I am listening to a reading of the Book of Job. Job was a man from Uz who suffered greatly. Bandits robbed him of his property. A storm felled the house that crushed his sons and daughters to death during supper. His body became riddled with loathsome, unpleasant, and painful sores. His three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—were skeptical of him being a good man suffering with misfortune. They were under the notion that only good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.
Words from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar misapprehended the situation, and draws out Job’s complaint, “How long will you torment me |and break me in pieces with words?” (Job. 19:2).[1] Job sees himself as an innocent man stricken by great calamities.
But Job with unbridled audacity goes on to call out the Lord as an opponent! He says,
Know then that God has put me in the wrong
and closed his net about me.
Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
I call for help, but there is no justice.
He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
He has stripped from me my glory
and taken the crown from my head.
He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
He has kindled his wrath against me
and counts me as his adversary.
His troops come on together;
they have cast up their siege ramp against me
and encamp around my tent. (Job 19:6-12).
What a shocking complaint. Job without reservation speaks out against the Almighty. Insofar as the man is concerned, God is waging war against him. It was the Lord who had driven him into misery. These are the words from a deeply wounded man in the moment of catharsis.
Adding to all the misery, Job finds himself shunned and despised from his own “brothers,” “relatives,” “guests,” “servant,” “wife,” and “children” (Job 19:14-20).
Full of deep anguish and isolation, Job pleads, “Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, |for the hand of God has touched me! |Why do you, like God, pursue me? | Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?” (Job. 19:21-22).
Job calls out for everyone to remember his suffering:
Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever! (Job. 19:23-24).
He wants a written record about him being the innocent man who experienced suffering. He wants it put down on something permanent, like a stone memorial with letters etched with an iron pen and inlaid with lead. He wants to preserve his story for posterity. Elmer B. Smick notes, “With no hope left of proving his righteousness Job looked to the future, leaving his case with posterity (Ps 102:18).[2]
Why does Job want his plea of innocent preserved for posterity? He explains,
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another (Job 19:23-27).
But Job never simply wallows in the depths of melancholy and infinite sadness — nihilistic despair. He hopes of being vindicated by the one who would stand up and defend his integrity. Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser explains:
The one who would stand up to defend Job was called his gō˒ēl [גֹּ֣אֲלִי], his “kinsman-redeemer” or “vindicator.” This kinsman-redeemer basically functioned as the avenger of the blood of someone unjustly killed (2 Sam 14:11). He had the right to preempt all others in redeeming property left by a kinsman (Ruth 4:4–6). He also recovered stolen items (Num 5:8) or vindicated the rights of the oppressed (Prov 23:10–11). He was one who redeemed, delivered and liberated.[3]
With his own fleshly eyes Job confidently anticipated seeing the gō˒ēl come forward and set things right. This would be an embodied experience — “in my flesh I shall see God,” — not as a disembodied phantom with the mind’s eye. He is confident of being vindicated whether in the present life or in the afterlife. “Job believed that even if a person were cut down in life just as a tree was, the tree and the person would share the same hope—that a ‘shoot’ would sprout out of the stump (Job 14:14). Even though it might take time (see ‘after’ in Job 19:25–26), he hoped in the end for God’s vindication” and “Job was expecting a resurrection of his body! It was this which lay at the heart of his hope in God and in his vindication,” writes Kaiser. [4]
Job is a far more complex individual that the man who in a moment of catharsis complained that God was at war with him. He firmly hopes that a redeemer will step up and he will be vindicated. Despite all the calamities that had come upon him, Job anticipates that redeemer will be God.
Everyone familiar with the Book of Job knows God shows up! The one thing we are certain about is this: Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were wrong. They eloquently presented cases for why divine retribution on this side of eternity befalls sinners in the form of pain and suffering. But out of the whirlwind Yahweh tells Eliphaz, “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job. 42:7).
The three friends appear to make sound observations about suffering in this life. For example, Bildad Eliphaz point out: “Blessed is the one whom God reproves; |therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty” (Job 5:17). Bildad advised, “If you will seek God | and plead with the Almighty for mercy, | if you are pure and upright, | surely then he will rouse himself for you | and restore your rightful habitation” (Job 8:5-6). Zophar observed, “But oh, that God would speak | and open his lips to you, | and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom! |For he is manifold in understanding. | Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves (Job. 11:5-6). They offered good advice for the transgressor. But they were presumptuous, and dismissed the idea that Job was an innocent man who suffered great calamities. They missed the mark in supposing Job had sinned and God was punishing him for it.
Only the narrator of the Book of Job and the audience are privy to the cosmic exchange that brought about all the suffering. The afflicted one is kept in the dark about Yahweh granting Satan permission to take away his property, children, and health. Satan paints Job out to be fickle who only worships God because of all the good things in life he possesses. But Yahweh knows better and grants permission to take away Job’s property, children, and health, sparing only his life. Job’s refusal to curse God exposes Satan’s folly. Yet, for Job, along with the three friends, this cosmic exchange between God and Satan remained mystery.
No answer to the question of why Job suffers is given. We are only left with a cosmic riddle.
G.K. Chesterton writes, “The book of Job is chiefly remarkable, as I have insisted throughout, for the fact that it does not end in a way that is conventionally satisfactory. Job is not told that his misfortunes were due to his sins or a part of any plan for his improvement.”[5] More humorously, George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright and friend to Chesterton, is said to have quipped: “If I complain that I am suffering unjustly, it is no answer to say, ‘Can you make a hippopotamus?’”[6]
Rebekah Valerius rightly observes “The book of Job tells us that all human attempts to resolve the problem of evil are inescapably oversimplified” yet “Job is also comforted in knowing that the world is more complex than any human explanation can account for, especially when it comes to matters of suffering.”[7]
The Book of Job offers us an exceptional theodicy. It acknowledges the reality of evil. It effectively reveals to us that that innocent people do experience pain and suffering, and the pain and suffering is not always divine retribution setting things to right. It reminds us that God is not indifferent to our suffering. Most of all, it gives sufferers hope for vindication and the Redeemer will stand up in their defense.
The Book of Job anticipates the Passion and the Pascha of the Christ. Christ is the most innocent of us all, He is betrayed by Judas, the rest of His disciples flee from Him at the arrest in Gethsemane, the Sanhedrin wrongly condemn Him for blasphemy, Pilate knows His innocence yet still sanctions His death, He suffers upon the cross, the execution meant for criminals, but He committed no crime, He was buried, and resurrected on the third day. The Suffering Servant is vindicated through the Resurrection.
We live in a sinful and fallen world and our lives are immersed in an ocean of tears. Every day we receive news of lives being decimated by sickness, crime, hatred, violence, murder, wars, and natural disasters. If it is not one, it is another. Death surrounds us. It never the case that things in the world are getting worse; rather, our troubles have been consistent ever since the fall. But we are never given the final answer to the “why” question. Much of it is left to mystery. Yet, even if evil does its worse, there is still a Redeemer.
Our hope is in the reality that God is with us, and the Redeemer will stand up and come to our side.
Christ’s resurrection offers the Christian the blessed hope of being resurrected to everlasting life on the last day — the ultimate vindication for the righteous who suffer. Even if the worse happens, if we have been destroyed by evil, the Redeemer resurrects us immortal, imperishable, incorruptible. Sin curses us with death, but Christ breaks the curse, removes the sting of death, and gives us resurrection life.
— WGN
[1]All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
[2] Elmer B. Smick, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), 941.
[3] Walter C. Kaiser Jr. et al., Hard Sayings of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 259.
[4] Kaiser, 259.
[5] G.K. Chesterton, “Introduction to the Book of Job,” https://www.chesterton.org/introduction-to-job/
[6] Cited in Rebekah Valerius, “G.K. Chesterton on the Book of Job,” Christian Research Journal, 44, 1 [2021]: 13; https://www.equip.org/articles/g-k-chesterton-on-the-book-of-job/
[7] Ibid, 14.
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