Job suffered in a peculiarly excruciating and confusing way, and his story addresses that kind of experience. They rose like wispy fragments. Topics. As Thomas Merton writes, “if we love God for something less than himself, we cherish a desire that can fail us. 6:5–7). To motivate students to consider trials a joy, realizing it is maturing them in their faith. My … This ancient book of poetry lifted another burden from my sagging shoulders. . �] �"ӾȻ�y���(Ƥ��%{>�w~��_��V���ٽ1�i��I�?��UسD��[����x.�kv#C%.��D�$K�!s��Y(��V��M�i�W� I needed to find meaning. When walking with a friend through traumatic suffering, it may be appropriate to find a time to ask if there is some sin which God is bringing to the surface, or some growth edge which this pain is exposing. My sense is that current North American evangelical culture basically has two explanations for suffering: sin on our part or God’s work of growing us as Christians. Year follows year and grinds your spirit into smithereens. More substantially, Ash connects Job’s innocent suffering under God’s wrath with Christ’s suffering under the same (as I do above), and also notes the NT theme of the believer’s participation in Christ’s suffering (e.g., Mark 10:38–39). Salvation: Finding Treatments to Restore Injured Neurons, Learnings from Brain Injury: Anger and Perception. How does the book of Job help disciples of Jesus Christ remain faithful to God as they suffer—or walk alongside others who suffer—in ways that are extreme and inexplicable? [10] Bruce Waltke with Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Thematic, and Canonical Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 936. life with faith, maintain an unbroken relationship with a loving God, and still come to a satisfactory resolution for personal and collective injustice and undeserved suffering. 1–2: “Let me know why you contend against me!” (10:2). Perhaps that is the monster’s ultimate defeat, that our Savior is not only unintimidated by his opponent, but positively cheerful as he looks forward to the day when he pierces the fleeing serpent (26:13). Job 1–20, WBC 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989), 24. The person who most clearly sees everything which is wrong with creation is the person most enthusiastic about it. On the other hand, if God allows a Christian to suffer some great and painful loss, and if the Christian’s response is, “How dare you, Lord? One common answer is that these speeches express the limitless power and wisdom of God.13 Although this is not totally wrong, it does not quite explain Job’s change from protest to praise, because Job never denied that YHWH was powerful or (in a certain sense) wise. My pastor heard my cry and blessed me with his time. Even while sitting in the ash pit, Job trusts God enough to express extraordinary confidence in him, and for no ulterior motive.”9, So also saints in the new covenant, when they find themselves in deep pain that seems to have no point, will find themselves saying with Job, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust him” (13:15). [4] Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island, reprint ed. Creation is a good place in which God delights, not an amoral jungle ruled by an arbitrary tyrant, as Job had imagined. I recommend his work highly to any reader interested in exploring that subject further, even if I had some lingering questions about his approach. So when Job worships this God, it proves how different his relationship with God is from every other relationship he has. Within the context of the entire canon of Scripture, I do identify this figure with Satan in the NT (cf. For more options and fuller bibliography, see Leo Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job, JSOTSup 29 (Sheffield: Almond, 1991), 197–98. How is it that dozens of questions about different parts of creation and the animals in it (38:4–39:30) and long descriptions of what appear to be a hippopotamus (40:15–24) and a crocodile (41:1–34) elicit such awed worship in Job? The book of Job is not relevant in every circumstance, but Job-like experiences are all too common. YHWH’s description of his world and his manner of ruling it in chs. He is entirely reconciled to a world in which children sometimes die, and the best kind of lives are sometimes the most miserable. This essay certainly will not resolve or even address many of the problems of the book. . Job is the man who endured suffering without complaint. Similarly, Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight the “Bull of Heaven” in the sixth tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic. 1–2 to give Job some virtue or moral quality that he is lacking. Eric Ortlund is a tutor in Hebrew and Old Testament at Oak Hill College, London, England. Another Riddle without a Resolution? Sometimes God will appear to act like an enemy (13:24), like someone who has betrayed us. August 2005, ed. In those days, women were property, to be treated as less than men. This is probably why God does not simply rebuke the Accuser in 1:12, as he does in Zech 3:2. Although the blessings listed are familial and financial, if Job received some spiritual blessing or virtue from his ordeal, it would be possible for the Accuser to repeat his accusation, this time with reference to a different part of Job’s life. (San Diego: Harvest, 1985), 18. The usual theory is that the scribes “euphemized” the text to avoid having anyone say “curse God,” but this phrase occurs elsewhere in the OT (Exod 22:27, Isa 8:21). If Job was blameless and upright in his relationship with God (1:1), Jesus was even more so. 4 0 obj Reflections on Suffering and Evil, 2nd ed. Daughters, wives, mothers had no say in the things of men. He wished God would answer him. His Words also bring us life. Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today. . Attention to this aspect of the book of Job deepens and nuances how we interpret suffering and prevents us from well-intentioned torture of our friends who suffer, either by implicitly blaming them for their pain or by reducing their tragedy to moral lessons. . And so this lesson, too, is not the significant one. Is our piety just for show? my pastor asked me, horrified. As I read his blunt assessment of his friends, knowing from the first chapters that Job held zero responsibility for his ailments — just as I as a passenger in a car had no hand in my concussion — I felt solidarity. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 124. This may sound strange, since wisdom is usually associated with moral uprightness in the OT (Prov 1:2–3). Job is using the word “wisdom” in chs. [17] Christopher Ash, Job: The Wisdom of the Cross, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 424. Without being idealistic or unrealistic, YHWH goes so far as to praise his opponent (41:12–34). As I read Job 1–2, I must ask myself: if my family were suddenly killed in a car accident, would I praise God any less as I grieved and mourned that very real loss? ), This perfect and upright man had seven sons and three daughters (Job 1:2). The poetry is complex, but the description of the rising sun chasing the wicked away (v. 13) and breaking their arm (a symbol for strength, v. 15) implies that there is a moral edge to the architecture of creation. or hast thou been exercised with any affliction without laboring for the appointed end of it?”6. The animals described here are animals, but they stand for something more, similar to the serpent of Genesis 3:1 or the unclean animals inhabiting the waste places of divine judgment in Isaiah 13:20–22 and 34:14–15. By analogy, if a human friend allowed the death of one of my children or the destruction of my property, and did not apologize or explain himself to me, I would “curse” that former friend in that I would not continue in my relationship with him—and I would be justified in so doing. 40–41 deepens his engagement with Job’s protest. 8, 10)—and he is far gentler and kinder even with chaos than Job has imagined. While it may be an example of “antiphrasm” (a word being used in the opposite sense of its normal meaning [C. L. Seow, Job 1–21, 271]), Tod Linafelt notes that each verse can be translated as “bless” (“The Undecidability of ברך in the Prologue to Job and Beyond,” BibInt 4 [1996]: 154–72). But Job found himself in a kind of agony that was beyond all proportion, and one which he was at a loss to explain. in the midst of contrary experiences.”10 And like Job, they too will be vindicated for it (42:7–10). But if Behemoth and Leviathan symbolize supernatural chaos which resists God, then the resolution to Job’s protest clicks into place: YHWH is allowing that there is a great evil at loose in his creation, but he promises one day to defeat it (40:19, 41:8). The book of Job gives us a glimpse behind the veil that separates earthly life from the heavenly. Although he was not discussing the book of Job, C. S. Lewis expressed this issue well as he journeyed through the collapse of his faith: If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. With regard to the former, David writes that his wounds “stink and fester” because of his own foolishness (Ps 38:5). D. A. Carson puts this well when he writes that even Job’s “demand that God present himself before Job and give an answer is the cry of a believer seeking to find out what on earth God is doing. Take those away, the Accuser says, and Job will openly curse God (v. 11).2 A curse does not, of course, refer to obscene speech in the OT but is the act of abominating someone or something, regarding it as utterly ugly, worthless, and execrable. The wisdom that is found in the book of Job is not communicated in the form of proverb. 40:7), he sees YHWH as God and Lord in a whole new way. The word “torture” may seem extreme, but that is how Job experienced the “help” of his “friends” (19:22). 1–2 are similar enough to the curses of Deut 28 or various proverbs (e.g., 10:27–31) that they would have looked like divine judgment for sin. As we do, the God who inspired this text will help us, like Job, to bless his name whether he gives or takes (1:21) and gain a new vision of the Lord (42:5). [11] In Phil 1:19, the echo of Job 13:16 suggests that Paul seems to be talking about perseverance in faith in the midst of suffering, not only his release from prison (see further Moisés Silva, “Philippians,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. Some Bible scholars debate whether he was an actual person or legend, but Job is mentioned as a historical figure by the prophet Ezekial (Ezekial 14:14, 20) and in the book of James (). Since Job is deeply suspicious of YHWH’s righteousness at this stage of his story, the moral and ethical dimensions of the term do not seem to be in play.). In so doing, this difficult and challenging book speaks in clear and strengthening ways to Christians suffering and trying to remain faithful in their agony.19. After all, anyone who has (for instance) suffered the loss of a child and then been blamed for it, or been told God is trying to teach them something, knows how bitter that kind of “help” is (cf. Job puts paid to that monstrous dismissal of intense suffering. [3] Michael Fox aptly paraphrases the accusation that YHWH and Job are only “colluding in a game of bribery and payoffs” (“Job the Pious,” ZAW 117 [2005]: 360). It is significant that the terms of the test in 1:9–12 exclude any secondary blessing whatsoever outside of God himself. I think there is a sense in which Job cannot benefit in any way from his ordeal except with regard to a deeper experience of and intimacy with God.
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