Hedges of Protection

By Manny Vazquez, M.S., LMFT, Christian Counselor and Bible Study Leader


Friday, September 18, 2026


My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,


This past week, during one of my counseling sessions with a client, the topic of our Precious LORD guarding our lives and our hearts from the wiles of the enemy came up. I was reminded of the agricultural term “hedge of protection,” which is found in Scripture, and I provided for my client a brief overview about what this allegorical term means for us today.


Okay, Friends, fasten your seatbelts for a quick trip throughout the Scriptures, as we examine some Bible verses where God’s “hedge of protection” is described.


Our first stop is in Job 1:8-12, where God and the devil are having a conversation about Job, who is upright and blameless:


“Then the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.’


Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven’t You placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out Your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse You to Your face.’


‘Very well,’ the LORD told Satan, ‘everything he owns is in your power. However, you must not lay a hand on Job himself.’ So Satan left the LORD’S presence.” (from the Holman Christian Standard Bible [HCSB] version of the Holy Scriptures)


Here we see that our LORD had been protecting Job all along. So, it stands to reason that God protects all of us, too. It also stands to reason that when we face adversity, it is not God who is causing it, but we must understand that He does allow it, and I would assert that it is always for a specific reason that He is allowing it, although we don’t always see that reason right away.


Now, let’s look at Psalm 121:


“I lift my eyes toward the mountains.


Where will my help come from?


My help comes from the LORD,


the Maker of heaven and earth.


He will not allow your foot to slip;


your Protector will not slumber.


Indeed, the Protector of Israel


does not slumber or sleep.


The LORD protects you;


the LORD is a shelter right by your side.


The sun will not strike you by day


or the moon by night.


The LORD will protect you from all harm;


He will protect your life.


The LORD will protect your coming and going


both now and forever.” (from the HCSB version of the Holy Bible)


While the word “hedge” does not appear in Psalm 121, it talks about our LORD being a “help,” a “Protector,” “a shelter,” and “right by your side.” (Think our Precious Holy Spirit.) So, essentially, this Psalm talks about the same thing that the Scriptures said about Job, that God protects us, watching over us, to make sure no harm comes to us. So, again, I say that if harm is befalling you, it must be for a reason, like it was for Job. Consider that if you are suffering, like Job and Christ, it is for the glory of God. And, I always think, as a woman whose body had been ravaged by cancer once told me in a hospital, who am I to question my LORD about my suffering when our Savior Jesus suffered the most horrible torture for us on the Cross?


Let’s consider Isaiah 43:1-4:


“Now this is what the LORD says —


the One who created you, Jacob,


and the One who formed you, Israel —


‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;


I have called you by your name; you are Mine.


I will be with you


when you pass through the waters,


and when you pass through the rivers,


they will not overwhelm you.


You will not be scorched


when you walk through the fire,


and the flame will not burn you.


For I Yahweh your God,


the Holy One of Israel, and your Savior,


give Egypt as a ransom for you,


Cush and Seba in your place.


Because you are precious in My sight


and honored, and I love you,


I will give people in exchange for you


and nations instead of your life.’” (from the HCSB version of the Word of God)


I love how the Word of God says the same thing in many different ways. In this passage from Isaiah, our Blessed Holy Spirit describes how our LORD protects us in several different ways. He talks about redeeming us, calling us by our name, that we are His, that he will be with us when we pass through waters (like the Israelites when they went through the Red Sea), that we will not be burned in the fire, that he gave Egypt and Cush and Seba as a ransom for us, and ultimately, our LORD says we are precious in His sight, and He loves us, so much so that he will gladly give people and nations instead of our lives. Do you understand just how much our LORD loves us; that He is willing to do all of these things to protect us and take care of us?


It is like the many different ways our LORD Jesus healed. I’m getting a little off topic here, but did you ever stop to consider why our LORD Jesus healed, say blindness, in multiple ways (sometimes, he used only his spit; sometimes, he made mud with his spit; sometimes, he merely touched the eyes, etc.). The answer, my Friends, is that Jesus wanted us to know that He uses many different ways to heal us. He can use a prayer, a touch, a medicine, etc., and if we limit God, we are limiting a Being who has unlimited power. Think about this, and think about a situation that feels hopeless; and know that our Blessed LORD knows all about it, and He is working to fix it in your favor, precisely because you are a child of God.


So, in the initial passage from Job, our enemy pointed out to our Father that He had placed a “hedge” of protection around Job. What exactly does this mean, and how can a hedge, which is basically a large bush, protect Job?


We have to remember that back then, people lived in an agrarian society. That means that almost everyone lived on a farm. They had to, for there were no supermarkets, no 7-Elevens, and definitely no fast food places where you could buy food. No, if you were going to eat, you grew your own vegetables, and you had livestock, chickens and other small to large animals. Well, at that time, there were a lot of wild animals that lived in the areas where people settled to have their farms, and farmers would surround their farms with large hedges to protect their farms.


I once heard a Christian comedian make fun of the fact that hedges are not very good defensive systems. I mean, if some criminal really wanted to rob your house, a hedge wouldn’t be much help; they would be able to easily get through it. But that’s not what a hedge was meant to do back then. Actually, hedges were very good at stopping most animals, even larger ones. A bear or a lion, for example, would probably turn away rather than attempt to get through a bothersome hedge. And smaller animals would definitely be turned away because a good hedge would be hard to get through, and although they could burrow their way through, why bother when there were probably easier ways to get a meal?


So, a hedge was good protection for a farmer’s crops and animals. Almost everyone had a hedge around their farm back then, or they had other means to protect their property. And remember, if animals, large or small, got onto your property, and they ate some or all of your bounty, chances are you would not make it through the winter. So, this was serious; you either protected your farm, or you found another way to sustain your family during times when the harvest was not plentiful.


And this is precisely what the devil meant, symbolically, that God was doing for Job. Our LORD was protecting Job because He loved him. Now, it is absolutely clear that Job was a righteous man. God said so. But even Job had sin in his life. Who doesn’t, right? At the beginning of the Book of Job, the author described him as an upright man who loved his children, so much so that he would offer sacrifices for them, in case they had sinned. His children were somewhat wild, so it was certainly possible that they had sinned in their partying and carrying on.


But the Bible says that Job would sacrifice animals to God IN CASE his children had sinned. What??? Let’s back up a little. So, it stands to reason that Job may have been sacrificing animals, even when his children did not sin. In other words, Job was paying for sins that weren’t even committed by his children. I’m sorry, but that is pride. And the very fact that Job was paying for the sins of his children was an incorrect practice also. The Bible teaches that we are responsible for our own sins. When the sacrificial system was instituted, people had to bring their own, correct sacrifices, to the altar of God.


Remember the story of Cain and Abel, the first children of Adam and Eve? Abel offered up animals to the LORD as sacrifices, and the LORD accepted his sacrifices, as they were acceptable because Abel had killed living things to pay for his sins. Now Cain, on the other hand, would sacrifice the best of his produce, which was not acceptable to the LORD because vegetables are not alive and cannot take the place of someone on the altar of sacrifice. Cain became upset, and even though he knew the right way to sacrifice, he killed his brother Abel in anger and jealousy, the first murder in recorded history. And what was the murder over? Cain knew his way was wrong, but as is often the case, those who are doing wrong will double down on their sin, rather than repent and seek the way of Truth.


Getting back to Job, yes, he had pride in his life. I imagine as a very wealthy man, his riches brought him great joy, and he was very proud of the family God had given him. Yet, even with sin in his life (and we all have sin in our lives), our LORD called Job righteous. In fact, Job was so righteous that God knew that even if everything was taken away from him, Job would remain faithful to God. The Scriptures record that the enemy took everything from poor Job, his family, his riches, even his health, and Job never cursed God. His wife and his friends regaled him with insults and questions about his integrity (because we all know that when things go wrong in our lives, it is because we have sinned, right? Wrong!).


Job never curses God, but he does question why God has allowed this to happen to him, and in a beautiful exchange, our LORD questions Job, asking him things like, “Where were you when I created everything?” In other words, Job, who are you to question God?


And, as hard as that is for us to understand, we must always ask ourselves, who are we to ever question God? Don’t get me wrong, God is not angered when we ask Him why we have cancer, or why our child died, or why we lost that great job, or why anything bad happens to us at all. In fact, I would say that our Blessed LORD expects us to ask Him those hard questions. But the answer to all those questions from God is that He is enough to sustain us, and that He will protect us, if not in our current circumstances, then enough to get us to Heaven. And isn’t that what ultimately matters? At one point, Jesus asks, what does it profit a man to gain the world if in the end, he loses his soul? (Matthew 16:26 and Mark 8:36)


We have to realize that nothing in this world ultimately matters. The only thing that matters is having faith in Jesus and living that faith in a way that gains us entrance into Heaven, where everything does matter. If you are struggling with something, if someone has hurt you, if something has gone terribly wrong, remember the example of Job, that he quite literally lost everything, but he never lost his soul. He never lost his faith, and he entered Heaven poorer (because even though God restored everything to him in the end, the trauma of losing everything to begin with must have scarred him for life), but the point is this, Job entered his eternal rest in Heaven with our LORD. And, you will, too, if you trust God with all of your heart, all of your mind, and all of your soul. Amen and Amen and Amen.