You people really know everything, don’t you?
    And when you die, wisdom will die with you!
Well, I know a few things myself—
    and you’re no better than I am.
    Who doesn’t know these things you’ve been saying?
Yet my friends laugh at me,
    for I call on God and expect an answer.
I am a just and blameless man,
    yet they laugh at me. (Job 12:2-4)

Uh-oh. Job’s losing it, people. Cue meltdown in 5-4-3-2-

As for you, you smear me with lies.
    As physicians, you are worthless quacks.
If only you could be silent!
    That’s the wisest thing you could do. (Job 13:4-5)

“Oh, SHUT UP, you idiots!” – Job, to his friends, when they tried to “comfort and console” him.

A lot of chapters 12-14 is dedicated to Job elegantly insulting his friends. May no smack down be crude; this is high literature. He waxes poetically about how even the animals are smart enough to know Job is innocent, about how true wisdom comes from God, presumably unlike theirs, and makes sly underhanded insinuations like –

He leads counselors away, stripped of good judgment;
    wise judges become fools. (Job 12:17)

But in the face of his friends’ failure to provide him with the wise counsel he has maybe always depended on from them, he comes to a moment of clarity: his friends, great as they are and useful as they want to be, cannot actually help him. <gasp!> They are just human, like him! “The blind leading the blind,” Jesus called it. They don’t understand what is going on in his life any better than he does. Worse, maybe. But definitely no better.

Look, I have seen all this with my own eyes
    and heard it with my own ears, and now I understand.
I know as much as you do.
    You are no better than I am.
As for me, I would speak directly to the Almighty.
    I want to argue my case with God himself. (Job 13:1-3)

From this sudden revelation of the limitations of his heroes and role models, then, arises a huge moment of character growth. As the framework and support system Job has always relied on collapses, he is forced to seek something new, something more dependable, in which to place his trust. He is left with only one viable source for answers. “That’s it,” he says. “I’m going to God.”

God might kill me, but I have no other hope.
    I am going to argue my case with him. (Job 13:15)

The loss of everything else he could have relied on – his family, his wealth, his counselors’ wisdom, his own understanding, his own body – pushes him toward facing his biggest fear. Job is afraid of God. It says in Proverbs that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. He’s a wise man; he understands his size, power, and importance relative to God’s. He is a creature entirely within God’s power to utterly destroy, not just in body, but also in soul. What God has created, he also can uncreate. Job is, currently, deeply aware of how easily God can take away. But at this point – what has he got to lose?

So without further ado, in verse 20, Job ceases to address his friends, who it is clear can no longer help him, and addresses his questions straight to God.

O God, grant me these two things,
    and then I will be able to face you.
Remove your heavy hand from me,
    and don’t terrify me with your awesome presence.
Now summon me, and I will answer!
    Or let me speak to you, and you reply.
Tell me, what have I done wrong?
    Show me my rebellion and my sin.
Why do you turn away from me?
    Why do you treat me as your enemy? (Job 13:20-24)

Job then poetically argues that God really doesn’t need to interfere – human lives are short enough as-is. “Just give it a little while, God, and I’ll be out of your hair soon enough anyway! You can just leave me alone.” But as Job pours out his heart to God, his real desire begins to take shape a little differently. He starts out repeating that wish to die, but then –

I wish you would hide me in the grave
    and forget me there until your anger has passed.
    But mark your calendar to think of me again!
Can the dead live again?
    If so, this would give me hope through all my years of struggle,
    and I would eagerly await the release of death.
You would call and I would answer,
    and you would yearn for me, your handiwork.
For then you would guard my steps,
    instead of watching for my sins.
My sins would be sealed in a pouch,
    and you would cover my guilt. (Job 14:13-17)

Job’s thoughts turn away from what he thinks is the only realistic solution to his problems and toward what he really wants – something he thinks is a useless dream, something impossible. “You would yearn for me, your handiwork.” Job, like a child with his father, really just wants to be wanted by God. He wants God to like him! He’s spent so many years of his life trying to gain God’s approval. He wants, more than anything, a peaceful, loving relationship with his Creator. When he believed he did not get it, when the circumstances of his life convinced him that God hated him, that was what broke Job’s will to live.

Job was a man who sincerely sought God. Here, in this moment, when he has been stripped of all his accoutrements and we see just the man himself before God, his heart is laid bare. And what he says is, “You would call and I would answer.” He says, “My sins would be sealed in a pouch, and you would cover over my guilt.”

Again, Job calls out for a Savior he can’t see. Like the rest of us, his vision is short and limited to the moment he’s in, a moment of pain, suffering, and hopelessness.

But instead, as mountains fall and crumble
    and as rocks fall from a cliff,
as water wears away the stones
    and floods wash away the soil,
    so you destroy people’s hope. (Job 14:18-19)

But because we are reading this thousands of years later, we can see what he could not. Job could not yet see Jesus coming, but what he could see was a great big Jesus-shaped hole in the world. He, millennia before Jesus would come, before any of the psalmists and the prophets prophesied, before redemption was written into the story of the Exodus and the Kings – he looked at his world, at his life, at his limits, and he saw the need. “If that hole were filled,” he said to his Creator, “you would call me, and I would come.” Little did he know what we know. And yet, with only that little to go on, he offered to drop his own proverbial nets and follow.

One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew—throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” And they left their nets at once and followed him.

A little farther up the shore he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, repairing their nets. And he called them to come, too. They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind. (Matthew 4:18-22)

You would call and I would answer (Job 14:15a)