This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the ESV Study Bible. Click here to learn more. You are most welcome to join along at any time.
Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Job 6-9
Before we consider today's reading, I think it is important to remember a few things from the previous day's reading:
- Job, according to God's own lips, is "a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil".
- With God's approval, Satan has just destroyed Job's worldly possessions. Satan destroyed Job's business, and killed his seven sons and three daughters. To top this all off, Satan then, with further approval from God, affects Job's health by covering him from head to toe with painful, oozing boils.
- When Job's friends first saw him, they didn't even recognize him. Job was completely broken financially, physically, and his wife is encouraging him to curse God.
This was such an awful scene that when his friends saw him they couldn't even speak. Job, and his friends, sat silent for seven days!
Get the scene? Horrible!
In fact, things were so horrible to Job that in chapter three he laments that he was even born.
After this most harsh blow begins to settle in, then Job must go to work to settle the question of questions: why has this happened to me?
Then Job's friends begin to put in their two cents. Eliphaz starts in at Job proclaiming that this must be happening because you have done wrong in the eyes of God:
“Remember: who that was innocent ever perished?Or where were the upright cut off?
8 As I have seen, those who plow iniquity
and sow trouble reap the same.
And then Job's friend Bildad chimes in trumpeting that Job must repent:
If you will seek Godand plead with the Almighty for mercy,
6 if you are pure and upright,
surely then he will rouse himself for you
and restore your rightful habitation.
The thing that you and I know, along with God and Job, is that he was a blameless and upright man. There may be some truth in what Eliphaz and Bildad are saying, but they don't really settle the issue for us here.
Furthermore, I think God intends that you and I, as 21st century readers, understand that these horrible things are not easily swept under the rug because of Job's sin, and unrepentant heart. There seems to be something perhaps bigger that God desires to teach us.
Job knows his own heart, Job knows his standing with God, and as he listens to his friends attack his character, Job lashes out at the true source of his woe. Job knows where this has come from, but not why. Look at his lament towards God. I almost felt like ducking as I read this:
“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
12 Am I the sea, or a sea monster,
that you set a guard over me?
13 When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me,
my couch will ease my complaint,’
14 then you scare me with dreams
and terrify me with visions,
15 so that I would choose strangling
and death rather than my bones.
16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever.
Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.
17 What is man, that you make so much of him,
and that you set your heart on him,
18 visit him every morning
and test him every moment?
19 How long will you not look away from me,
nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?
20 If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? [Wow! Job is upset!]
Why have you made me your mark?
Why have I become a burden to you?
21 Why do you not pardon my transgression
and take away my iniquity?
For now I shall lie in the earth;
you will seek me, but I shall not be.”
(Job 7:11-21)
So, for us the mystery continues. Why on earth would God allow Satan to bring this misery on Job? In our quest, we continue reading tomorrow.
What are your thoughts of this Book of Job so far?