A Commentary on Job 1-2
By Thomas Liew
Shoes of Jews who perished in the Holocaust (Image source: ushmm.org)
Introduction
What
would you do if you lose everything in life? Family, wealth and blessings
of every kind. We have to admit that such suffering or losses does not make
sense. What about the account of the appalling atrocities undergone by the Jews
during the Holocaust?
As we contemplate the Holocaust in all its
naked evil, can we honestly believe that all those children tortured by the
Nazis were not, in a very real sense, innocent sufferers? Here is one book in
the Bible that talks about the problem of innocent suffering and that is the
book of Job. If God is good, why are things so bad?
Job’s
Inexplicable Travails
Job was a righteous man who has the
abundance of a good life. He lives at a time when a person’s wealth is measured
not in terms of the size of his bank balance but the size of his herds. He
lived in Uz and he is not only a wealthy man, indeed possibly the wealthiest
man alive (Job 1:3), but he is also a godly man. He feared God and shunned
evil.
His deep personal respect for God showed
itself in several ways, not least in his passionate concern for the spiritual
well-being of his children – the sign of any good father. In verses 4-5, we
read that just in case his sons and daughters had behaved in a way that might
have offended God and brought down His judgement upon them, Job went out of his
way to make sacrifices for their sin on their behalf. And this was no passing
task for Job – we are told that this was his regular custom.
‘His
sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite
their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had
run its course, Job would send
and have them purified. Early in the
morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God
in their hearts.”
From what we can see, under today’s
circumstances, we would describe Job as a committed Christian, one whose faith
penetrated every area of his life. He is a model of what the Bible calls
wisdom.
Job was blameless and upright. In other
words, his moral character was outstanding. He was one of those rare
individuals who existed within a class all by themselves; he was genuinely a good
man. In fact, Job almost appears to be too good to be true. Therefore, what
could possibly go wrong? What in the world is going on here? To see what is
going on, we have to look outside the world. This world alone never answers the
great questions of life. The answer is found in heaven.
Verses 6-12 describe a meeting between God
and Satan. In verse 7, Satan says that he spends his time roaming through the
earth and going back and forth in it. In verse 8, God was speaking proudly of
Job:
“Then
the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? There is no one on
earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
Can you imagine the God of the Universe
speaking proudly of Job from heaven? Might He also talk about you and your
righteousness found in Jesus Christ?
Satan was neither impressed nor convinced.
He said to God, “Does Job fear God for
nothing?”
“Have
You not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You
have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread
throughout the land. But stretch out Your hand and strike everything he has,
and he will surely curse You to Your face.” (Job 1:9-11)
Satan’s name means “adversary” and he has
been called the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12:10). God sets out to prove
to Satan that Job is not righteous just because he is blessed. And shocking
though it may seem, God takes up the challenge and actually gives Satan
permission to do his worst albeit with one condition – he is not to harm Job
himself:
“Very
well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not
lay a finger.” (Job 1: 12).
Image source: loverofsadness.net
Job’s life is totally devastated. He loses
his wealth to bandits and gone are his oxen needed for farming, his donkeys and
camels needed for transport, and all his workers are massacred (Job 1:14-15).
His financial empire lies in ruins. And just as he may have been consoling
himself, news reached him that the sheep too had been destroyed, not by an act
of man this time but by an act of God.
“The
fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants” (Job 1:16).
Then news of an even greater personal
tragedy comes to his ears – a storm has taken the lives of his dear children
(Job 1:18-19).
Inflamed
Faith
But remarkably he did not lose his faith
in God. What was Job’s response?
“At this, Job got up and tore his robe and
shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and
naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of
the Lord be praised.” In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with
wrongdoing.” (Job 1:20-22).
Here we can see Job’s reaction: he
worshipped God and did not curse Him when he lost his wealth and his children.
He said that he came into this world with nothing and will return with
nothing.
In Job 2, the wager was further
intensified. Satan, still not convinced and obviously angered by Job’s
response, pursues his challenge in verses 4-5:
“Skin
for skin!” Satan replied.
“A
man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out Your hand and strike
his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse You to Your face.”
So Job is afflicted with boils of such
excruciating pain that his wife, finding it unbearable to watch, urges Job to
“curse God and die” (verse 9). Why, even Job himself wishes that he had never
been born when he cries out in 3:11-12:
“Why
did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? Why were there
knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?
So disfigured and ruined is Job that when
his friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar arrive to console him, they hardly
recognise him and break down in uncontrollable weeping – it was that bad (2:11-13).
This was a man undergoing suffering, a suffering which was devastating, not
lessened, by his faith in God. But to believe in God and a good and all
powerful One at that, seemed to fly in the face of his present experience. How
could such a God allow this to happen?
Reaffirming
God’s sovereignty
One thing we want to know is that our God
is absolutely sovereign who is not outwitted or out of control. Job’s troubles
can be attributed to the activity of Satan. In Job 1:11, Satan challenged God
to stretch out His hand against Job. But it is God who put the power into
Satan’s hands. Job too recognised the sovereignty of God, for example in 2:10,
when he said to his wife: “Shall we
accept good from God, and not trouble?”
Job has shown that God is more valuable to
him than family and possessions. Comforts and calamities come from the hand of
God. This solid confidence in the sovereignty of God is something Job will not
relinquish. With God so all-powerful, there will always be hope that He has the
power to relieve our sufferings or at least provide us with the grace to cope
in our sufferings. So it is clear that it is God, and not the devil, who rules.
Sometimes, when we see a Christian suffer,
we unfairly assume that there must be sin in that believer’s life. But
suffering is not always a result of sin as we see in Job. Like the refiner’s
fire, God often uses suffering to produce righteous character in believers.
Sometimes He wants those who suffer to be more dependent upon Him.
God, in His sovereignty, chooses not to
tell us everything. That is God’s prerogative. We cannot question God’s
motives. His ways are beyond human comprehension but clearly He does have a
purpose in suffering. All that we can do, in the face of the unanswerable, is
to trust in the God whom we know has tasted suffering first-hand in the Person
of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thomas Liew is a mature-age student studying theology at the Malaysia Bible Seminary. This is his first article to the Sunday Weekly.
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