Job 6--Job Replies: My Complaint Is Just

Job Replies: My Complaint Is Just
6 Then Job answered and said:

2 “Oh that my vexation were weighed,
    and all my calamity laid in the balances!
3 For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea;
    therefore my words have been rash.
4 For the arrows of the Almighty are in me;
    my spirit drinks their poison;
    the terrors of God are arrayed against me.
5 Does the wild donkey bray when he has grass,
    or the ox low over his fodder?
6 Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt,
    or is there any taste in the juice of the mallow?
7 My appetite refuses to touch them;
    they are as food that is loathsome to me.

8 “Oh that I might have my request,
    and that God would fulfill my hope,
9 that it would please God to crush me,
    that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!
10 This would be my comfort;
    I would even exult in pain unsparing,
    for I have not denied the words of the Holy One.
11 What is my strength, that I should wait?
    And what is my end, that I should be patient?
12 Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze?
13 Have I any help in me,
    when resource is driven from me?

14 “He who withholds kindness from a friend
    forsakes the fear of the Almighty.
15 My brothers are treacherous as a torrent-bed,
    as torrential streams that pass away,
16 which are dark with ice,
    and where the snow hides itself.
17 When they melt, they disappear;
    when it is hot, they vanish from their place.
18 The caravans turn aside from their course;
    they go up into the waste and perish.
19 The caravans of Tema look,
    the travelers of Sheba hope.
20 They are ashamed because they were confident;
    they come there and are disappointed.
21 For you have now become nothing;
    you see my calamity and are afraid.
22 Have I said, ‘Make me a gift’?
    Or, ‘From your wealth offer a bribe for me’?
23 Or, ‘Deliver me from the adversary's hand’?
    Or, ‘Redeem me from the hand of the ruthless’?

24 “Teach me, and I will be silent;
    make me understand how I have gone astray.
25 How forceful are upright words!
    But what does reproof from you reprove?
26 Do you think that you can reprove words,
    when the speech of a despairing man is wind?
27 You would even cast lots over the fatherless,
    and bargain over your friend.

​28 “But now, be pleased to look at me,
    for I will not lie to your face.
29 Please turn; let no injustice be done.
    Turn now; my vindication is at stake.
30 Is there any injustice on my tongue?
    Cannot my palate discern the cause of calamity?

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This is Job's initial reply to Eliphaz's opening argument.  Job will then continue onto a different thought in chapter 7 which I'll cover in the next blog.

We see some interesting cries here for someone to listen to Job's case and hear him out (for he thinks that his human "friends" are not doing that)--essentially he wants someone that knows all the facts to listen that will believe him and advocate for him.  That is none other than Christ Jesus the Lord.

He says that he feels the affliction that only God can bring and that life has become not just bitter, but tasteless--if you've ever experienced real clinical depression as I have, you know what Job is getting at here.  There is a point where you just feel numb and wish that you could feel something--its that point that many reach before they start inflicting harm on themselves just to feel some kind of pain to know that they are still alive or before they start contemplating their own death.  Job is in a very bad place right now.  The good thing is that he's among friends who are not going to let him kill himself or do harm to himself.  The bad thing is that the words of these friends are not helpful and are not helping the healing process and might actually be making things words.  Job will tell them all later in the book that he wishes they all would have remained silent and just sat there with him, because that's what he needed and they were fine until they opened their mouths--though Job seems to forget that he was the first one to speak and they were responding to things he said.  Even so, not everything that comes out of hurting man's mouth is something that you need to respond to--sometimes you acknowledge the pain without validating what the person is saying, especially when you don't know all the facts, or even when you think you know all the facts, because, like in this story, you may think you know more than you do.

Job cries out to God to kill him, to "crush" him--again, the same words that will be used to describe what happened to Jesus, "Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." (Isiah 53:10).

Then Job turns to his so-called friends and says that they withhold kindness and are treacherous and cold like ice and when the ice melts away, there is nothing left.  That's pretty brutal.  Then Job tells his friends that he asked none of them to provide a gift for him or pay him a bribe (though they were all wealthy) nor did he ask any of them to be his redeemer (to buy his property back that was stolen) nor did he ask them to be his deliverer (to stop the attacks).  No, the only one Job called on to be any of these things was God,  Job will make clear later in the book that He knows that his Redeemer and Deliver will have to be God alone.

Then Job mocks their worldly wisdom that is of no value, but says that he will sit quietly and listen to their instruction (he will not as he responds each and every time--there is only one he will get silent for and listen to eventually, and that is God).  They are engaged in some petty behavior seeming to even take some bets--maybe on who will get through to Job, or maybe on what will happen next to him, who knows--but Job asks them to stop and listen to him and consider his integrity and to know that he would not lie to them, especially not to their face.  He seeks vindication and for others to cry out to God with him on his behalf because it is injustice and not justice that is being done according to Job, and God is the only one that can stop this and fix the situation--there is nothing that these mere words of these men can do to fix the situation because all they seek to do is call Job to repent of a sin he did not commit.

We also need to be careful when helping someone through a dark time in their life that we don't assume that there is a causal nature between some sin in their life and the effects of sin being in the world.  All of the bad things we see in the world are a result of sin entering the world through Adam, but not every bad thing we experience in our lives can be directly tied to a particular sin in our lives.  Even if we lived a life as perfect as Jesus did and were sinless, bad things would still happen to us, just like they happened to Him (and we can by no means live a sinless life).  Injustice will happen in this world as "good" people will have "bad" things happen to them and everything will have to get straightened out when God the Just Judge pays back people according to what we see in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31).

Job simply wants someone to listen to him and to have compassion on him and to believe him.  If we've ever been there in our lives, we know how this feels and how betrayed we feel when no one, not even our friends, will believe us or side with us.  It is a dangerous proposition to take sides against God, but all Job needs is for at least one of these friends to say "I believe you."  Yet, he will not find that voice from any of his friends here on earth--in fact, he is going to find quite the opposite as they will go from making veiled references to something that Job might have done to anger God to calling Job a liar and assuming things about him that have no basis in reality.  We'll come back to this next time as we see Job continue to try to argue his case before his friends and God as Job dives deeper into his depression and talks about how he is hopeless--another feeling that many of us can emaphize with.