October 12
Reading: Job 21
1 Then Job answered and said:
2 “Keep listening to my words,
and let this be your comfort.
3 Bear with me, and I will speak,
and after I have spoken, mock on.
4 As for me, is my complaint against man?
Why should I not be impatient?
5 Look at me and be appalled,
and lay your hand over your mouth.
6 When I remember, I am dismayed,
and shuddering seizes my flesh.
7 “Why do the wicked live,
reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
8 Their offspring are established in their presence,
and their descendants before their eyes.
9 Their houses are safe from fear,
and no rod of God is upon them.
10 Their bull breeds without fail;
their cow calves and does not miscarry.
11 They send out their little boys like a flock,
and their children dance.
12 They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
13 They spend their days in prosperity,
and in peace they go down to Sheol.
14 They say to God, ‘Depart from us!
We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’
16 Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?
The counsel of the wicked is far from me.
17 “How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?
That their calamity comes upon them?
That God distributes pains in his anger?
18 That they are like straw before the wind,
and like chaff that the storm carries away?
19 You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’
Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
20 Let their own eyes see their destruction,
and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
21 For what do they care for their houses after them,
when the number of their months is cut off?
22 Will any teach God knowledge,
seeing that he judges those who are on high?
23 One dies in his full vigor,
being wholly at ease and secure,
24 his pails full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist.
25 Another dies in bitterness of soul,
never having tasted of prosperity.
26 They lie down alike in the dust,
and the worms cover them.
27 “Behold, I know your thoughts and your schemes to wrong me.
28 For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?
Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’
29 Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
and do you not accept their testimony
30 that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,
that he is rescued in the day of wrath?
31 Who declares his way to his face,
and who repays him for what he has done?
32 When he is carried to the grave,
watch is kept over his tomb.
33 The clods of the valley are sweet to him;
all mankind follows after him,
and those who go before him are innumerable.
34 How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”
We are halfway through the book of Job and it seems like we are ready for a break. This, I think, is part of the point of the book. Grief and lament take a long time and we would like to be done with it long before we actually are done with it.
Job is wrestling with who God is. Can God be trusted? C.S. Lewis writes about such a struggle in A Grief Observed.
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?
In the first six verses of Job’s response to Zophar, Job makes it clear that he will respond, though Zophar will mock. Job really wants to talk with God and not the insensitive boor that Zophar has become.
In verses 7-26 Job lays out in poetic verse a stunning rebuttal to Zophar’s point that God always punishes the wicked. Job here is not saying that God does not punish the wicked, but that it appears that God does not punish the wicked. The wicked seem to prosper. One wonders if David thought of these words in many of his psalms. Consider Job’s points.
- The wicked live on, safe and prosperous. (vss. 7-11)
- The wicked sing and are happy and even mock God and nothing bad happens. (vss. 12-16)
- Rarely do we see calamity befall the wicked man himself. (vss. 17-21)
- One way or another, every person dies. (vss. 22-26)
Finally, in verses 27-34, Job points out that in this life the wicked man seems to do no worse than the righteous man. People do not even confront the wicked man with the expectation of judgment. Even his tomb seems peaceful. The implication is that ultimate judgment must confront the wicked man after the grave and not in this life.
This all means that the calamity that has befallen Job may have nothing to do with God’s righteous judgment but some other purpose. But, if this is so, what is that purpose?! Why??
Sometimes we must walk a long time with the Lord in the “Why?”