Job 3
Today we get the first inkling of the depths of Job’s misery, and the first verse reveals his sentiment: Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. He feels it would have been better to die unborn than to live in this evil existence. Down through the ages millions have joined Job in similar sentiments. Suffering is real, and we search for ways to escape. Some choose suicide. Some try to escape their pain through alcohol, drugs, or other addictions. Unfortunately, the thought of dying unborn is echoed by those who promote abortion as a “solution” to challenging pregnancies. After all, why bring a child into this world only to be subjected to pain, misery, and the vagaries of this life? (They forget that choosing death for the child is not their choice to make…) This is decidedly not God’s perspective, who brought Job into the world in the first place. But Job’s suffering is very real, and he expresses it honestly — and bitterly — and we likewise must wrestle with the realities of real and terrible suffering in this life.
One small thing that I find interesting in today’s reading is in Job 3:23, where Job complains of God’s having hedged him in (apparently in the sense that Job is trapped in his circumstances). I find that curious because back in Job 1:10 Satan asserted that God was protecting Job: Have You not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? So, the very thing that Satan viewed as God’s protection, Job now sees as a curse. Hmmm.
It can be easy for us to want to tell Job (or others who are suffering), “Buck up! It’s not so bad.” Or to say, “I feel your pain” when we really have no idea. Or we might rebuke Job for being so “self-focused” and encourage him to “look outside himself”, never having really connected with the depth of his misery. Or we could easily go the other direction and fall into the same sort of despair, focusing on the suffering to such an extent that we lose sight of any hope. So how should we listen to Job? How might we enter into his suffering and truly sympathize with him while not falling into such despair? That, I think, is one challenge for us today.
Thanks, John. I hadn’t seen the connection about the hedge.
I was struck by Job’s different response here than in the first test in chapter 1. There he lost his wealth and possessions, and even his children. These were all outside him.
But here in chapter 3 he has lost his own health. He is in physical pain and hurts all over his body. Physical pain (serious illness, the pain of cancer, torture, starvation, abuse, the Inquisition) can break a person more than other losses, like wealth. (I’m not sure how emotionally tied he was to his many children, though he no doubt loved them.) I think I could cope with loss of money, etc. But to be in ongoing deep physical pain??? I know I haven’t suffered like Job’s experienced.
His story is one that compels me to think, what if? Will I be ready for real suffering like that? Job basically has two choices, curse God and give up, or trust God and draw strength from Him to keep on. I’m trying to take Door #2, even when the chips are down…
John has cautioned us to weigh Job carefully, not to take him too literally as if God were speaking through him. That caution came to life today in verses 17 to 19: There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. Certainly Job’s vision of death is different from ours, but with these verses I recall some words from Father David. He might be asked to do a funeral for someone he did not know and he might hear someone say, “Well, he’s in a better place now.” David’s response (spoken only to himself) was, “I certainly hope so!”