells him to lay out the evidence before their relatives “that they may decide between the two of us,” using this verb (Genesis 31:37). Isaiah says the Lord will settle disputes for many peoples (Isaiah 2:4). The same verb can also mean to rebuke or correct, since deciding a case means telling someone they are wrong.
Where You Meet It
Job wants to take God to court and realizes he cannot. God is not a man like him whom he could answer, and there is no one to stand between them:
Nor is there an arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both. (Job 9:33)
Laying a hand on both parties is the picture of an arbiter with standing on each side, someone both parties must respect. Job’s problem is not that his case is weak. It is that there is no one great enough to put a hand on God and near enough to put a hand on Job.
The root runs through the whole book. Job wants to argue his case with God (13:3) and to defend his ways to God’s face (13:15). Later he longs for someone who “contends with God on behalf of man as a man pleads for his friend” (16:21). Elihu complains that none of the three friends refuted Job (32:12). And when God finally speaks, he turns the word around, asking whether the one who contends with the Almighty will correct him (40:2).
A textual note. The traditional Hebrew text of 9:33 reads “there is no arbiter.” The ancient Greek translation and some other witnesses read it as a wish: “Would that there were an arbiter.” In Hebrew the two readings differ by a single letter. Either way, Job’s longing is the same.
What Confessional Lutherans Hear
The ancient Greek translation of 9:33 uses the word mesitēs, “mediator.” That is the word Paul uses when he writes that there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human (1 Timothy 2:5). Hebrews uses it for Christ as mediator of the new covenant (Hebrews 8:6; 9:15; 12:24). See μεσίτης.
What Job lacked is exactly what the incarnation supplies. Job’s complaint was that God “is not a man like me” (9:32). In Christ, he is. The Son can lay a hand on God because he is God, and a hand on us because he is a man. He is not a third party standing between two others. He is God and man in one person, which is why the Formula of Concord insists so firmly on the personal union of Christ’s two natures (Solid Declaration VIII). A mediator who was only God could not lay a hand on us. A mediator who was only a man could not lay a hand on God.
So What
Christian prayer ends “through Jesus Christ our Lord” for a reason. It is not a formula. It is the hand on both. When God seems too great to approach and too far to answer, you are not left where Job was in chapter 9, wishing someone could stand between you. Someone does, and he has your flesh and blood.