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)

Shouldn’t someone answer this torrent of words?
    Is a person proved innocent just by a lot of talking?
Should I remain silent while you babble on?
    When you mock God, shouldn’t someone make you ashamed? (Job 11:2-3)

Listen! God is doubtless punishing you
    far less than you deserve! (Job 11:6b)

And in this way enters Zophar the Skeptic I mean Naamathite. Here are the current standings: Job claims he’s completely innocent. Eliphaz insists he messed up on the basis that no human can be perfect. Bildad is perfectly willing to blame Job’s obviously naughty dead children. And Zophar is – well – skeptical, to put it politely.

For he knows those who are false,
    and he takes note of all their sins. (Job 11:11)

Color Zophar unconvinced. Eliphaz gently suggests accidental, ignorant sin, Bildad plays the blame game, and Zophar comes right out and says, “Job, man, give it up, we know you lyin’.” What, we ask, is his conclusive proof? Same as the other two. Input = output, therefore output = input. He’s not as generous as Eliphaz to think it’s an accident, not as loyal as Bildad to think it’s someone else’s fault. He mercilessly says, “This is your fault and you know it. Stop acting like this is an outrage.”

All right. Now. In Zophar’s defense, we humans do have a tendency to play dumb when we do something wrong. “I don’t know how the cookies vanished,” we say. “My dog ate my homework. Traffic was terrible. It wasn’t me! My brother did it.” Or, my three-year-old thieving self’s best try: “It just fell from the sky!” Yeah. Sure it did.

It made more sense to Zophar that Job would deviate from his character than that God would deviate from God’s. That’s honestly not bad reasoning. God is unchanging. You want us to believe now that he has done something totally unlike anything he’s ever done in the past so that we will believe you have not. <raised eyebrow> Yeah. Sure he did.

You want us to believe that he split open a sea and an entire nation walked through it on dry land.

You want us to believe a flour jar and an oil jar never ran dry while there was need.

You want us to believe a little boy came back from the dead.

You want us to believe the sun went backwards up the steps.

You want us to believe a pregnant teenage girl is a virgin.

You want us to believe the blind saw, the dead were raised, the lame leapt, and the storm was stilled.

You want us to believe in the resurrection.

Frankly, dear, faith requires us to believe some pretty wild things. And at the heart of them all is that God sometimes deviates from how he usually operates. That’s not to say he changes. It’s just to say sometimes more (or less) of him is revealed than we usually see, like with a rainbow. Did you know from an airplane a rainbow is a complete circle? Well. We usually only see an arch. Sometimes only a sliver. But that’s because our view is limited, not because the rainbow changes. When he has determined the time is right and the need is there, for his own purposes to be accomplished, God is fully capable of surprising us. How, then, are we supposed to know the difference between someone who is lying and someone who has seen God act out of the ordinary? These are muddy waters.

If only God would speak;
    if only he would tell you what he thinks! (Job 11:5)

Ironically, Zophar wishes God would speak to Job what he thinks – but Zophar does not appear to have asked God first. If he would have only taken his own advice! Eesh, Zophar. Aren’t you an unflattering mirror. But the point! Back to the point. The point I’m trying to make is – if you’re not sure, ask.

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. (James 1:5)

And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

Believe it or not, Zophar, God does speak. God does tell us what he thinks. I can usually tell when God is speaking to me because what he thinks is nothing like what I think. I often, like Zophar, expect I know what God is going to say to me. I often, like Zophar, am immensely, entirely, devastatingly wrong! But God’s knowledge is solid, and mine is only vapors. He holds onto tangible truths, rocks of fact and reason; I reach out my hands for truth, but find only clouds. I guess; he knows. So if I want to know, my best hope is to ask him.

If only God would speak indeed, Zophar. Hold on to your hat, Sir. His turn is coming. But first, you’ve got to deal with Job.

I will say to God, ‘Don’t simply condemn me—
    tell me the charge you are bringing against me. (Job 10:2)

A brief context refresher: Job has confessed to his friends that he believes he would be better of dead. They are trying to talk him down from the ledge. Their arguments include assumption of guilt, belief in input = output, expectation that God believes as they do, and absolute faith that Job’s integrity will come to fruition in health, wealth, and wisdom. “Just go say sorry and ask God for your stuff back and he’ll give it to you because you’re a good guy” is basically what their arguments amount to.

Another brief context refresher: Job is not convinced by their nonsense. He knows their arguments unhinge on one key point – there is no guilt. <boom! crash clatter clatter> There is nothing to apologize for, and no one who can stand in his defense (yet). He ardently wishes for the Savior we take for granted every day.

Doesn’t matter what I do, Job says. He probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway.

And even if I summoned him and he responded,
    I’m not sure he would listen to me. (Job 9:16)

This next chapter is Job suggesting what he would say to God if he could get God to listen. First, he wants to know what God’s got against him. This is considered, even in our modern court system, a fair and reasonable right. If the government takes any kind of action against you – arrests you, seizes your property, issues a fine, etc. – you have a right to know why. Job is feeling like someone who’s been beaten, arrested, imprisoned, and stripped of his assets without any communication of the charges brought against him. If I’ve done something wrong, he says, TELL ME WHAT!

But like a subject of a strong, oppressive government, he knows that if God has already decided the case against him, his own actions can have no effect on the outcome.

Although you know I am not guilty,
    no one can rescue me from your hands. (Job 10:7)

So from this viewpoint – God as a government that does what he pleases regardless of his subjects – he wants to know what God stands to gain from this destruction.

What do you gain by oppressing me?
    Why do you reject me, the work of your own hands,
    while smiling on the schemes of the wicked? (Job 10:3)

From Job’s perspective, this destruction is absolutely pointless. He can see nothing God could possibly gain from this – the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it already, so it’s not like he was after Job’s stuff, and anyway, Job would have given him anything he’d asked for. If it had been one of Job’s shortcomings that brought this destruction, then why were the truly wicked – those not even trying to be good – not likewise destroyed? Why was Job, of all people, so singled out? And it’s not like Job belonged to some enemy king, and therefore could be destroyed on the principle of a greater war!

You formed me with your hands; you made me,
    yet now you destroy me. (Job 10:8)

You worked hard to make me, God! Job says. I only exist because of and for you! Do you really want to throw away all that work so soon?? Did you really make me just so you could find all my faults and wreck me again?

As Job puzzles out what God’s possible motive could be, we get to another revelation of character. We uncover a piece of how Job sees God – in chapter 7, he calls God the “Watcher of all humanity” (vs 20), and then here in chapter 10 he accuses God of watching for the pleasure of criticizing, of finding fault.

Yet your real motive—
    your true intent—
was to watch me, and if I sinned,
    you would not forgive my guilt. (Job 10:13-14)

“You’ve just been waiting for me to screw up!” he accuses. Sometimes, when Job says stuff like this – even though he’s been dead for a few thousand years now – I still duck. I mean, he’s not the only person in history to think of God as this cosmic police force, constantly looking for someone breaking the rules so he can drag them off to be punished. A good majority of people who believe in God view him in this way, but I always thought it’s an entirely unfair portrayal of the loving father character of God (are the storm clouds gone? <phew>). God does punish, but not for the pleasure of punishment any more than a parent punishes their child for the fun of it. “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” human parents are famous for saying. God punishes not because he wants to, but because we need him to according to the rest of the Bible.

Think about it: Just as a parent disciplines a child, the Lord your God disciplines you for your own good. (Deuteronomy 8:5)

For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. (Hebrews 12:6)

But here Job goes accuses God of punishing him for God’s pleasure, not for Job’s growth. I wonder so much how God can say, at the very end of it all, to Eliphaz:

I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:7)

Umm. Hold up, Lord. Are we just – overlooking this moment? This isn’t accurate, right. You’re not just up there waiting for us to screw up so you can smite us, right. This isn’t paintball, right, you’re not just up there waiting for us to expose some vulnerable part of ourselves so you can redecorate us, right. Did I misunderstand the character of the Living God, or are we just ignoring this part? I need to know. I don’t want to believe I am nothing more than an animal hunted for sport.

Job, I think, is feeling the same. If this is true, if God has no interest in us other than in destroying us, then why –

Why, then, did you deliver me from my mother’s womb?
    Why didn’t you let me die at birth? (Job 10:18)

Why bother going to all this trouble to make me, Job imagines asking God, just to wreck me now? Like those Asian monks who spend hundreds of hours making beautiful, ornate pictures out of sand, only to brush them away as soon as they are through, Job feels like God’s wasted a lot of time and effort if his ultimate goal was just destruction. “Could’ve just destroyed me at the beginning!” he says. “Would’ve been more efficient!”

Job is acknowledging to God, in a way that his friends aren’t and won’t, that God’s choices don’t make sense to him. “God’s choices always totally make sense to us,” his friends have been arguing. “Well, they absolutely don’t to me!” Job responds in this chapter.

In short, Job 10 is an eloquent oration of Job asking the age-old question, “God, why?” There are few of us who have never asked that question. There is something about that question, that doubt, that… insubordinate attitude that feels dangerous to us, that feels somehow like if we have to ask, we must be the problem. We must not be good Christians, good believers, good followers, good servants of the Most High God. We must not know God very well if we don’t understand his actions.

The irony here is that the people who believe they do understand God are the ones who are most ignorant of him. The ones who don’t ask why, but assume they know – are the ones who earn God’s ire and rebuke. Job, who fully admits he doesn’t get why God has allowed these bad things to happen, is the one God praises for seeing God rightly. “You’re starting to get it!” God says to Job. “I am incomprehensible to you, and that doesn’t make me bad.” Because in all this, Job still has not cowed to the pressure to curse God. He has cursed his own life, cursed the day of his birth, and wished fervently for his own death, but he has not wished God ill. He has only wished for his own relief, not for God’s harm. In all this questioning – Job still has not sinned.

So what does chapter 10 mean? It means it is not unholy to be unhappy. It is not unholy to ask why. It is not unholy to desire comfort or relief from suffering. It is not unholy to be confounded by God’s choices. But wishing God harm, cursing him to his face and wanting him to suffer for them – that is the line Job simply will not cross.

You can feel what you feel. It’s still what you do, not what you feel, that determines who you are. This chapter reveals that Job feels the absolute worst feelings humans can feel – abused, victimized, powerless, hopeless, in pain with no way of getting out of it – absolute and utter despair.

But he still refuses to be spiteful.

Yes, I know all this is true in principle.
    But how can a person be declared innocent in God’s sight?
If someone wanted to take God to court,^[a]
    would it be possible to answer him even once in a thousand times?
For God is so wise and so mighty.
    Who has ever challenged him successfully? (Job 9:2-4)

My first question, when I read Job’s response to Bildad, is how does this differ from what Eliphaz just said? Didn’t Eliphaz say he received this vision – “Can a mortal be innocent before God? Can a mortal be pure in his sight?” (Job 5:17) Isn’t that exactly what Job says too – how can a person be declared innocent in God’s sight? How is this different?

This is one of those places where translation across language, time, and culture muddies the meaning, I think. Eliphaz’s main argument, if we look at the rest of the passage, was that everybody messes up and Job, too, must have sinned and either not know it or be lying about it. He is talking about measurement – no one can quite fill that scale of goodness required by God. If we read on into chapters 9 and 10, though, we see Job’s words in an entirely different context: a court room, and on one side is Job, on the other, God. Job’s friends have suggested he approach God and present his grievance because God will surely be reasonable and absolve him, so Job is envisioning himself taking God to trial.

If Job himself sinned accidentally, as Eliphaz suggests, God will forgive him, heal him, bind his wounds. If Job’s children had been at fault, as Bildad suggests, God will surely see Job’s innocence and make restitution – he will compensate Job for his loss by replacing what he previously had with something of even better quality. Both are based in the assumption that God’s justice looks just like and agrees with ours and therefore a fault lies somewhere within the humans involved.

But Job continues to argue that God knows there is no discernible human fault, and therefore there is no point in trying to change God’s mind. When he asks how he can be declared innocent – he’s asking how it would help if he were acquitted and exonerated by the same God who has already seen his innocence and allowed him to suffer all the same. God’s justice, he argues, must look different than ours.

If it’s a question of strength, he’s the strong one.
    If it’s a matter of justice, who dares to summon him^[c] to court?
Though I am innocent, my own mouth would pronounce me guilty.
    Though I am blameless, it^[d] would prove me wicked.

Job’s faith in God’s omnipotence and sovereignty has led him to determine there is absolutely no sense in contradicting God. Job feels very strongly in the injustice of what he’s suffering, but he knows that his God is the very standard of justice, the ruler by which all rightness is measured, so if he argues with God, he’ll always be wrong. Just because Job doesn’t like it and doesn’t agree with the standard due to the pain it has caused him doesn’t mean God is going to change to accommodate him – the universe does not bow Job’s preferences, desires, and whims, but God’s. No matter what I do, Job says, I’m wrong. I can’t win. There’s no point.

If I decided to forget my complaints,
    to put away my sad face and be cheerful,
I would still dread all the pain,
    for I know you will not find me innocent, O God.
Whatever happens, I will be found guilty.
    So what’s the use of trying? (Job 9:27-29)

Do you feel the lament in his words? How desperately Job wanted his friends to be right – how desperately he wanted his efforts to have meant something! He worked hard for what he had. And he had it. He had it! He had what he wanted, what he felt he deserved! And it was yanked from his blistering hands. Even if he listened to them now, he says, it would never be the same. He would always be waiting to lose it again the same way.

His friends just want him to cheer up, old chap! and be done with it, I think because it makes them uncomfortable to see him in pain, and despite the years that have passed between us, this human condition has not changed. Thou shalt not make others suffer just because thou art suffering. Don’t rain on our parade. How could you be so selfish to spoil our fun with your misery? How we fake a cheerful face even while our insides shudder! This, we are conditioned, is what others want from us. This, we are conditioned, is only common curtesy. In our modern world, we’ve taken it so far we’ve created something the world is now calling “toxic positivity,” the complete and utter denial and stuffing of pain of any kind in the name of “staying positive.” But Job fails to see how fake cheerfulness would fix his very real pain.

Even if I were to wash myself with soap
    and clean my hands with lye,
you would plunge me into a muddy ditch,
    and my own filthy clothing would hate me. (Job 9:30-31)

I think we can sum up Job’s argument in chapter 9 in this one word: powerless. He is trying to explain to his friends how very powerless he has recently discovered himself to be. They are doing their best to convince him he is not powerless, that he has his integrity and his reputation and that counts for something, but their arguments hold no sway over Job because he knows that his power is simply a far cry from enough. “It will never happen to you” is an empty consolation to the one who has already suffered the tragedy. “It will never happen again” is equally empty, a mirage that has already vanished.

And in this moment – “what’s the use of trying?” – it seems like the Accuser may just win the point after all. Remember, his hypothesis was that without the incentive, even Job would see no reason to be good. “He will surely curse you to your face,” he taunted God. You are nothing to him but a wallet.

Which brings us to another chance for our hero to fall. It’s a compelling one. Once again, he’s given a choice, and it looks like he’s leaning hard the wrong way. If there is no use in trying, if he gives up and finally curses God, the Accuser wins. On bated breath, all of heaven watches Job say –

God is not a mortal like me,
    so I cannot argue with him or take him to trial.
If only there were a mediator between us,
    someone who could bring us together.
The mediator could make God stop beating me,
    and I would no longer live in terror of his punishment.
Then I could speak to him without fear,
    but I cannot do that in my own strength. (Job 9:32-35)

“I wish there was a Jesus.”

I intended when I started this post to combine chapters 9 and 10. Job isn’t finished with his turn to talk. But looking at those words has brought me to a full stop: “I wish there was a Jesus.” Look at them again. If only. Again. Again. At the very moment Job’s “feet were slipping, and [he] was almost gone” as Asaph would say (Psalm 73:2), he cried out for a Savior. He cried out for exactly THE Savior – that God had already planned.

I knew this story was important.

A few extra footnotes in case you’re wondering how I got there…

A mediator:

But now Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises. (Hebrews 8:6)

To bring him together, or reconcile him, with God:

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20)

So that he would no longer live in terror of his punishment:

All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.

But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) (Ephesians 2:3-5)

And he could talk to God without fear:

So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. (Hebrews 4:14-16)