Beloved, I am pleased to share with you today the above theme from Job 16:1-2 and following. Indeed, “You are all unfortunate comforters,” Job replies to his visitors (v. 2). This is how I would act if you were in my place and I in yours (v. 5). To truly sympathize with someone, it is necessary to enter into their trial as if we were going through it ourselves (Heb 13:1-3). Jesus did not heal a sick person without first feeling the full weight of his suffering. “He himself took our weaknesses and carried our diseases” (Mat 8:16-17). So he deserves that name of friend (Mat 11:16-19) that suits so badly the three visitors of Job.
In v. 9, Job is struck by god’s wrath. In v. 10, he expresses what he endures from men. Job’s trial was multiple. But what is it in comparison to what Christ suffered, he who “had done no violence”? (Es a 53.4-9; v. 17). He suffered inexpressible suffering at the hands of men animated by Satan, and then at the hands of God during the three hours of darkness of the cross. Now his blood is shed saving believers and blaming the world. He himself is in heaven for us, the Witness of our justification (v. 19). He is also, before God, the Arbitrator or Mediator – see note – whose need Job felt (v. 21). In Job’s response to his friends, we can notice that he expresses the deep feeling he had of their complete inability to meet his needs. He says, “I have heard many things like that; you are all unfortunate comforters. Will there be an end to these words of wind? What irritates you, that you answer? I, too, could speak like you.” Then he adds in moving terms: “If your soul were in the place of my soul, I could pile up words against you and shake my head against you!” (16:2-4). Let them exchange only their place for his, if that would have been possible.
Let the three friends be in Job’s position; that not only their possessions, but their families be swept away completely by the broom of destruction, and in such a way that this visitation appears to be the effect of god’s displeasure, and then, that they suffer in their bodies in a way as profound and cruel as Job, so that, for the least exercised eye, they are, in the most obvious way possible, the objects of God’s most frightening governmental ways, whether they are in such circumstances and job being their friend who came to speak to them, could he not have used such harsh words towards them and cast such angry glances at them as theirs? We can only be struck by the touching nature of the appeal he addresses to them, in response to their accusations, especially when he adds, “But I would strengthen you with my mouth” (16:5). In this he has the indisputable advantage of grace over them: “And the consolation of my lips would alleviate your pains.” No word with such character or purpose had come out of their lips.
“If I speak, my pain is not alleviated; and if I keep quiet, will she walk away from me?” Certainly he did not ignore what they interpreted to his disadvantage, namely the depth of his desolation. Had they insisted to him that God had allowed all this? This was precisely what he felt so painfully. In this, Job showed his piety, without it being possible to doubt it. He recognized the truth; he did not attribute his ruin to the Chaldeans or other secondary causes. He did not seek vain explanations in external circumstances. He saw the hand of God, without entering in any way into his thought about his trial, let alone into his love that had allowed it. This was precisely the reason why everything was then so inexplicable for his soul. He held fast to his integrity, being perfectly sure that there was nothing they imagined against him, no terrible secret, no overwhelming sin from which God took vengeance against him through this visitation. His conscience was good. Job could not tell how or why God was in all this, while feeling it painfully.
However, he was no less certain that his friends were treating him with blatant injustice and that, if they had been in his place, his words to them would have been all different. He adds: “But now he has tired me…: you have devastated my whole family. You have embraced me, it is a testimony, and my thinness rises against me” (16:7-8). There was no attempt in him to hide his suffering, no haughty claim that it was less great than it actually was. On the contrary, he goes to the opposite extreme and indulges in deeply regrettable language: “His anger tears me apart and pursues me; he grinds his teeth against me; like my opponent, he sharpens his eyes against me.” These are sad words, especially if we consider the source from which Job saw that his trial had come, whatever the means or instrument may have been. However, he firmly admits and maintains that the enemy could not have poured out the cups of his fury on him if God had not spoken the word to allow him. He thus understood this double truth: on the one hand, God is holy, just and good, on the other, He visited him by unheard-of and absolutely overwhelming trials. But he could not solve this problem, let alone his friends, because they misinterpreted these two truths, concluding that they cast doubt on Job’s faith and probity.
However, Job was still attached to God, although exuding bitter and misplaced complaints. He could not understand why or how such a trial had attained him, nor for what purpose God had thus changed the way of acting towards him, but he did not deny for a moment the truth. He uses language that painfully depicts the distress his soul was going through: “They open their mouths against me.” This is not at all the only time we have to notice in this book a language that is strikingly connected to that of the Psalms. Anyone who takes the trouble to compare these two books will easily find a large number of positively similar expressions. The passage we have quoted is an example of this. Who is the One who in the Psalms said, “They open their mouths against me, like a heartbreaking and roaring lion”? (Ps. 22:14).
It is the Lord on the cross. But what a difference! “And ye are holy, ye who dwell in the midst of the praises of Israel” (Ps. 22:4). No such word comes out of Job’s mouth. As a result of the ardent trial he was going through, he speaks as if God is acting harshly towards him, as if He had mysteriously become his enemy, and he expresses himself with bitterness, which is the natural effect of such a thought. The state of the soul must always depend on how one looks to God or how one fails to do so. Also, how important it is that our souls possess the knowledge of God as He is and enjoy it, so that they may be comfortable and at home in His presence, while judging the self and relying on His love.
The effect of a real enjoyment of God’s love is naturally that we become the channels of that love. This was not the case with Job or his friends. Job was right to feel that God was dealing with his painful trial. He was completely unaware of what had taken place in heaven and which gave the key to at least part of this trial. However, he could not leave God aside in any way in this visitation. The latter had the effect of leading his friends to make a false judgment about him and to speak of God in a wrong way, because they were completely wrong, just as it tended for the moment to give Job harsh feelings towards God.
He whispers as if he were the object of the ways without mercy on his part. “God has delivered me to the iniquitous, and threw me into the hands of the wicked.” He confesses with the greatest frankness that without Him none of these trials could have reached him. There was a real faith in him, although he had been imperfectly taught until then. “I was at peace, and he broke me; he grabbed me by the neck and crushed me, and trained me to serve as his goal. His archers surrounded me; he pierces my kidneys and does not spare me; he spreads my fiel on the earth. He breaks in me, breach upon breach; he runs over me like a strong man. I sewed a bag over my skin, and I degraded my horn in the dust.” But was it true that he restricted prayer before God, as Eliphaz had accused him of? Let’s listen to his own words.
The following verses have been compiled for your edification and grouped together for your better understanding.
Job hurt by the words of his friends:
- Words of men, evil
-Vain Jb 16:3 When will these speeches in the air end? Why this irritation in your answers?
-Hurtful Pr 15:1 A gentle response calms fury, but a harsh word excites anger.
-Thoughtless Pr 29:20 If you see a thoughtless man in his words, there is more to be expected from a fool than from him.
-Disrespectful Ml 3:13 Your words are harsh against me,” said the Lord. And you say: What have we said against you?
-Seductive Col 2:4 I say this so that no one deceives you with seductive speeches.
-Flattering 1 Thess 2:5 Never, indeed, have we used flattering words, as you know; never have we had greed as our motive, God is a witness.
-Deceptive 2 Pet 2:3 Out of greed, they will deceive you by means of deceptive words, which have long been threatened by condemnation, and whose ruin does not lie dormant.
-Grandiloquent 2 Pet 2:18 With speeches swollen with vanity, they begin with the lusts of the flesh, with dissolutions, those who have just escaped from men who live in bewilderment;
-Bad 3 Jn 10 That is why, if I go to see you, I will recall the acts he commits, making wicked remarks against us; not content with this, he does not receive the brethren, and those who would like to do so, he prevents them from doing so and drives them out of the Church.
- Teeth grinding, under the effect of disappointment
Ps 112:10 The wicked man sees him and gets irritated, he grinds his teeth and consumes himself; The desires of the wicked perish. Mt 8:12 But the sons of the kingdom will be cast into the darkness of the outside, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Mt 13:42 and they will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Mt 25:30 And the useless servant, throw him into the darkness of the outside, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
- Arrows of God, figuratively speaking
Ps 7:14 He directs murderous features at him, He makes his arrows burning. Ps 21:13 For thou shalt turn one’s back on them, and with thy bow thou shalt shoot at them. Ps 45:6 Your arrows are sharp; Peoples will fall under you; They will pierce the hearts of the king’s enemies. Ps 144.6 Make the lightning shine, and scatter my enemies! Throw your arrows, and route them!
- Call to God, as a witness
Gen 31:50 If you mistreat my daughters, and if you take more women, it is not a man who will be with us, beware, it is God who will be a witness between me and you. Jg 11:10 The elders of Galaad said to Jephthah, Let jehovah hear us, and judge us, if we do not do what you say. 2 Cor 1:23 Now I take God as a witness on my soul, that it is to spare you that I have no longer been to Corinth; Phil 1:8 For God is a witness to me that I cherish you all with the tenderness of Jesus Christ.
From all of the above, we note these words of Job: “My face is inflamed by crying, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death, though there is no violence in my hands, and let my prayer be pure” (16:8-17). Eliphaz had judged him entirely badly. “O earth, do not cover my blood, and let there be no place for my cry! Now also, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is in the high places.” That is, as for his ways, he can rely on God. Only he could judge whether he had restricted or neglected prayer. Job acts here according to what God knew, it seems; if I am not mistaken, this is what his call means: “My friends laugh at me… to God weep my eyes.” It was absolutely wrong that he did not cry out to God. “What is there an arbiter for man before God, and for a son of man vis-à-vis his friend! Because the years go by, the number of which can be counted, and I am going down the path from which I will not return.” We find the same sequence of thoughts in chapter 17, where Job exhales his lamentations. If the suspicion (we can even say the accusation) of his friends had been founded, it is a terrible event that he would have apprehended above all else. Do I need to say that it is death? On the contrary, however, there was nothing that Job desired more. It was futile to talk to him about a possible change on earth or to support him with his family, or about recovering from the disasters that had engulfed him. None of these hopes could have brought any consolation to Job’s heart. On the other hand, if only he had been able to die and get close enough to God to plead before Him his just cause, he had no doubt that he would not have found favor with him, even at that time. How clear it is that, however incomplete the revelation that had formed Job’s heart, he possessed the substance of truth. Certainly there is nothing that can put a man as deeply to the test as death. A bad conscience causes him to recoil in horror before death, because he feels that it tears all the veils and plunges the soul into perdition. Job, on the contrary, proved not only the reality of his faith, but the good state of his conscience, by the fact that he longed to leave to be with God. We thus see his trust in Him, even while He exposed the pains of His soul and had nothing before Him but death. “If I hope, the sheol is my home, I lie my bed in the darkness. I shout at the pit: You are my father! to the verses: My mother and my sister! Where is my hope? And my hope, who will see it? It will descend to the bars of the sheol, when together we have rest in the dust.” Our prayers are with you all.
PRAYER OF ACCEPTANCE OF JESUS CHRIST AS LORD AND PERSONAL SAVIOR
I now invite every person who wants to become a new creation by walking in the truth, to pray with me the following prayer:
Lord Jesus, I have long walked in the lusts of the world ignoring your love for humans. I admit to having sinned against you and ask your forgiveness for all my sins, because today I have decided to give you my life by taking you as Lord and personal Savior. I recognize that you died on the cross of Calvary and rose from the dead for me.
I am now saved and born again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lead me every day to the eternal life that you give to all who obey your Word. Reveal yourself to me and strengthen my heart and faith, so that your light may shine in my life right now.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for accepting me into your divine family, so that I may also contemplate the wonders of your kingdom as I walk in your ways.
I will now choose a nearby waterpoint to baptize myself by immersion, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
All adoration, power and glory are yours, now and forever and ever. Amen!
I would be happy to respond to any questions and comments you may have, before sharing with you tomorrow “The words of Job’s friends are not fair. (Jb 17)
May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you abundantly.
David Feze, Servant of the Almighty God.