Job 21

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Job 21:1

Satan Again Challenges the LORD

Satan does not give up. He will never give up, as long as he is given the opportunity to do his pernicious work. His reaction to what the LORD says about Job and about the actions of satan testifies to this (Job 2:4). He does not come to acknowledge his defeat, but fancies new wickedness. In his depravity he will always seek new reasons to separate God’s children from God and plunge them into ruin. He can only act according to his immutable wickedness.

He contradicts God and says that Job has not yet been tested to the extreme. All previous trials have affected his possessions and his children, but not him personally. Satan claims that Job will be prepared to give up another person’s skin – his relationship with God – in order to save his own skin. Let the LORD make Job feel pain and torment, then Job will really curse him (Job 2:5).

The LORD allows satan to do with Job as he pleases, but Job’s life must be spared (Job 2:6). The LORD sets the limit. Satan is not allowed to cross it, nor does he do so. By the way, this does not make the trial lesser, but greater. Death would put an end to the trial and thereby shorten its grief. How Job longed for death in the midst of suffering! But the fact that Job remains alive enables God to reach His goal with him.

Satan goes away to do his pernicious work here himself. After this we hear nothing more of him in this book. With this terrible action he disappears from the story. God no longer needs him. Satan does what he is allowed to do. He smites Job with a disease with which God threatens to smite Israel if the people are unfaithful to Him (Job 2:7; Deuteronomy 28:27; 35).

If satan is allowed to have his way, he does not do half the work. He beats Job in a way that Job loses all personal satisfaction and dignity. He has lost everything: his possessions, his children, his prestige, and now also his health. All that Job has left on earth is unbearable mental and physical pain. He is covered from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head with sore boils on which also worms grow (Job 7:5). His breath stinks (Job 19:17). He is slimmed down to just skin and bone (Job 19:20) and suffers unbearable pain (Job 30:17). His powers are demolished by high fever (Job 30:30). He is tormented by anxiety (Job 6:4) and suffers from sleeplessness (Job 7:4), and when he sleeps, he has nightmares (Job 7:14).

Job goes to an ash heap, possibly outside the inhabited world, where he sits amidst the dust in solitude and takes a potsherd to scrape himself (Job 2:8). However, the lowest point has not yet been reached.

Job 21:2

Satan Again Challenges the LORD

Job 21:3

Job and His Wife

While Job is plunged into the greatest misery and sorrow, his wife appears on the scene. She begins to talk to him (Job 2:9), but that is not to encourage him. On the contrary, she turns against him. At first she blames him for still holding fast his integrity. How can he do that? Surely it is foolish to rely on God in the midst of all the misery, isn’t it? A God Who inflicts such suffering on someone who so faithfully serves Him is not worth taking into account. If you take Him into account, all you get is misery over you.

This completes the trial. She who has to be a help to him, as she is meant to be (Genesis 2:18), collapses in the trial. It seems that she has not shared in the integrity of Job. Now that his integrity is being tested and he, and she too, has lost everything, it no longer makes sense to her to trust in God. To her, God is no longer necessary. She has given up her trust in God.

As a result, she no longer honors her husband. Drawn away by her emotions, she urges him to “curse” God and end his life. In the proposal she makes to Job, she utters the same words as satan and thus becomes his spokesman. This is a temptation for Job that surpasses the previous one. If Job had listened to his wife, satan – the accuser – would have emerged as the victor in this battle after all.

Job retorts his wife. He tells her that her speaking is like the speaking of “foolish women” (Job 2:10). Job does not call his wife a fool. She is his wife and he loves her, but he must reprimand her. He tells her she speaks as foolish women do. A fool is one who does not want to know about God, who denies the existence of God, because “the fool says in his heart, There is no God” (Psalms 14:1; Psalms 53:1; 1 Samuel 25:25). Job takes everything from the hand of God, although he does not understand why all this is necessary. He speaks of “we” when it comes to taking from the hand of God whatever happens to him and to her – they are also her children and Job is her husband.

“In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” There’s not a rebellious word coming out of his mouth. Job acknowledges with his mouth that the LORD kills and makes alive (Deuteronomy 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:6), that He wounds and heals (Job 5:18). For the second time, Job refutes with his reaction the lie which satan has spoken about him.

If the book had ended here, the great goal of God with Job’s life would not have been achieved. Nor would we be able to learn the lessons we can learn now. The book would be an indictment of all the ‘whys’ we can have if things are against us in life. After all, there would have been someone who, despite all the suffering that has afflicted him, would not have ascribed anything incongruous to God – namely Job. That is why it is of great significance that later, when Job starts to think about everything, he comes up with his ‘whys’ and bitter reproaches in the direction of God. But then satan has already disappeared from the scene. As said, we will hear nothing more about him after the second chapter.

Job 21:4

Job and His Wife

Job 21:5

Three Friends Visit the Sick

With the coming of the three friends the book really begins. When “Job’s three friends” hear of “all this adversity” described above, it leads them to go and visit him (Job 2:11; cf. Proverbs 17:17). It takes a few months before they are with him (Job 7:3). The three friends are mentioned by name and also their origin or background.

“Eliphaz the Temanite” is mentioned first. Teman is an area of Edom that is proverbial for its wisdom (Jeremiah 49:7). This Eliphaz may well be the eldest son of Esau (Genesis 36:10-11). In any case, he is an Edomite. He is the oldest and most important of the friends. In the dialogues that begin after seven days, he is the first to speak. He starts the rounds of conversation and is the first in each round. The other friends support him, each with their own arguments. God also addresses Himself to him when He reveals His anger to them about the way the friends speak (Job 42:7).

“Bildad, the Shuhite” is mentioned second. He is also always second in the following rounds of conversation. Shuah is not far from Teman, because Bildad and Eliphaz make an agreement to go to Job. Bildad is most likely a descendant of Abraham and Keturah, through Shuah their youngest son (Genesis 25:1-2).

Job’s third friend is “Zophar, the Naamathite. Naama is a nomadic tribe from central Arabia. Zophar always takes the third dialogue with Job. He, too, will have lived near the other two friends, for he too is included in the appointment to visit Job.

The friends’ motive was “to sympathize” with Job “and comfort him”. Uz (where Job lives) and Teman (where Eliphaz comes from) are in Edom, Shuah (where Bildad comes from) is on the border of Edom, and Naama (where Zophar comes from) is a little further away. Some time will have passed before they hear the news of the disasters that have struck Job. Then they go to him, a journey that also takes some time. A few months later, when they arrive at Job and see him in the distance, they do not recognize him.

How great must be the suffering of Job, and by how many horrors, both physical and spiritual, he must have passed through, that his friends do not recognize him (Job 2:12). His torn clothes and his shaven head reveal the festering ulcers that cover his whole body in all their horror. This awful sight they have deeply absorbed for seven days.

We also see, for example, in Naomi’s case, that the time of trial has apparently made her unrecognizable. When she returns to Bethlehem, they say of her: “Is this Naomi?” (Rth 1:19). Naomi is marked by the hardships she has experienced in her life. However, the passage of time also plays a role for her. That is not the case with Job. From one moment to the next, he has changed from a prosperous man to a wreck of a human being. Job has endured all the trials and tribulations. Yet he remains sick. This is because God wants to teach him things now.

In the months that passed between the disasters that struck him and the visit of his friends, Job will also have thought about the meaning of what happened to him. It is in this state that the friends find him. What Job has thought about and what the friends see will characterize their conversations.

The friends do not lack real concern and compassion (Job 2:13). When they see him, “they raised their voices and wept”. They do not suppress their feelings, contrary to what we sometimes do. His misery touches them deeply. Just as Job did, “each of them tore his robe”. Every friend is personally involved. As another expression of sadness, they throw “dust over their heads toward the sky”.

Thus they sit “with him”. The words “with him” show that they are really there for him, to share in his grief. They sit “for seven days and seven nights” with him (cf. Genesis 50:10; 1 Samuel 31:13). All this time, not a word is said by them. They don’t pay a quick visit to a sick bed. They have an eye for his great sorrow, they see “that [his] pain was very great”.

Today’s man turns his head when he sees suffering. He does not want to be confronted with it. Life has to be fun and attractive. Where can you find this kind of pity and compassion like Job’s friends today? Is it present with us, children of God, or do we prefer to run away from it? The friends of Job stay “with him”. They endure the awful sight and stench of his festering wounds. Are there still such friends? Where are they? Who can compare themselves to them? That they later speak wrong of their friend is another matter, but doesn’t change the example they set here.

The friends will have thought about Job’s suffering and its cause on the way and in those seven days. Their view is that Job must have sinned very much, given his enormous suffering. Their big mistake is that they, each in his own way, hold on to the accepted theory that God, because He is righteous, never causes undeserved suffering. They can only imagine suffering as retribution. How different, richer and deeper, are God’s purposes with suffering that He permits over His own than their strict and hard theories. The pity of friends shows that all human help is ultimately insufficient. God is our true Helper and, finally, only Helper (Psalms 60:11; Psalms 146:3-5; Isaiah 2:22).

Unfortunately, Job thinks in the same direction. He too cannot get away from the thought that God wants to punish him through suffering. And because he is not aware of any evil, he comes to blame God for His injustice, which leads him to consider Him his enemy. Job’s greatest need is not the loss of everything, but that he experiences that God has turned against him. At the same time, this is proof that he is not cursing God, but that he misses Him. God will lead Job to get the right thoughts about Him. He will show him that His ultimate goal of all suffering is to know Him better and to see that for those who love God, “all things … work together for good” (Romans 8:28).

There are some big differences between Job and his friends: 1. The friends have suffered nothing – Job is a believer who is desperate because of suffering. 2. The words of the friends are calm, well-considered – the words of Job are often intense and deeply emotional. 3. The friends are firmly convinced of the truth of their claims, they defend God and warn and condemn Job – Job struggles desperately and seeks the meaning of his suffering. 4. From the words of the friends it is clear that they have a certain degree of knowledge of God, but that true fellowship with God is lacking – with Job, in addition to expressions of rebellion about which he later repents, we also see expressions of great faith and trust in God. 5. The friends say nothing to God, they only speak about Him, they philosophize and theologize, but they never speak to Him – Job is perfectly clear and transparent, he wants to be honest toward God, he tells Him everything, all his feelings of doubt and fear.

Job 21:6

Three Friends Visit the Sick

Job 21:7

Three Friends Visit the Sick

Job 21:9

Introduction

Here the largest, and in many ways, most complicated part of the book begins. It contains a large number of arguments, charges, accusations, imputations, denials, partly correct theories, philosophies and theology. Here we see a ray of faith and hope. Everything that is said happens in beautiful poetic language, often using beautiful oriental imagery. This is in contrast to the beginning of the book (Job 1-2) and its end (Job 42:7-17). Both parts are written as prose, narration.

Job’s complaint in this chapter is the beginning of this large section. We can divide this chapter into three more or less equal parts: 1. Job curses his birthday (Job 3:1-10); 2. Job curses that he was kept alive as a baby (Job 3:11-19); 3. Job curses the fact that he must continue to live (Job 3:20-26).

If Only I Had Never Been Born!

“Afterward” (Job 3:1) means after all the preceding days and events, up to and including the past seven days, that his friends sit with him silently. But during the silence the thoughts do not stand still. That appears when Job and then the friends open their mouths.

Job’s patience has run out, he can no longer remain silent. He sees no hope of enlightenment or consolation in his fate. He can no longer stand it and collapses. His first words are words of curse. This curse concerns the day of his birth (cf. Jeremiah 20:14-18). His curse does not concern God! He does not curse God, but holds on to Him all through everything. He who wrestles with someone is at the same time very closely connected to such a person (cf. Genesis 32:24). He who wrestles with someone does not want to get rid of him, but wants to overcome him.

It is more often the case that a person endures a great trial, but collapses when, over time, the pain of the situation begins to penetrate. Especially overwhelming events sometimes give a superhuman strength to endure the shock. But when silence comes after the shocking events, the struggle often comes too.

Job is the first to break the silence (Job 3:2). He takes the floor to give an answer to the situation in which he has ended up. The spiritual tone of Job’s life changes dramatically here. The man of patience and faith sinks into a state of despair and spiritual depression. This is a situation that is so often the main problem for those who have to endure severe and prolonged physical illness or weakness.

It is conceivable that the change in Job’s behavior is the result of a change of thoughts about God. The word ‘God’ is here for the first time the singular Eloah instead of the common Elohim (God in the plural). This shows the question marks Job has here about God. First Job saw Him as the good Director and Controller of the elements. But it seems that as the trial continued, Job began to doubt God’s righteousness and goodness.

It feels to him as if he is in the hands of a judiciary that makes him suffer for what he has not done, without a way to escape. This makes him desperate, and that is why he wishes he had never been born. The only one who has ever been declared that it was better if he had not been born – and that by the Lord Jesus Himself – is Judas, the traitor of the Lord (Matthew 26:24-25).

As long as his suffering is external or physical, Job is calm; but when doubts about God enter his heart, he collapses. Nevertheless, satan does not triumph here either, for never does Job curse God. He curses the day of his birth, but not God. He continues to hope on God, no matter how much he despairs because of what God has done to him (Job 13:15a).

This chapter is a source of consolation for those who are similarly tested when they see that even a great man like Job can have such a struggle with faith. God prefers that we speak frankly to Him, even in moments of deepest somberness, rather than express ourselves in vague clichés that are far removed from reality.

We must also consider the following. In Job we have an example of unprecedented suffering, and we can take comfort from his history when something bad happens to us. Job did not have such an example. He had to settle it all by himself with God. This aspect also makes him unique.

Only the Lord Jesus rises above Job. He has gone through all the suffering that can afflict any human being. He has never been rebellious in this, for He entrusted everything to Him Who judges righteously (1 Peter 2:23). On top of that, He has also been in a suffering that could only afflict Him and that is the substituting suffering because of sin.

In a terrible complaint Job pours out his heart about his birth (Job 3:3). It is a wild outburst of a stuffed-up and unstoppable stream of feelings. The bomb bursts. He wishes that he had not been born, or even better, he wishes that that day and that moment had not existed at all. The day that is a day of remembrance every year must disappear from the calendar. It must become a day that never existed, because there is no joy attached to that day, but deep misery. In addition to the day he was born, he also mentions the night nine months before, when he was conceived. This will be worked out later in Job 3:6-9.

That day must be a dark place on the calendar (Job 3:4). No man should be able to discover it. And God, for Whom the darkness is light as the day, should not ask for it. Nor should He concern Himself with it from His exalted abode, as Job seems to suggest to Him. That day must disappear into the darkness as if it never existed. No ray of light must fall on it, for there is no ray of light connected with that day. We can also think of the darkness in Genesis 1 when God began the creation of light (Genesis 1:3). With this, Job wants to ask God to reverse the act of creation of his birth.

That day may be claimed by the darkness and shadow of death (Job 3:5). This is where his day of birth belongs and not in the land of light and life. The sun must not shine over it; that is why Job wishes there to be clouds settle on that day. That day is presented as a person who is frightened by sudden eclipses.

Also the night must be taken away by darkness (Job 3:6) – the shadow of death (Job 10:21-22). The night must remain night and not see daylight. The joy of the daylight of his birth is undesirable and inappropriate. There is no reason to rejoice about his birth. That night must remain barren and not be united with the daylight of life; that day must disappear from the days of the month.

The night of his conception must be barren (Job 3:7). The joyful chanting of his birth, “a boy is conceived” (cf. Job 3:3) – to which greater expressions of joy were attached than to the birth of a girl – is completely out of place. The expressions of joy must be silent, for there is no reason to be cheerful about the birth of someone who has been struck by such terrible disasters without any cause.

The day of his birth is so terrible for him, that he not only pronounces the curse on it himself, but also calls upon all those who can curse that day, who have made it their profession, such as a Balaam (Job 3:8; Numbers 22:5-6). A believer should not seek the help of a conjurer. But we must imagine here that Job’s need is so great that he would, so to speak, accept the help of conjurers.

These conjurers are described as those who are able to rouse Leviathan. This Leviathan, a destructive sea monster (Isaiah 27:1), could then disrupt creation in such a way that the night of Job’s conception and the day of Job’s birth would be nullified.

If Only I Had Died as a Baby!

In Job 3:11 Job asks God the first “why” question. More ‘why’ questions follow (Job 3:12; 20; Job 7:20; 21; Job 10:18; Job 13:14; 24; Job 21:7; Job 24:1). To none of them does God answer Job, for He is God. But He doesn’t blame Job for it either.

God already sees the time as present that all ‘why’ questions have turned into praise. Then Job, and we, will see that every day, the happy and the sad, was there because He wanted it. And His will is good. Then we will praise Him retrospectively, as it were, for every day that has been given to us on earth.

In Job 3:1-10 Job has cursed his day of birth. However, he could not prevent his birth. ’But’, he exclaims, ’why did I not die immediately at my birth instead of giving me the spirit when I came out of the womb?’ (cf. Genesis 49:33). Any love service after his birth, the care given to the infant Job, he sees as a cruel act.

Job abhors the lovely sight of a mother who lovingly takes a newborn child to her knees and breastfeeds the baby (Job 3:12). Those knees or the womb on which he was laid and pampered and by which he was carried (Genesis 50:23; Isaiah 66:12) and the breasts that fed him have caused him so much misery now. Had they not done so, he would at least have died.

Job prefers death to life. Compared to his present existence, death is an enviable fate for him. To describe the benefit of this situation he uses four expressions (Job 3:13). He would “lay down” “be quiet “sleep” “be at rest.”

“Laying down” gives the thought of beneficent rest. “Be quiet” means not to be in trouble or to be afraid of them coming. “Sleep” is not only silence, but also not being aware that there might be danger somewhere. He would then “be at rest” instead of experiencing the present misery.

He sees the realm of the dead as a dwelling place where he is together with kings and counselors who were so powerful that they rebuilt cities to keep their names alive (Job 3:14). He also sees himself together with princes, people who had succeeded in life and who had gold and abundance of silver (Job 3:15).

Another option is that in case he was a miscarriage he would not be there, like a little child who never saw the light of day (Job 3:16; Ecclesiastes 6:3-5; Psalms 58:8). In any case, there is rest in the realm of the dead, both for the wicked and for those who are exhausted (Job 3:17). There is also rest for the prisoners there (Job 3:18). They no longer have to do forced labor. They don’t hear the voice of the slavedriver there. In the realm of the dead there is no distinction between large and small, old and young, considerable and despised (Job 3:19). Also the slave is free.

Job is a wretched man and counts himself among those who are “bitter of soul” (Job 3:20). He speaks in plural. It is a category of people longing for death (Job 3:21). To them death is the end of all their bodily suffering and all the bitterness of their soul. But death does not show itself.

Then they will look for death, searching for it, that is to say, searching for it with the greatest possible effort, for they are eager to find it. They will search for it with even more zeal than they would search for hidden treasures. Even if they were to find so many hidden treasures, they know that the greatest treasure cannot deliver them from their suffering and bitterness. According to them, only death can do that. That’s why they “rejoice greatly and exult when they find the grave” (Job 3:22). Then they finally have peace.

Job does not see how his path will have to continue (Job 3:23). Despairingly, he asks why God gives the light of life to someone who doesn’t know how to go on, what path to take. With all his struggles, there is nothing to suggest that he wants to take his life into his own hands and does want to commit suicide. That was not an option to Job. Suicide means that all hope and sight of God is lost. That is not the case with Job. On the contrary, he is engaged in a passionate conversation with God, that is to say, he expresses everything that is in his heart of incomprehension about what God has allowed to happen to him.

Job even blames God for obstructing him in every way (cf. Lamentations 3:9). For Job it is as if God, Who first protected him and his possessions from all sides and thus shielded him from all evil (Job 1:10), now places him in the midst of all evil and hedged him in in such a way that he cannot escape, that God gives him no way out (cf. Lamentations 3:2-7). If we find ourselves in such a situation and do not see a way out, God wants to focus our gaze on the only way out that always remains: the way upward (2 Corinthians 4:8b).

To Job, God is the causer of the evil that has afflicted him, not satan. Nowhere does Job speak of satan as the author of his disasters. He has not, like us, looked behind the scenes and does not know about the actions of satan. He doesn’t think about the possibility of that. He only thinks of God, also in his further struggle. This is a hallmark of true godliness.

He knows that God has first given him food (Job 3:24). There is nothing left of that. Everything has been taken away from him. The only thing that gives him any relief is groaning. Nor does he have water. His lamentation has come instead. It also indicates that the pains go over him like a never-ending stream.

In Job 3:25 we see that Job, during all the prosperity he enjoyed, was also plagued by the fear that his prosperity would one day be taken away. He was afraid of disaster. A great number of catastrophes have come upon him in all their ferocity. In his prosperity Job already had no peace and security. And now he has none at all (Job 3:26). The silence has disappeared. Already he was not at all calm, but now the inner turmoil has come to pass to the full, and has taken on such great proportions that it has driven him to despair.