Job 3:20-23
Bill Long 5/2/05
Gaining a Perspective
A person of faith experiencing great pain often has to maintain two irreconciliable beliefs at the same time. On the one hand, s/he believes in the goodness and power of God. God is not simply the creator of the ends of the earth but the guide of life. God not only created the vast heavens and deep seas, but knows when the sparrow falls and has numbered even the hairs on our heads. In short, on the one hand, the great God of creation is also the intimate God of salvation and guidance. On the other hand is the reality of the pain. How is the existence of pain a "belief," as I used the word in the first sentence? It is a belief because at some point and some level you must acknowledge it. There is the physical discomfort that it brings but often the more debilitating pain is the mental anguish that follows in its wake.
Thus, you have the reality of God's goodness and the reality of the pain. Each is clamoring insistently for recognition. In some ways these "beliefs" are compatible: pain might not be seen as a challenge to the sovereignty and goodness of God if you accept it as a divine "test" or "discipline," for example. But often the simultaneous existence of these beliefs can cause mental oppression. You simply cannot give up either. God is there, a brooding omnipresence, present in every thought and in every conversation. The pain is there, sometimes throbbing and sometimes dull, but still very real. While modern medicine and psychology have made tremendous strides in "pain management," modern theology has not made similar advances in "God management." Hence, the continuing problem.
Returning to Job 3
Job's great distress quickly brings him to the realization that he can let go neither of his God nor the pain that wracks his frame. Both are there; both are oppressive and disturbing presences. For Job, God is "present" through the inherited teachings of the wisdom tradition. Those teachings are summarized most accessibly for us in the Book of Proverbs. For purposes of our essays today, Prov.3:5-6 captures the essence of that tradition. These verses not only were beloved in ancient Israel but are still the favorite verses of preacher and Bible student alike. They read:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths" (Prov. 3:5-6).
These words resonate powerfully for the one who wants to love God, for they give a path, a way, a mode by which one can live. All it takes is a trusting heart. All it requires is one who realizes that God is the source of life, the one always to be acknowledged, the one in whose care you can place your heart. And, the heart is our most valued possession. Entrusting the heart to God seems to be the prerequisite for our paths to be made straight. And there is a promise here, an affirmation that goes straight to the "basis of the bargain," to use a term from warranty law. We entrust our hearts to God and God will make our paths straight.
How it Worked for Job
This is what Job had done. He had done it "continually," as the text says (1:5). He had placed his heart in God's care by trusting in God. And, as a result, God had made his paths straight. Until Job's world collapsed. Then, after an initial attempt at maintaining the faith ("The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord"), Job collapses internally. Or, to put it differently, he becomes enraged, embittered, and embattled. He feels he must seek an explanation of what has happened to him. The friends will not be able to answer him in the way he desires; ultimately he will have to go directly to God for an explanation.
It is this psychological reality which begins to dawn on Job in 3:20-23. It is too early for him to identify the pain he feels as the arrows of God (cf.6:4). It is far too early for him to go from third person observation to second person address to God (cf.7:12). But in 20-23 he will begin to return from the pleasant mental journey he took in 3:11-19. It is like the experience we have on the last day of vacation. It still is vacation, but there is packing to do, travel plans to confirm, and dozens of details to take care as we "transition" back to our "normal" lives.
Job makes his transition back to "normalcy" in these verses through two questions, the first of which looks like it is a "general interest" type of question while the second seems to focus more particularly on Job's distress. In fact what is occurring, and it is one of the lessons of great distress, is that every searching question coming from the mouth of a person in huge pain has a first person referent, even if it is couched in third person grammatical garb.
With this rather long introduction, let's now turn to the text of 3:20-23.
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