reflections on job: part 3 {asking questions & making a case}

Why is life given to a man

whose way is hidden,

whom God has hedged in?

For sighing comes to me instead of food;

my groans pour out like water.

What I feared has come upon me;

what I dreaded has happened to me.

I have no peace, no quietness;

I have no rest, but only turmoil.

Job 3:23-26

This is at the end of Job's first speech since the onslaught of his pain and loss. His friends have come to be with him and seeing how much he is suffering, sit with him on the ground in silence for seven days (2:13). Just sitting. Just being present with him. Seven whole days and nights (and we all know that when you're in the thick of it, the nights are the hardest).

These first words out of his mouth are heavy with sadness: he laments the day he was born, wondering why he did not perish at birth (3:11), or why he is given life when his days are so bitter (3:20-21). There is no rest, nor is there any escape for him in his waking or living hours; death seems to be the only way out.

His friends, being the good Jewish boys they are, seek to explain to Job his pain. A very simplistic way of summarizing their theology is that if you're good and obedient, God blesses you. If you offend God, he curses you. They tell Job that God is disciplining him and that he should evaluate himself closely and confess his sin to God, do his best to make amends and live a righteous life. Job maintains before his friends that he has not offended God, that he has not exacted any injustice. In fact, Job desires to "speak to the Almighty / and to argue my case with God" (13:3).

From chapters 3 through 31, Job and his friends go round and round with arguments and answers to arguments. Job maintains his integrity and his friends try to convince him that his suffering is God's chastisement for him. When Elihu shows up in chapter 32, he tries to put both Job and his friends in their places: his friends are unable to answer Job's arguments or prove him wrong. To Job, he says that God does no wrong or evil toward any man (34:10), but "those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; / he speaks to them in their affliction" (36:15).

If I were Job, I'd be asking: How? How is he delivering me in this suffering? From what is He delivering me? How is He speaking? God has not said a thing.

I'm struck by the fact that in this span of more than thirty chapters (and who knows how many days and nights), God is alarmingly silent. While the pain continues and while his friends argue and while Job wonders and asks and maintains his integrity, God is quiet. The suffering continues, and Job wants to make his case before God, who does not answer him. At least not yet.

This song is one that has stayed with me since I first heard it about ten years ago. There is some comfort in knowing that Christ did not spare himself from any aspect of our human lives, including suffering; in His last moments He knew what it was to feel like God had disappeared, extricated Himself from the scene completely. But even in light of this, the questions continue and we wonder why, and when it will stop. Job asked, and I think no matter what kind of suffering we face, his questions are representative of those we ask when we are hedged in, when the pain just won't stop.

Please, God. Please. Answer me.

This song has no answers. But I love that in it, the questions I'm sometimes too afraid to ask are said out loud. There's a certain not-aloneness in that, and an inherent permission to feel the same.

NOTE: For some reason, the music doesn't want to embed in the post. I've put the song over on the sidebar.


Rich Mullins
"Hard to Get"