Job 29

¹ And Job again took up his discourse, and said: ² “Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, ³ when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness, ⁴ as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent, ⁵ when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were all around me, ⁶ when my steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured out for me streams of oil! ⁷ When I went out to the gate of the city, when I prepared my seat in the square, ⁸ the young men saw me and withdrew, and the aged rose and stood; ⁹ the princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth; ¹⁰ the voice of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. ¹¹ When the ear heard, it called me blessed, and when the eye saw, it approved, ¹² because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him. ¹³ The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. ¹⁴ I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. ¹⁵ I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. ¹⁶ I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know. ¹⁷ I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth. ¹⁸ Then I thought, ‘I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand, ¹⁹ my roots spread out to the waters, with the dew all night on my branches, ²⁰ my glory fresh with me, and my bow ever new in my hand.’ ²¹ “Men listened to me and waited and kept silence for my counsel. ²² After I spoke they did not speak again, and my word dropped upon them. ²³ They waited for me as for the rain, and they opened their mouths as for the spring rain. ²⁴ I smiled on them when they had no confidence, and the light of my face they did not cast down. ²⁵ I chose their way and sat as chief, and I lived like a king among his troops, like one who comforts mourners.

Job 30

¹ “But now they laugh at me, men who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock. ² What could I gain from the strength of their hands, men whose vigor is gone? ³ Through want and hard hunger they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation; ⁴ they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes, and the roots of the broom tree for their food. ⁵ They are driven out from human company; they shout after them as after a thief. ⁶ In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell, in holes of the earth and of the rocks. ⁷ Among the bushes they bray; under the nettles they huddle together. ⁸ A senseless, a nameless brood, they have been whipped out of the land. ⁹ “And now I have become their song; I am a byword to them. ¹⁰ They abhor me; they keep aloof from me; they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me. ¹¹ Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me, they have cast off restraint in my presence. ¹² On my right hand the rabble rise; they push away my feet; they cast up against me their ways of destruction. ¹³ They break up my path; they promote my calamity; they need no one to help them. ¹⁴ As through a wide breach they come; amid the crash they roll on. ¹⁵ Terrors are turned upon me; my honor is pursued as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud. ¹⁶ “And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction have taken hold of me. ¹⁷ The night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest. ¹⁸ With great force my garment is disfigured; it binds me about like the collar of my tunic. ¹⁹ God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes. ²⁰ I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. ²¹ You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me. ²² You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm. ²³ For I know that you will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all living. ²⁴ “Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand, and in his disaster cry for help? ²⁵ Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the needy? ²⁶ But when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came. ²⁷ My inward parts are in turmoil and never still; days of affliction come to meet me. ²⁸ I go about darkened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. ²⁹ I am a brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches. ³⁰ My skin turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat. ³¹ My lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.

In Stephen Lawhead’s amazing novel, Byzantium, the monk Aidan, after returning to Ireland after many adventures and journeys that involved great suffering and loss, speaks to his confessor Ruadh about the loss of his faith.

            “…I thought I could depend on the truth. But I have learned there is no truth. The innocent are everywhere slaughtered – they die pleading for God to save them, and death takes them anyway. Faith’s own guardians are inconstant liars, and Christ’s holy church is a nest of vipers; the emperor, God’s Co-ruler on Earth, is a vile, unholy murderer.”

            “Life is a school of the spirit, Aidan,” Ruadh intoned with gentle insistence. “Learning is our soul’s requirement, and suffering our most persuasive teacher.”

            “Oh, aye, it is a school,” I agreed, feeling the throbbing ache of futility. “It is a terrible school wherein we learn harsh and bitter lessons. We begin by trusting, and learn there is no one worthy of our trust. We learn that we are all alone in this world, and our cries go unheeded. We learn that death is the only certainty. Yes, we all die: most in agony and torment, some in misery, and the fortunate few in peace, but we all die. Death is God’s one answer to all our prayers.”

            “Do not blaspheme, Aidan,” cautioned the secnab sternly.

            “Blaspheme!” I challenged angrily. “Why, I speak the very heart of God’s own truth, brother. How is that blasphemy? We put our trust in the Lord God, and were proved fools for believing. We endured slavery and torture and death, and God lifted not a finger to save us. I saw our own blessed Bishop Cadoc hacked to pieces before my eyes and God – the God he loved and served all his days – did not so much as lift a finger to ease his suffering.”

            Ruadh regarded me severely, his brow creased in disapproval. “As he did nothing when His beloved son died on the cross,” my anamcara pointed out. “We are closest to Christ when sharing the world’s misery. Think you Jesu came to remove our pains? Wherever did you get that notion? The Lord came, not to remove our suffering, but to show us the way through it to the glory beyond. We can overcome our travails. That is the promise of the cross.”[1]

Here in essence is the struggle of Job. How do we hold on to faith after God allows us to endure great suffering? Lawhead has captured the picture of the struggling, battered heart pretty well. He also provided the answer that is most dear to Christians: “The Lord came, not to remove our suffering, but to show us the way through it to the glory beyond. We can overcome our travails. That is the promise of the cross.”

It is a hard truth to learn, but a critically important one. God does not spare us suffering, but He is with us through it. In Job chapters 29 and 30 we find Job struggling to come to terms with this truth.

Job bemoans the loss of his life before the tragedy, when he walked in righteousness and God blessed him deeply.

Job begins in Job 29 by looking backward with nostalgic longing to the time when he was a blessing to others and he was himself blessed by God.

¹ And Job again took up his discourse, and said: ² “Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, ³ when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness, ⁴ as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent, ⁵ when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were all around me, ⁶ when my steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured out for me streams of oil! ⁷ When I went out to the gate of the city, when I prepared my seat in the square, ⁸ the young men saw me and withdrew, and the aged rose and stood; ⁹ the princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth; ¹⁰ the voice of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. ¹¹ When the ear heard, it called me blessed, and when the eye saw, it approved, ¹² because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him. ¹³ The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. ¹⁴ I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. ¹⁵ I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. ¹⁶ I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know. ¹⁷ I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth. ¹⁸ Then I thought, ‘I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand, ¹⁹ my roots spread out to the waters, with the dew all night on my branches, ²⁰ my glory fresh with me, and my bow ever new in my hand.’

One might be tempted to view these words merely as the nostalgic longings of an old man, but I think that viewing them in this way is an injustice. We do not have here a man who is stuck in the past in the way that you and I get stuck in the past. We have here a man who we are told is a righteous man responding with passion to a chapters-long attack on his character and a chapters-long allegation that he is harboring secret sin. We have here a man who has had enough of the forced and overly simplistic theory of retributive justice and who knows that his righteousness is the undoing of that damaging theory. While wealth was a part of the blessings of God, it is not as if Job merely misses money. On the contrary, he is looking back through bloodied eyes to a time when he walked uprightly with God and God, in turn, blessed him.

In order of presentation, Job bemoans the loss:

• of a close relationship with God (1-5a),
• of his family (5b),
• of his name among the peoples (6-11),
• of his ministry to the poor and downtrodden (12-16),
• of his opposition to those who oppressed the downtrodden (17),
• of his sense of optimism and hope about the future (18-20).

This is a lot to lose.

It was a time in his life when the world made sense, when things were as they should be. And, let us recall, it was a time that was the way it was because God was indeed blessing Job and Job was indeed walking in righteousness! We may think wrongly of “the good ole’ days” because of the obscuring power of distance, time, and our proclivities towards the romantic whitewashing of reality, but Job was, in fact, absolutely correct. This was the life he actually knew, and it is actually commendable to miss the presence of such things.

We may perhaps hear some of the same kind of longing in the words of the psalmist in Psalm 51.

⁷ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. ⁹ Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. ¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. ¹¹ Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. ¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

“Restore my joy!” is the heart-cry of any person who feels that his or her relationship with God is not as it once was…and if it is not, it should be! In Job 29, Job steps out of the ever-escalating fracas in order to say, likely with tears in his eyes, that there was a time in his life that was ever-so-sweet but now was no more.

Job bemoans the loss of his name and the respect that it once brought.

Probably because of the incessant and ruthless attack upon his name, Job belabors the point that his name once meant something. We find this in the end of Job 29 and beginning of Job 30.

Job 29

²¹ “Men listened to me and waited and kept silence for my counsel. ²² After I spoke they did not speak again, and my word dropped upon them. ²³ They waited for me as for the rain, and they opened their mouths as for the spring rain. ²⁴ I smiled on them when they had no confidence, and the light of my face they did not cast down. ²⁵ I chose their way and sat as chief, and I lived like a king among his troops, like one who comforts mourners.

Pastors sometimes speak of “subterranean pastors” in their congregations. What is meant by the term is that there are laypeople who simply hold the respect of the congregation. I once had an older pastor tell me that you could tell who these folks are by watching which way people look in business meetings when decisions that need to be made in the church are being discussed. The person that the people instinctively looked at was usually the “subterranean pastor,” the pastor beneath the surface.

I hasten to add that this term is not necessarily a critical term. I have been blessed at every church I have ever pastored by “subterranean pastors.” A “subterranean pastor” can be a nightmare, to be sure, but then so can an above-ground pastor! Likely as not, they are just respected people who, over long years of being in a church, win the respect of those around them.

Job was a “subterranean pastor.” He was the one that folks looked to when decisions had to be made. He was the leader.

²¹ “Men listened to me and waited and kept silence for my counsel. ²² After I spoke they did not speak again, and my word dropped upon them. ²³ They waited for me as for the rain, and they opened their mouths as for the spring rain. ²⁴ I smiled on them when they had no confidence, and the light of my face they did not cast down. ²⁵ I chose their way and sat as chief, and I lived like a king among his troops, like one who comforts mourners.

What an amazing picture of respect. “After I spoke they did not speak again” is a reality that probably most people understand. There are simply people whose words are so weighty that they “carry the room.” Job was this person. “I…sat as chief, and lived like a king among his troops.” Lest one think that Job is on an ego trip, he adds, “like one who comforts mourners.” This means that Job’s “reign” was a virtuous and good one, and the scriptures confirm this.

Yet now, in his fall and in his shame, Job not only no longer has the respect of his peers, he is openly derided by them, even those of low character.

Job 30

¹ “But now they laugh at me, men who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock. ² What could I gain from the strength of their hands, men whose vigor is gone? ³ Through want and hard hunger they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation; ⁴ they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes, and the roots of the broom tree for their food. ⁵ They are driven out from human company; they shout after them as after a thief. ⁶ In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell, in holes of the earth and of the rocks. ⁷ Among the bushes they bray; under the nettles they huddle together. ⁸ A senseless, a nameless brood, they have been whipped out of the land. ⁹ “And now I have become their song; I am a byword to them. ¹⁰ They abhor me; they keep aloof from me; they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me. ¹¹ Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me, they have cast off restraint in my presence. ¹² On my right hand the rabble rise; they push away my feet; they cast up against me their ways of destruction. ¹³ They break up my path; they promote my calamity; they need no one to help them. ¹⁴ As through a wide breach they come; amid the crash they roll on. ¹⁵ Terrors are turned upon me; my honor is pursued as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.

One can sense the bitterness in Job’s words. Job is now laughed at by scoundrels and the sons of scoundrels. Job has “become their song,” is “a byword to them,” is “abhorred,” is kept at a distance, as spat upon by these men. He attributes this to the actions of God. Now, in Job’s calamity, wicked men fall upon him and seek his absolute destruction.

J. Vernon McGee, a man whose teachings I do normally appreciate, sees little to sympathize with in the Job of Job 29. Here is McGee’s take:

Job reminds me of a little tea party I heard about:

I had a little tea party

This afternoon at three.

‘Twas very small – Three guests in all,

Just I, Myself, and Me.

Myself ate all the sandwiches,

While I drank up the tea.

‘Twas also I who ate the pie

And passed the cake to me.

McGee saw self-righteousness in Job’s complaint.

He was voted the most valuable citizen by the city clubs of Uz in Chaldea…He was chairman of the board at the blind school, and he was a benefactor of the crippled children’s home…Job sat at the very top of the totem pole of life. He dwelt in honor, affluence, and influence. He was a plutocrat and a tycoon. He was an ideal man, the goal toward which humanity is striving today. He lived the good life…But Job lived in a fool’s paradise. He was in a Cinderella world; and when the clock struck midnight, his chariot turned into a pumpkin…Job has been putting on his self-righteousness…Fifty-two times he has used “I” and “me.” We hear no confession, no admission of failure. We see nothing of a broken and contrite spirit in Job.[2]

I am loathe to disagree with such an esteemed preacher and commentary, but I cannot help but feel that McGee, in this instance and to some extent, has taken on the mindset of Job’s enemies. We have said before that Job does indeed make some errors in what he says and that Job, in his pain, has his vision blurred enough to say some profoundly unwise things. Even so, God will vindicate Job as essentially correct at the end of the book and say that what Job has said is true. Not, we may be sure, everything, but Job’s words on the main are correct.

What this means is that we can and should be critical of Job where he missteps, but to depict Job 29 and 30 as an elongated pity party seems a bit much. Job does use the words “I” and “me” a great deal, but let us remember that he is responding to a great many “you’s” that not only lack charity and compassion but are being lobbed maliciously and with dire consequences towards a correct theology of God.

Yes, one may detect self-pity in Job, but I think we should be careful and charitable. Job’s calamity was excruciating, completely out of the blue (to him), and was now bound up with the most fundamental question of all: who is God and what is His character?

Does Job linger overly long in his reminiscences? Perhaps. But he is trying to drive the final nail in the coffin of his friends’ fallacious theories about God, man, justice, and, specifically, Job and his character.

Job bemoans the loss of his name and the loss of the respect it brought. He is verbalizing aloud the surreal agony of his predicament. He has fallen so low that both his enemies and his friends assail him.

Job bemoans the loss of his relationship with God as he knew it.

Above all else, Job bemoans the loss of his relationship with God as he knew it.

¹⁶ “And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction have taken hold of me. ¹⁷ The night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest. ¹⁸ With great force my garment is disfigured; it binds me about like the collar of my tunic. ¹⁹ God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes. ²⁰ I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. ²¹ You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me. ²² You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm. ²³ For I know that you will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all living. ²⁴ “Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand, and in his disaster cry for help? ²⁵ Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the needy? ²⁶ But when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came. ²⁷ My inward parts are in turmoil and never still; days of affliction come to meet me. ²⁸ I go about darkened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. ²⁹ I am a brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches. ³⁰ My skin turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat. ³¹ My lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.

It is difficult not to feel one’s heart break for Job. Here we see the heartbroken cry of one who is groveling and broken in the dirt. Surely we must reject Job’s sentiment in verse 21: “You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me.” God is not cruel. Job is mistaken. Even here, though, we should show compassion. Job knew neither what had happened in the throne room of God when God and Satan discussed him nor about the cross of Jesus Christ. He did need to show great faith, but it might be that he showed more than many of us would have in a similar circumstance.

Time and again we return to the fact that the cross would have radically changed Job’s perspective in the midst of suffering. Job is in heaven right now because of the cross of Jesus Christ, but Job did not know the name “Jesus” yet. By putting faith in God the Father, Job was putting his faith in the Christ Whose name he did not know. But he was a believer. Even so, Job needed a theology of the cross, just as we do.

The cross makes all the difference.

Let us consider yet another scene near the end of Stephen Lawhead’s novel, Byzantium. Here, Aidan, the monk who lost his faith due to the great suffering he underwent, is sharing about this loss with Gunnar, a Viking who he himself had earlier led to Christ.

            Despair cast its dark cloak over me, and I said, “You see how unreliable this God is, and yet you still want to build a church? Truly, Gunnar, you are better off without it.”

            Gunnar regarded me in disbelief. “How can you speak so, Aeddan – especially after all we have seen?”

            “It is because of all we have seen that I speak as I do,” I retorted. “God cares nothing for us. Pray if it makes you feel better; do good if it pleases you, but God remains unmoved and unconcerned either way.”

            Gunnar was quiet for a moment, gazing at the little stone chapel. “The people of Skania pray to many gods who neither hear not care,” Gunnar said. “But I remember the day you told me about Jesu who came to live among the fisherfolk, and was nailed to a tree by the skalds and Romans and hung up to die. And I remember thinking, this Hanging God is unlike any of the others; this god suffers, too, just like his people.

            I remember also that you told me he was a god of love and not revenge, so that anyone who calls on his name can join him in his great feasting hall. I ask you now, does Odin do this for those who worship him? Does Thor suffer with us?”

            “This is the great glory of our faith,” I murmured, thinking of Ruadh’s words to me – but changing them to reflect Gunnar’s sentiments, “That Christ suffers with us and, through his suffering, draws us near to himself.”

            “Just so!” agreed Gunnar eagerly. “You are a wise man, Aeddan. I knew you would understand. This is most important, I think.”

            “You find this comforting?”

            “Heya,” he said, “Do you remember when the mine overseer was going to kill us? There we were, our bodies were broken, our skin blackened by the sun – how hot it was! Remember?”

            “Sure, it is not a thing a man easily forgets.”

            “Well, I was thinking this very thing. I was thinking: I am going to die today, but Jesu also died, so he knows how it is with me. And I was thinking, would he know me when I came to him? Yes! Sitting in his hall, he will see me sail into the bay, and he will run down to meet me on the shore; he will wade into the sea and pull my boat onto the sand and welcome me as his wayfaring brother. Why will he do this? Because he too has suffered, and he knows, Aeddan, he knows.” Beaming, Gunnar concluded, “Is that not good news.”

            I agreed that it was, and Gunnar was so full of joy at this thought that I did not have the heart to tell him I could not come and be his priest. Later that night, after our guests had been made as comfortable as possible in the guest lodge, I lay down to sleep and instead found myself thinking how strange it was that Gunnar should come to faith this way.

            Sure, I myself had told him most of what he knew. But he had endured the same hardships, and suffered all that I had suffered, and more – at least, I had not lost wife and friends to fever while a slave in foreign lands – yet Gunnar’s travails created in him a kinship with Christ, while mine produced only separation. This seemed very strange to me. Stranger still, I fell asleep wondering not what was wrong with Gunnar, but what was wrong with me?[3]

This is wisdom: “Because he too has suffered, and he knows, Aeddan, he knows.”

Christ has suffered.

Christ knows.

Believer in Christ: He knows. He has suffered. He is with you. He is for you. He has not abandoned you…especially in your suffering.

 

[1] Stephen Lawhead, Byzantium. (New York, NY: Harper Prism, 1996), p.632.

[2] J. Vernon McGee, Job. Thru the Bible Commentary Series. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers), p.144-148.

[3] Stephen Lawhead, Byzantium. (New York, NY: Harper Prism, 1996), p.638-639.