Job 30
KingCommentsJob 30:1
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:2
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:3
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:4
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:5
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:6
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:7
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:8
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:9
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:10
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:11
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:12
Introduction
In spite of his speech about the senselessness of an argument against God, Job is forced by his terrible suffering to go on with his complaint. The language that Job speaks against God in this section is not the result of his physical suffering, but of the wrestling of his faith in the goodness of God. He cannot but see the hand of God in all the suffering that befalls him.
At the same time, he cannot understand that God is inflicting this suffering on him. This leads him to make statements or better exclamations about God that are not true. God does not call him to account for this. His friends do. But even they don’t speak about God as He is. The inner conflict that Job has with his situation is getting bigger and bigger as a result. We taste the bitterness of it in the following verses.
Again Job’s Complaint Against God
Job continues his answer to Bildad. He loathes his own life (Job 10:1). The burden is unbearable. He must express himself and let himself go. He gives free rein to his complaint and speaks from the bitterness of his soul. The expression of complaints is a way to draw attention for the situation a person is in. There are people who always complain out of dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They think they have suffered badly compared to others. This type of complainer about their fate, complains because they feel that they have been wronged and because their desires are not being met. Job is not that kind of complainer. He really has something to complain about.
His complaint is against God (Job 10:2). God should “not condemn” him or let him know why He is doing this to him. Job is not yet ready to resign himself to his fate and certainly not to surrender to God for his fate. Rather, he should call God to account. Then, if God does not let him know why He is fighting him, he will ask God his questions.
It is, of course, inappropriate to call God to account. Unbelief does so in great moderation, because it denies there is a sovereign God. Paul says to such people: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9:20). But Job is not such a person. He wrestles with God and, out of the greatest despair, slings his questions to heaven. God does not blame him for putting up a big mouth against Him. He knows Job and lets him rage until Job comes face to face with Him (Job 42:5-6).
Job does by no means and nowhere abandon God. It is precisely his great difficulty with God’s actions that drives him toward God. In his struggle to understand God, he fires a number of questions at God. He wants to know from Him whether it is right for Him to oppress him (Job 10:3). What is His gain if He uses His power to oppress him? Faith answers: “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men” (Lamentations 3:33). But Job is not that far yet.
He knows that God’s hands have made him, that God did also “labor” for him. But what does God do with him, the labor of His hands? He rejects him. Surely, this is impossible to reconcile, isn’t it? Doesn’t God love His own work? But there is nothing of that in His treatment of Job. He treats Job, who has served Him so faithfully, as a masterpiece without value. And what is even stranger is that He looks favorably on the schemes of the wicked. They live happily in the light, while he is in darkness.
Would all this escape God? That is why Job asks God if He sometimes has the eyes of flesh and sees as a man sees, so that He has overlooked Job’s suffering. A creature cannot look beyond its own horizon. A human being certainly cannot look into the hearts of others (Job 10:4). But God does, doesn’t He? That is the desperate underlying thought of Job. But then he can no longer grasp God’s ways, for him they are all murky and incomprehensible.
God is not bound to time either. This brings Job to the firing of his third question, why does He look so much like a mortal who counts the days, and like a man who sees his years pass by (Job 10:5)? Job knows that God sees much wider and much deeper than a man and that He is not bound to time and space. For God there is no past or future. For Him, His past and future are always present.
But then why does He pretend that He, like a human being, is limited in understanding and in time and space? For Job this is apparent from the way God is occupied with him. He experiences it as if God thoroughly investigates his iniquity, as if He is unaware that He has served Him faithfully (Job 10:6). Why, then, does He search so much for his sin? Why doesn’t God wait patiently until sin is clear to everyone? Why does He hasten, like a man, to torture Job in order to force a confession?
‘Of course You know’, Job says to God, ‘“that I am indeed not guilty” (Job 10:7). But it says nothing to You. You are continuing to destroy me. And I cannot resist it. Nor is there anyone who will stand up for me against You, to save me from Your hand. Who would that be? No one can stand up to You.’
Job can’t understand that the Creator and the Destroyer are the same Person. At first God’s hands skillfully “fashioned and made” him and protected him, but now these two hands are around him to destroy him (Job 10:8). Job is not an evolutionist; he firmly believes in God as his Fashioner and Maker. He just cannot understand what God does with what He has fashioned and made. God first created him with great wisdom, ability, effort, and care. And then, suddenly and without cause, He destroys His work, Job, with the same hands. Who makes a beautiful vase to smash it into pieces a little later?
He reminds God that He made him a fragile, vulnerable clay (Job 10:9). He knows that God formed man, Adam, “of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). He also knows that man “to dust … shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This presupposes that Job knows about the Fall and its consequences for man. He also acknowledges God’s judgment of sin, that death has come into the world through it.
After the picture of the potter, Job now uses the picture of the cheesemaker (Job 10:10). A solid substance, cheese, comes out of the liquid milk after coagulation. This is a beautiful picture of man’s creation and growth. This is also God’s work.
He places skin and flesh through which a form is created (Job 10:11). He also places bones and sinews through which the body can move and walk. In this way He weaves man into a whole. David says that he is “woven” in his mother’s womb and that he is “skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth” (Psalms 139:13; 15). Man is a piece of art, the product of an Artist.
Job now speaks of the life he was given as a gift (Job 10:12). It was given to him by God, both in conception and in birth. He also acknowledges that God, by giving him life, has also given him lovingkindness. Life is a gift from the merciful God. His spirit, with which he can be connected to God, is also the object of God’s care, Job says here. God has preserved the spirit of Job in His care. That Job has not abandoned God is the result of God’s care for his spirit.
This wonderful description of his life as a product of God is a prelude to a new complaint about God’s dealings with him. God has so clearly cared for him. But His purpose is very different from Job’s expectations. ‘Now it appears’, Job says to God as it were, ‘that You had other, hidden plans with my birth’ (Job 10:13). In fact, Job says it so strongly, that he knows that God planned this with him from the beginning.
Job constantly feels God’s penetrating eye on him, but now not only to take care of him (Job 10:12), but to spy on him and catch him for sin (Job 10:14). Not the slightest sin escapes him. Certainly, if he is guilty, he has to fear God’s wrath (Job 10:15). Then the cry fits him: “Woe to me!” But even if he is righteous – and he thinks so of himself – he will not be able to raise his head proudly. After all, God is aiming at him. He is therefore satiated with disgrace and can only bow his head out of misery.
‘Can You face my misery and remain unmoved? It seems so because You don’t care about my misery. But if I myself try to put myself out of my misery, then “You would hunt me like a lion” (Job 10:16). If it seems that You leave me alone for a while, then I am mistaken, for You return to me to further maul me. You are acting very miraculously with me; I don’t understand a thing. First You have created me with care, and then You make every effort to humiliate and destroy me.’
Job complains that God is bringing new witnesses against him instead of asserting his right (Job 10:17). It may be that Job means his friends by this. They set themselves up as lawyers of God. They defend His interests, at least that is the impression they give. They do so in a way that makes Job feel God’s anger against him. Every new plea of the friends that they think they should keep in favor of God and in which they charge Job, is as it were a new army that positions itself against Job. It is an army that in turn constantly bombards him with words. It is therefore not strange that Job erupts in a new series of complaints.
Job 30:13
Job’s Longing for Death
What Job says in Job 10:18-19 reinforces what he said in Job 3. Here he attributes his birth explicitly – and rightly so, of course – to God (Job 10:18; cf. Psalms 22:9a). However, he is not thankful to God for this act, but complains to Him about it. He should never have allowed his birth to take place. If only he had died in the womb, no eye would ever have seen him in the wretched circumstances in which he now finds himself. Then it would be as if he had never been there (Job 10:19). He would have been brought from the womb to the tomb, nameless, and would be buried. Then he would never have known of the torments he now undergoes (cf. Ecclesiastes 4:2-3).
But he is still alive, and he experiences that life as a long path of suffering on which he has been consciously placed by God. He has only a few days left and then his life is over (Job 10:20; Psalms 39:5). He wishes that God would stop tormenting him, that He would not continue to do so to the very last moment of his life. He would like to have some rest and joy in the few remaining days before he leaves this life forever (cf. Psalms 39:13).
If he leaves this life, he will be in the tomb and will never return to earth (Job 10:21). The tomb is in “the land of darkness and deep shadow”. It is “the land of utter gloom as darkness [itself]” where darkness is lord and master and “the deep shadow” covers everything (Job 10:22).
In that darkness every order is lacking, just as it was before the days of creation (Genesis 1:2). There is no order of day and night or summer and winter or heat and cold. There is also no order by age or gender or rank or status. The bones of the dead are gathered together without anyone knowing who they belong to except the omniscient God.
The darkness shines there as if it were light. If the light is darkness, how great is the darkness! The light reveals everything, but if the light is darkness, then the darkness itself is extremely dark. The darkness is impenetrable. Nothing is visible in it, there are not even vague contours perceptible so that there might be some recognition.
Job 30:14
Job’s Longing for Death
What Job says in Job 10:18-19 reinforces what he said in Job 3. Here he attributes his birth explicitly – and rightly so, of course – to God (Job 10:18; cf. Psalms 22:9a). However, he is not thankful to God for this act, but complains to Him about it. He should never have allowed his birth to take place. If only he had died in the womb, no eye would ever have seen him in the wretched circumstances in which he now finds himself. Then it would be as if he had never been there (Job 10:19). He would have been brought from the womb to the tomb, nameless, and would be buried. Then he would never have known of the torments he now undergoes (cf. Ecclesiastes 4:2-3).
But he is still alive, and he experiences that life as a long path of suffering on which he has been consciously placed by God. He has only a few days left and then his life is over (Job 10:20; Psalms 39:5). He wishes that God would stop tormenting him, that He would not continue to do so to the very last moment of his life. He would like to have some rest and joy in the few remaining days before he leaves this life forever (cf. Psalms 39:13).
If he leaves this life, he will be in the tomb and will never return to earth (Job 10:21). The tomb is in “the land of darkness and deep shadow”. It is “the land of utter gloom as darkness [itself]” where darkness is lord and master and “the deep shadow” covers everything (Job 10:22).
In that darkness every order is lacking, just as it was before the days of creation (Genesis 1:2). There is no order of day and night or summer and winter or heat and cold. There is also no order by age or gender or rank or status. The bones of the dead are gathered together without anyone knowing who they belong to except the omniscient God.
The darkness shines there as if it were light. If the light is darkness, how great is the darkness! The light reveals everything, but if the light is darkness, then the darkness itself is extremely dark. The darkness is impenetrable. Nothing is visible in it, there are not even vague contours perceptible so that there might be some recognition.
Job 30:15
Job’s Longing for Death
What Job says in Job 10:18-19 reinforces what he said in Job 3. Here he attributes his birth explicitly – and rightly so, of course – to God (Job 10:18; cf. Psalms 22:9a). However, he is not thankful to God for this act, but complains to Him about it. He should never have allowed his birth to take place. If only he had died in the womb, no eye would ever have seen him in the wretched circumstances in which he now finds himself. Then it would be as if he had never been there (Job 10:19). He would have been brought from the womb to the tomb, nameless, and would be buried. Then he would never have known of the torments he now undergoes (cf. Ecclesiastes 4:2-3).
But he is still alive, and he experiences that life as a long path of suffering on which he has been consciously placed by God. He has only a few days left and then his life is over (Job 10:20; Psalms 39:5). He wishes that God would stop tormenting him, that He would not continue to do so to the very last moment of his life. He would like to have some rest and joy in the few remaining days before he leaves this life forever (cf. Psalms 39:13).
If he leaves this life, he will be in the tomb and will never return to earth (Job 10:21). The tomb is in “the land of darkness and deep shadow”. It is “the land of utter gloom as darkness [itself]” where darkness is lord and master and “the deep shadow” covers everything (Job 10:22).
In that darkness every order is lacking, just as it was before the days of creation (Genesis 1:2). There is no order of day and night or summer and winter or heat and cold. There is also no order by age or gender or rank or status. The bones of the dead are gathered together without anyone knowing who they belong to except the omniscient God.
The darkness shines there as if it were light. If the light is darkness, how great is the darkness! The light reveals everything, but if the light is darkness, then the darkness itself is extremely dark. The darkness is impenetrable. Nothing is visible in it, there are not even vague contours perceptible so that there might be some recognition.
Job 30:16
Job’s Longing for Death
What Job says in Job 10:18-19 reinforces what he said in Job 3. Here he attributes his birth explicitly – and rightly so, of course – to God (Job 10:18; cf. Psalms 22:9a). However, he is not thankful to God for this act, but complains to Him about it. He should never have allowed his birth to take place. If only he had died in the womb, no eye would ever have seen him in the wretched circumstances in which he now finds himself. Then it would be as if he had never been there (Job 10:19). He would have been brought from the womb to the tomb, nameless, and would be buried. Then he would never have known of the torments he now undergoes (cf. Ecclesiastes 4:2-3).
But he is still alive, and he experiences that life as a long path of suffering on which he has been consciously placed by God. He has only a few days left and then his life is over (Job 10:20; Psalms 39:5). He wishes that God would stop tormenting him, that He would not continue to do so to the very last moment of his life. He would like to have some rest and joy in the few remaining days before he leaves this life forever (cf. Psalms 39:13).
If he leaves this life, he will be in the tomb and will never return to earth (Job 10:21). The tomb is in “the land of darkness and deep shadow”. It is “the land of utter gloom as darkness [itself]” where darkness is lord and master and “the deep shadow” covers everything (Job 10:22).
In that darkness every order is lacking, just as it was before the days of creation (Genesis 1:2). There is no order of day and night or summer and winter or heat and cold. There is also no order by age or gender or rank or status. The bones of the dead are gathered together without anyone knowing who they belong to except the omniscient God.
The darkness shines there as if it were light. If the light is darkness, how great is the darkness! The light reveals everything, but if the light is darkness, then the darkness itself is extremely dark. The darkness is impenetrable. Nothing is visible in it, there are not even vague contours perceptible so that there might be some recognition.
Job 30:17
Job’s Longing for Death
What Job says in Job 10:18-19 reinforces what he said in Job 3. Here he attributes his birth explicitly – and rightly so, of course – to God (Job 10:18; cf. Psalms 22:9a). However, he is not thankful to God for this act, but complains to Him about it. He should never have allowed his birth to take place. If only he had died in the womb, no eye would ever have seen him in the wretched circumstances in which he now finds himself. Then it would be as if he had never been there (Job 10:19). He would have been brought from the womb to the tomb, nameless, and would be buried. Then he would never have known of the torments he now undergoes (cf. Ecclesiastes 4:2-3).
But he is still alive, and he experiences that life as a long path of suffering on which he has been consciously placed by God. He has only a few days left and then his life is over (Job 10:20; Psalms 39:5). He wishes that God would stop tormenting him, that He would not continue to do so to the very last moment of his life. He would like to have some rest and joy in the few remaining days before he leaves this life forever (cf. Psalms 39:13).
If he leaves this life, he will be in the tomb and will never return to earth (Job 10:21). The tomb is in “the land of darkness and deep shadow”. It is “the land of utter gloom as darkness [itself]” where darkness is lord and master and “the deep shadow” covers everything (Job 10:22).
In that darkness every order is lacking, just as it was before the days of creation (Genesis 1:2). There is no order of day and night or summer and winter or heat and cold. There is also no order by age or gender or rank or status. The bones of the dead are gathered together without anyone knowing who they belong to except the omniscient God.
The darkness shines there as if it were light. If the light is darkness, how great is the darkness! The light reveals everything, but if the light is darkness, then the darkness itself is extremely dark. The darkness is impenetrable. Nothing is visible in it, there are not even vague contours perceptible so that there might be some recognition.
Job 30:19
Introduction
In his reply to Bildad, Job stated that he experiences God as an adversary, but that a lawsuit against Him is not feasible. This provokes a reaction from Zophar the Naamathite. Because Zophar speaks last, it is likely that he is the youngest of the friends. His speech is more general in character than that of the other friends, but also harsher. Not only does he discuss the content of Job’s argument, but he also attacks Job himself and his integrity in a crude way.
With Zophar, we miss Eliphaz’s dignity and Bildad’s skillful arguments. He is impetuous and not sensitive in his speech. Like the other two, he fails to solve the enigma of Job’s suffering. Through his theory that Jobs’ suffering is the result of sins committed by him, he plunges the poor man even deeper into darkness.
Zophar paints Job as a foolish mocker, but still tries to lecture him. In his speech, he adopts the attitude of a great sage who possesses all wisdom. He tells Job at length about the greatness of the unfathomable God, and explains to him His actions as if he himself had fully understood this unfathomable God.
In his answer (Job 12-14) Job surpasses Zophar by far, both in length and in the fervor of expressions. This is not because Job has a greater ability, but because their gaze is not as wide as his.
Blaming Job’s Flood of Words
Zophar the Naamathite responds to Job’s answer to Bildad (Job 11:1). He feels compelled to respond to Job’s “multitude of words” (Job 11:2). He accuses Job of being “a talkative man”, someone who talks a lot, just to get his right, as if someone is right because he uses a lot of words (c.f. Proverbs 10:19).
By the way, Job not only talks a lot and uses a lot of words, but all his words have no substance either (Job 11:3; cf. Ecclesiastes 5:2). It is much ado about nothing. Zophar calls Job’s words “boasts”. He clearly shows that he thinks Job is talking nonsense. Job shouldn’t think that with such nonsense he silences “men” – i.e. the friends – because they no longer have a response.
Zophar adds another qualification. What Job said about God from the deepest misery, has, in his conviction, the character of “mocking”. This must be dealt with. Job must be made aware of the scoff of his words, so that he will be ashamed of what he has said.
It indeed is very rude of Zophar to qualify Job’s utterances in this way. How dare he accuse Job of lying and scoffing! Job spoke in despair and said inappropriate things of and about God. But he is far from being a scoffer. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced of God’s high holiness. What he struggles with is how God acts with him. It is a warning for us not to call certain statements about God by people in great distress a defamation of God.
Zophar considers the words of Job as pure mockery because he draws false conclusions from what Job has said. According to him, Job has said that his teaching is pure and that he is innocent in God’s eyes (Job 11:4). But Job did not say that. He has always maintained his innocence (Job 9:21; Job 10:7) and impeccability against their false accusations that he is a hypocrite, but never claimed to be perfect.
Zophar did not listen carefully. He listened selectively, and heard only that which suited his views of God. Not listening carefully to what someone else is saying has often been a source of miscommunication and misery. We need to listen carefully to what the other person is saying and also try to understand what he is saying. We can hear someone else’s words, but sometimes we can’t understand what he means to say.
Sometimes we only hear half of what someone is saying or we forget a part of it. Then words are taken out of context and wrong conclusions are drawn. Suppose I hear someone say: ’I don’t like coffee with milk.’ When I say to someone else: ‘He said: I don’t like coffee’, I quote the other person verbatim and therefore correctly. But because I only partly quote what the other person has said, I tell a lie about him. A half-truth is a whole lie (Genesis 20:2; 12).
Zophar’s persistent denial of Job that he has done something evil brings Zophar to the hard sigh that God should open His mouth against Job (Job 11:5). Then it would be over and done with Job talking about his uprightness. He says this in the full conviction that God will say to Job what he and both his friends keep saying to him.
If only God would reveal the wisdom of His actions to Job (Job 11:6). It is a wisdom hidden in Himself. No one will see any of it if He does not make it known. His wisdom is a double wisdom, which means that it is an unfathomable wisdom. If God were to show something of this to Job, he would see that God still treats him very gently with everything that has happened to him, and not charging him everything he deserves.
Without any proof, Zophar suggests that God does not even repay all of Job’s sins. Indirectly, he claims that he is aware of God’s wisdom. He sits on God’s chair and states that God forgets much of Job’s iniquity, that is, He does not take it into account. In His judgment of Job, according to Zophar, He allows a number of iniquities to go unpunished, for otherwise nothing would have been left of Job at all. Job should be thankful to God for this, for he got off lightly. Zophar is a hard, legal man. Of his friends he goes furthest in his accusations.
In this Job 11:6 we find the main point of Zophar’s argument against Job, namely the certainty that God punishes sins, so that according to him, rightly so, Job can never escape his well-deserved punishment.
Job 30:20
Introduction
In his reply to Bildad, Job stated that he experiences God as an adversary, but that a lawsuit against Him is not feasible. This provokes a reaction from Zophar the Naamathite. Because Zophar speaks last, it is likely that he is the youngest of the friends. His speech is more general in character than that of the other friends, but also harsher. Not only does he discuss the content of Job’s argument, but he also attacks Job himself and his integrity in a crude way.
With Zophar, we miss Eliphaz’s dignity and Bildad’s skillful arguments. He is impetuous and not sensitive in his speech. Like the other two, he fails to solve the enigma of Job’s suffering. Through his theory that Jobs’ suffering is the result of sins committed by him, he plunges the poor man even deeper into darkness.
Zophar paints Job as a foolish mocker, but still tries to lecture him. In his speech, he adopts the attitude of a great sage who possesses all wisdom. He tells Job at length about the greatness of the unfathomable God, and explains to him His actions as if he himself had fully understood this unfathomable God.
In his answer (Job 12-14) Job surpasses Zophar by far, both in length and in the fervor of expressions. This is not because Job has a greater ability, but because their gaze is not as wide as his.
Blaming Job’s Flood of Words
Zophar the Naamathite responds to Job’s answer to Bildad (Job 11:1). He feels compelled to respond to Job’s “multitude of words” (Job 11:2). He accuses Job of being “a talkative man”, someone who talks a lot, just to get his right, as if someone is right because he uses a lot of words (c.f. Proverbs 10:19).
By the way, Job not only talks a lot and uses a lot of words, but all his words have no substance either (Job 11:3; cf. Ecclesiastes 5:2). It is much ado about nothing. Zophar calls Job’s words “boasts”. He clearly shows that he thinks Job is talking nonsense. Job shouldn’t think that with such nonsense he silences “men” – i.e. the friends – because they no longer have a response.
Zophar adds another qualification. What Job said about God from the deepest misery, has, in his conviction, the character of “mocking”. This must be dealt with. Job must be made aware of the scoff of his words, so that he will be ashamed of what he has said.
It indeed is very rude of Zophar to qualify Job’s utterances in this way. How dare he accuse Job of lying and scoffing! Job spoke in despair and said inappropriate things of and about God. But he is far from being a scoffer. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced of God’s high holiness. What he struggles with is how God acts with him. It is a warning for us not to call certain statements about God by people in great distress a defamation of God.
Zophar considers the words of Job as pure mockery because he draws false conclusions from what Job has said. According to him, Job has said that his teaching is pure and that he is innocent in God’s eyes (Job 11:4). But Job did not say that. He has always maintained his innocence (Job 9:21; Job 10:7) and impeccability against their false accusations that he is a hypocrite, but never claimed to be perfect.
Zophar did not listen carefully. He listened selectively, and heard only that which suited his views of God. Not listening carefully to what someone else is saying has often been a source of miscommunication and misery. We need to listen carefully to what the other person is saying and also try to understand what he is saying. We can hear someone else’s words, but sometimes we can’t understand what he means to say.
Sometimes we only hear half of what someone is saying or we forget a part of it. Then words are taken out of context and wrong conclusions are drawn. Suppose I hear someone say: ’I don’t like coffee with milk.’ When I say to someone else: ‘He said: I don’t like coffee’, I quote the other person verbatim and therefore correctly. But because I only partly quote what the other person has said, I tell a lie about him. A half-truth is a whole lie (Genesis 20:2; 12).
Zophar’s persistent denial of Job that he has done something evil brings Zophar to the hard sigh that God should open His mouth against Job (Job 11:5). Then it would be over and done with Job talking about his uprightness. He says this in the full conviction that God will say to Job what he and both his friends keep saying to him.
If only God would reveal the wisdom of His actions to Job (Job 11:6). It is a wisdom hidden in Himself. No one will see any of it if He does not make it known. His wisdom is a double wisdom, which means that it is an unfathomable wisdom. If God were to show something of this to Job, he would see that God still treats him very gently with everything that has happened to him, and not charging him everything he deserves.
Without any proof, Zophar suggests that God does not even repay all of Job’s sins. Indirectly, he claims that he is aware of God’s wisdom. He sits on God’s chair and states that God forgets much of Job’s iniquity, that is, He does not take it into account. In His judgment of Job, according to Zophar, He allows a number of iniquities to go unpunished, for otherwise nothing would have been left of Job at all. Job should be thankful to God for this, for he got off lightly. Zophar is a hard, legal man. Of his friends he goes furthest in his accusations.
In this Job 11:6 we find the main point of Zophar’s argument against Job, namely the certainty that God punishes sins, so that according to him, rightly so, Job can never escape his well-deserved punishment.
Job 30:21
Introduction
In his reply to Bildad, Job stated that he experiences God as an adversary, but that a lawsuit against Him is not feasible. This provokes a reaction from Zophar the Naamathite. Because Zophar speaks last, it is likely that he is the youngest of the friends. His speech is more general in character than that of the other friends, but also harsher. Not only does he discuss the content of Job’s argument, but he also attacks Job himself and his integrity in a crude way.
With Zophar, we miss Eliphaz’s dignity and Bildad’s skillful arguments. He is impetuous and not sensitive in his speech. Like the other two, he fails to solve the enigma of Job’s suffering. Through his theory that Jobs’ suffering is the result of sins committed by him, he plunges the poor man even deeper into darkness.
Zophar paints Job as a foolish mocker, but still tries to lecture him. In his speech, he adopts the attitude of a great sage who possesses all wisdom. He tells Job at length about the greatness of the unfathomable God, and explains to him His actions as if he himself had fully understood this unfathomable God.
In his answer (Job 12-14) Job surpasses Zophar by far, both in length and in the fervor of expressions. This is not because Job has a greater ability, but because their gaze is not as wide as his.
Blaming Job’s Flood of Words
Zophar the Naamathite responds to Job’s answer to Bildad (Job 11:1). He feels compelled to respond to Job’s “multitude of words” (Job 11:2). He accuses Job of being “a talkative man”, someone who talks a lot, just to get his right, as if someone is right because he uses a lot of words (c.f. Proverbs 10:19).
By the way, Job not only talks a lot and uses a lot of words, but all his words have no substance either (Job 11:3; cf. Ecclesiastes 5:2). It is much ado about nothing. Zophar calls Job’s words “boasts”. He clearly shows that he thinks Job is talking nonsense. Job shouldn’t think that with such nonsense he silences “men” – i.e. the friends – because they no longer have a response.
Zophar adds another qualification. What Job said about God from the deepest misery, has, in his conviction, the character of “mocking”. This must be dealt with. Job must be made aware of the scoff of his words, so that he will be ashamed of what he has said.
It indeed is very rude of Zophar to qualify Job’s utterances in this way. How dare he accuse Job of lying and scoffing! Job spoke in despair and said inappropriate things of and about God. But he is far from being a scoffer. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced of God’s high holiness. What he struggles with is how God acts with him. It is a warning for us not to call certain statements about God by people in great distress a defamation of God.
Zophar considers the words of Job as pure mockery because he draws false conclusions from what Job has said. According to him, Job has said that his teaching is pure and that he is innocent in God’s eyes (Job 11:4). But Job did not say that. He has always maintained his innocence (Job 9:21; Job 10:7) and impeccability against their false accusations that he is a hypocrite, but never claimed to be perfect.
Zophar did not listen carefully. He listened selectively, and heard only that which suited his views of God. Not listening carefully to what someone else is saying has often been a source of miscommunication and misery. We need to listen carefully to what the other person is saying and also try to understand what he is saying. We can hear someone else’s words, but sometimes we can’t understand what he means to say.
Sometimes we only hear half of what someone is saying or we forget a part of it. Then words are taken out of context and wrong conclusions are drawn. Suppose I hear someone say: ’I don’t like coffee with milk.’ When I say to someone else: ‘He said: I don’t like coffee’, I quote the other person verbatim and therefore correctly. But because I only partly quote what the other person has said, I tell a lie about him. A half-truth is a whole lie (Genesis 20:2; 12).
Zophar’s persistent denial of Job that he has done something evil brings Zophar to the hard sigh that God should open His mouth against Job (Job 11:5). Then it would be over and done with Job talking about his uprightness. He says this in the full conviction that God will say to Job what he and both his friends keep saying to him.
If only God would reveal the wisdom of His actions to Job (Job 11:6). It is a wisdom hidden in Himself. No one will see any of it if He does not make it known. His wisdom is a double wisdom, which means that it is an unfathomable wisdom. If God were to show something of this to Job, he would see that God still treats him very gently with everything that has happened to him, and not charging him everything he deserves.
Without any proof, Zophar suggests that God does not even repay all of Job’s sins. Indirectly, he claims that he is aware of God’s wisdom. He sits on God’s chair and states that God forgets much of Job’s iniquity, that is, He does not take it into account. In His judgment of Job, according to Zophar, He allows a number of iniquities to go unpunished, for otherwise nothing would have been left of Job at all. Job should be thankful to God for this, for he got off lightly. Zophar is a hard, legal man. Of his friends he goes furthest in his accusations.
In this Job 11:6 we find the main point of Zophar’s argument against Job, namely the certainty that God punishes sins, so that according to him, rightly so, Job can never escape his well-deserved punishment.
Job 30:22
Introduction
In his reply to Bildad, Job stated that he experiences God as an adversary, but that a lawsuit against Him is not feasible. This provokes a reaction from Zophar the Naamathite. Because Zophar speaks last, it is likely that he is the youngest of the friends. His speech is more general in character than that of the other friends, but also harsher. Not only does he discuss the content of Job’s argument, but he also attacks Job himself and his integrity in a crude way.
With Zophar, we miss Eliphaz’s dignity and Bildad’s skillful arguments. He is impetuous and not sensitive in his speech. Like the other two, he fails to solve the enigma of Job’s suffering. Through his theory that Jobs’ suffering is the result of sins committed by him, he plunges the poor man even deeper into darkness.
Zophar paints Job as a foolish mocker, but still tries to lecture him. In his speech, he adopts the attitude of a great sage who possesses all wisdom. He tells Job at length about the greatness of the unfathomable God, and explains to him His actions as if he himself had fully understood this unfathomable God.
In his answer (Job 12-14) Job surpasses Zophar by far, both in length and in the fervor of expressions. This is not because Job has a greater ability, but because their gaze is not as wide as his.
Blaming Job’s Flood of Words
Zophar the Naamathite responds to Job’s answer to Bildad (Job 11:1). He feels compelled to respond to Job’s “multitude of words” (Job 11:2). He accuses Job of being “a talkative man”, someone who talks a lot, just to get his right, as if someone is right because he uses a lot of words (c.f. Proverbs 10:19).
By the way, Job not only talks a lot and uses a lot of words, but all his words have no substance either (Job 11:3; cf. Ecclesiastes 5:2). It is much ado about nothing. Zophar calls Job’s words “boasts”. He clearly shows that he thinks Job is talking nonsense. Job shouldn’t think that with such nonsense he silences “men” – i.e. the friends – because they no longer have a response.
Zophar adds another qualification. What Job said about God from the deepest misery, has, in his conviction, the character of “mocking”. This must be dealt with. Job must be made aware of the scoff of his words, so that he will be ashamed of what he has said.
It indeed is very rude of Zophar to qualify Job’s utterances in this way. How dare he accuse Job of lying and scoffing! Job spoke in despair and said inappropriate things of and about God. But he is far from being a scoffer. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced of God’s high holiness. What he struggles with is how God acts with him. It is a warning for us not to call certain statements about God by people in great distress a defamation of God.
Zophar considers the words of Job as pure mockery because he draws false conclusions from what Job has said. According to him, Job has said that his teaching is pure and that he is innocent in God’s eyes (Job 11:4). But Job did not say that. He has always maintained his innocence (Job 9:21; Job 10:7) and impeccability against their false accusations that he is a hypocrite, but never claimed to be perfect.
Zophar did not listen carefully. He listened selectively, and heard only that which suited his views of God. Not listening carefully to what someone else is saying has often been a source of miscommunication and misery. We need to listen carefully to what the other person is saying and also try to understand what he is saying. We can hear someone else’s words, but sometimes we can’t understand what he means to say.
Sometimes we only hear half of what someone is saying or we forget a part of it. Then words are taken out of context and wrong conclusions are drawn. Suppose I hear someone say: ’I don’t like coffee with milk.’ When I say to someone else: ‘He said: I don’t like coffee’, I quote the other person verbatim and therefore correctly. But because I only partly quote what the other person has said, I tell a lie about him. A half-truth is a whole lie (Genesis 20:2; 12).
Zophar’s persistent denial of Job that he has done something evil brings Zophar to the hard sigh that God should open His mouth against Job (Job 11:5). Then it would be over and done with Job talking about his uprightness. He says this in the full conviction that God will say to Job what he and both his friends keep saying to him.
If only God would reveal the wisdom of His actions to Job (Job 11:6). It is a wisdom hidden in Himself. No one will see any of it if He does not make it known. His wisdom is a double wisdom, which means that it is an unfathomable wisdom. If God were to show something of this to Job, he would see that God still treats him very gently with everything that has happened to him, and not charging him everything he deserves.
Without any proof, Zophar suggests that God does not even repay all of Job’s sins. Indirectly, he claims that he is aware of God’s wisdom. He sits on God’s chair and states that God forgets much of Job’s iniquity, that is, He does not take it into account. In His judgment of Job, according to Zophar, He allows a number of iniquities to go unpunished, for otherwise nothing would have been left of Job at all. Job should be thankful to God for this, for he got off lightly. Zophar is a hard, legal man. Of his friends he goes furthest in his accusations.
In this Job 11:6 we find the main point of Zophar’s argument against Job, namely the certainty that God punishes sins, so that according to him, rightly so, Job can never escape his well-deserved punishment.
Job 30:23
Introduction
In his reply to Bildad, Job stated that he experiences God as an adversary, but that a lawsuit against Him is not feasible. This provokes a reaction from Zophar the Naamathite. Because Zophar speaks last, it is likely that he is the youngest of the friends. His speech is more general in character than that of the other friends, but also harsher. Not only does he discuss the content of Job’s argument, but he also attacks Job himself and his integrity in a crude way.
With Zophar, we miss Eliphaz’s dignity and Bildad’s skillful arguments. He is impetuous and not sensitive in his speech. Like the other two, he fails to solve the enigma of Job’s suffering. Through his theory that Jobs’ suffering is the result of sins committed by him, he plunges the poor man even deeper into darkness.
Zophar paints Job as a foolish mocker, but still tries to lecture him. In his speech, he adopts the attitude of a great sage who possesses all wisdom. He tells Job at length about the greatness of the unfathomable God, and explains to him His actions as if he himself had fully understood this unfathomable God.
In his answer (Job 12-14) Job surpasses Zophar by far, both in length and in the fervor of expressions. This is not because Job has a greater ability, but because their gaze is not as wide as his.
Blaming Job’s Flood of Words
Zophar the Naamathite responds to Job’s answer to Bildad (Job 11:1). He feels compelled to respond to Job’s “multitude of words” (Job 11:2). He accuses Job of being “a talkative man”, someone who talks a lot, just to get his right, as if someone is right because he uses a lot of words (c.f. Proverbs 10:19).
By the way, Job not only talks a lot and uses a lot of words, but all his words have no substance either (Job 11:3; cf. Ecclesiastes 5:2). It is much ado about nothing. Zophar calls Job’s words “boasts”. He clearly shows that he thinks Job is talking nonsense. Job shouldn’t think that with such nonsense he silences “men” – i.e. the friends – because they no longer have a response.
Zophar adds another qualification. What Job said about God from the deepest misery, has, in his conviction, the character of “mocking”. This must be dealt with. Job must be made aware of the scoff of his words, so that he will be ashamed of what he has said.
It indeed is very rude of Zophar to qualify Job’s utterances in this way. How dare he accuse Job of lying and scoffing! Job spoke in despair and said inappropriate things of and about God. But he is far from being a scoffer. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced of God’s high holiness. What he struggles with is how God acts with him. It is a warning for us not to call certain statements about God by people in great distress a defamation of God.
Zophar considers the words of Job as pure mockery because he draws false conclusions from what Job has said. According to him, Job has said that his teaching is pure and that he is innocent in God’s eyes (Job 11:4). But Job did not say that. He has always maintained his innocence (Job 9:21; Job 10:7) and impeccability against their false accusations that he is a hypocrite, but never claimed to be perfect.
Zophar did not listen carefully. He listened selectively, and heard only that which suited his views of God. Not listening carefully to what someone else is saying has often been a source of miscommunication and misery. We need to listen carefully to what the other person is saying and also try to understand what he is saying. We can hear someone else’s words, but sometimes we can’t understand what he means to say.
Sometimes we only hear half of what someone is saying or we forget a part of it. Then words are taken out of context and wrong conclusions are drawn. Suppose I hear someone say: ’I don’t like coffee with milk.’ When I say to someone else: ‘He said: I don’t like coffee’, I quote the other person verbatim and therefore correctly. But because I only partly quote what the other person has said, I tell a lie about him. A half-truth is a whole lie (Genesis 20:2; 12).
Zophar’s persistent denial of Job that he has done something evil brings Zophar to the hard sigh that God should open His mouth against Job (Job 11:5). Then it would be over and done with Job talking about his uprightness. He says this in the full conviction that God will say to Job what he and both his friends keep saying to him.
If only God would reveal the wisdom of His actions to Job (Job 11:6). It is a wisdom hidden in Himself. No one will see any of it if He does not make it known. His wisdom is a double wisdom, which means that it is an unfathomable wisdom. If God were to show something of this to Job, he would see that God still treats him very gently with everything that has happened to him, and not charging him everything he deserves.
Without any proof, Zophar suggests that God does not even repay all of Job’s sins. Indirectly, he claims that he is aware of God’s wisdom. He sits on God’s chair and states that God forgets much of Job’s iniquity, that is, He does not take it into account. In His judgment of Job, according to Zophar, He allows a number of iniquities to go unpunished, for otherwise nothing would have been left of Job at all. Job should be thankful to God for this, for he got off lightly. Zophar is a hard, legal man. Of his friends he goes furthest in his accusations.
In this Job 11:6 we find the main point of Zophar’s argument against Job, namely the certainty that God punishes sins, so that according to him, rightly so, Job can never escape his well-deserved punishment.
Job 30:24
Introduction
In his reply to Bildad, Job stated that he experiences God as an adversary, but that a lawsuit against Him is not feasible. This provokes a reaction from Zophar the Naamathite. Because Zophar speaks last, it is likely that he is the youngest of the friends. His speech is more general in character than that of the other friends, but also harsher. Not only does he discuss the content of Job’s argument, but he also attacks Job himself and his integrity in a crude way.
With Zophar, we miss Eliphaz’s dignity and Bildad’s skillful arguments. He is impetuous and not sensitive in his speech. Like the other two, he fails to solve the enigma of Job’s suffering. Through his theory that Jobs’ suffering is the result of sins committed by him, he plunges the poor man even deeper into darkness.
Zophar paints Job as a foolish mocker, but still tries to lecture him. In his speech, he adopts the attitude of a great sage who possesses all wisdom. He tells Job at length about the greatness of the unfathomable God, and explains to him His actions as if he himself had fully understood this unfathomable God.
In his answer (Job 12-14) Job surpasses Zophar by far, both in length and in the fervor of expressions. This is not because Job has a greater ability, but because their gaze is not as wide as his.
Blaming Job’s Flood of Words
Zophar the Naamathite responds to Job’s answer to Bildad (Job 11:1). He feels compelled to respond to Job’s “multitude of words” (Job 11:2). He accuses Job of being “a talkative man”, someone who talks a lot, just to get his right, as if someone is right because he uses a lot of words (c.f. Proverbs 10:19).
By the way, Job not only talks a lot and uses a lot of words, but all his words have no substance either (Job 11:3; cf. Ecclesiastes 5:2). It is much ado about nothing. Zophar calls Job’s words “boasts”. He clearly shows that he thinks Job is talking nonsense. Job shouldn’t think that with such nonsense he silences “men” – i.e. the friends – because they no longer have a response.
Zophar adds another qualification. What Job said about God from the deepest misery, has, in his conviction, the character of “mocking”. This must be dealt with. Job must be made aware of the scoff of his words, so that he will be ashamed of what he has said.
It indeed is very rude of Zophar to qualify Job’s utterances in this way. How dare he accuse Job of lying and scoffing! Job spoke in despair and said inappropriate things of and about God. But he is far from being a scoffer. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced of God’s high holiness. What he struggles with is how God acts with him. It is a warning for us not to call certain statements about God by people in great distress a defamation of God.
Zophar considers the words of Job as pure mockery because he draws false conclusions from what Job has said. According to him, Job has said that his teaching is pure and that he is innocent in God’s eyes (Job 11:4). But Job did not say that. He has always maintained his innocence (Job 9:21; Job 10:7) and impeccability against their false accusations that he is a hypocrite, but never claimed to be perfect.
Zophar did not listen carefully. He listened selectively, and heard only that which suited his views of God. Not listening carefully to what someone else is saying has often been a source of miscommunication and misery. We need to listen carefully to what the other person is saying and also try to understand what he is saying. We can hear someone else’s words, but sometimes we can’t understand what he means to say.
Sometimes we only hear half of what someone is saying or we forget a part of it. Then words are taken out of context and wrong conclusions are drawn. Suppose I hear someone say: ’I don’t like coffee with milk.’ When I say to someone else: ‘He said: I don’t like coffee’, I quote the other person verbatim and therefore correctly. But because I only partly quote what the other person has said, I tell a lie about him. A half-truth is a whole lie (Genesis 20:2; 12).
Zophar’s persistent denial of Job that he has done something evil brings Zophar to the hard sigh that God should open His mouth against Job (Job 11:5). Then it would be over and done with Job talking about his uprightness. He says this in the full conviction that God will say to Job what he and both his friends keep saying to him.
If only God would reveal the wisdom of His actions to Job (Job 11:6). It is a wisdom hidden in Himself. No one will see any of it if He does not make it known. His wisdom is a double wisdom, which means that it is an unfathomable wisdom. If God were to show something of this to Job, he would see that God still treats him very gently with everything that has happened to him, and not charging him everything he deserves.
Without any proof, Zophar suggests that God does not even repay all of Job’s sins. Indirectly, he claims that he is aware of God’s wisdom. He sits on God’s chair and states that God forgets much of Job’s iniquity, that is, He does not take it into account. In His judgment of Job, according to Zophar, He allows a number of iniquities to go unpunished, for otherwise nothing would have been left of Job at all. Job should be thankful to God for this, for he got off lightly. Zophar is a hard, legal man. Of his friends he goes furthest in his accusations.
In this Job 11:6 we find the main point of Zophar’s argument against Job, namely the certainty that God punishes sins, so that according to him, rightly so, Job can never escape his well-deserved punishment.
Job 30:25
God’s Greatness and Job’s Nullity
Zophar underlines what he said about the wisdom of God with a sublime description of God. He asks Job whether he can discover the depts of God (Job 11:7). The depths or the mysteries of God are untraceable for Job and for every human being. Never will a man be able to figure out God in His wisdom and judge His deeds. The perfection of the Almighty is unfathomable for Job and for every human being.
In what Zophar says here about God, he connects Divine wisdom with God as the Almighty. The perfect wisdom and omnipotence of God surpasses every measure of creation with which man as a creature is associated (Job 11:8-9). Zophar describes of God’s perfect wisdom and omnipotence the measure of height, depth, length, and width.
He does so in pictures that we can understand because we know that God is like this, but that we cannot grasp according to their magnitude. Job cannot rise above heaven, so that he could do something there. He cannot look deeper than Sheol, the realm of the dead, so that he would know something about what lies even deeper. In the length he can only see the earth and in the breadth only the sea. God’s perfect wisdom and omnipotence go far beyond what a human being can comprehend and is therefore unattainable to him. Man is His creature, above whom God as Creator is infinitely exalted.
In the New Testament we also encounter these four dimensions. There they are made accessible to the believers of the church, who together form the new man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. Through the Spirit we, with all the saints, are able to understand “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18-19). “For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).
Job 30:26
God’s Greatness and Job’s Nullity
Zophar underlines what he said about the wisdom of God with a sublime description of God. He asks Job whether he can discover the depts of God (Job 11:7). The depths or the mysteries of God are untraceable for Job and for every human being. Never will a man be able to figure out God in His wisdom and judge His deeds. The perfection of the Almighty is unfathomable for Job and for every human being.
In what Zophar says here about God, he connects Divine wisdom with God as the Almighty. The perfect wisdom and omnipotence of God surpasses every measure of creation with which man as a creature is associated (Job 11:8-9). Zophar describes of God’s perfect wisdom and omnipotence the measure of height, depth, length, and width.
He does so in pictures that we can understand because we know that God is like this, but that we cannot grasp according to their magnitude. Job cannot rise above heaven, so that he could do something there. He cannot look deeper than Sheol, the realm of the dead, so that he would know something about what lies even deeper. In the length he can only see the earth and in the breadth only the sea. God’s perfect wisdom and omnipotence go far beyond what a human being can comprehend and is therefore unattainable to him. Man is His creature, above whom God as Creator is infinitely exalted.
In the New Testament we also encounter these four dimensions. There they are made accessible to the believers of the church, who together form the new man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. Through the Spirit we, with all the saints, are able to understand “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18-19). “For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).
Job 30:27
God’s Greatness and Job’s Nullity
Zophar underlines what he said about the wisdom of God with a sublime description of God. He asks Job whether he can discover the depts of God (Job 11:7). The depths or the mysteries of God are untraceable for Job and for every human being. Never will a man be able to figure out God in His wisdom and judge His deeds. The perfection of the Almighty is unfathomable for Job and for every human being.
In what Zophar says here about God, he connects Divine wisdom with God as the Almighty. The perfect wisdom and omnipotence of God surpasses every measure of creation with which man as a creature is associated (Job 11:8-9). Zophar describes of God’s perfect wisdom and omnipotence the measure of height, depth, length, and width.
He does so in pictures that we can understand because we know that God is like this, but that we cannot grasp according to their magnitude. Job cannot rise above heaven, so that he could do something there. He cannot look deeper than Sheol, the realm of the dead, so that he would know something about what lies even deeper. In the length he can only see the earth and in the breadth only the sea. God’s perfect wisdom and omnipotence go far beyond what a human being can comprehend and is therefore unattainable to him. Man is His creature, above whom God as Creator is infinitely exalted.
In the New Testament we also encounter these four dimensions. There they are made accessible to the believers of the church, who together form the new man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. Through the Spirit we, with all the saints, are able to understand “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18-19). “For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).
Job 30:28
All Things Are Open to Him
The infinite exaltation of God above all things and everyone is also evident in His dealings with man. If He passes by a man examining and finds sin, He has such a person confined to pre-trial detention, awaiting trial and sentencing (Job 11:10). He can also call someone to Himself to account before Him without anyone holding Him back. God can act in this way because He knows man through and through.
Again, these are powerful, impressive truths about God. God is indeed sovereign and nothing is hidden to Him. Scripture says to us: “All things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). However, this is not said as a threat, but as comfort and encouragement. It should encourage us to ask Him to search and try us to see if there be any hurtful way in us, so that He may lead us in the everlasting way (Psalms 139:23-24).
This is precisely not the way Zophar speaks about God. He does not apply the truth of God’s knowledge of man to himself, but to Job. He suggests that Job is a false man who does iniquity (Job 11:11). Does Job think that God does not pay attention to this? Zophar wants to make it clear to him that God is aware of him, the deceitful Job. Zophar believes that this can make Job bow down.
What Zophar says looks like shock therapy. He speaks to Job so harshly that it must bring him to his knees. He also suggests that Job is “an idiot”, or an airhead, with even less chance of becoming wise than the chance that the foal of a wild donkey is born a sensible creature (Job 11:12). A wild donkey is the symbol of stubbornness, independency and willfulness, not bothering with any authority. Ishmael is compared to a wild donkey (Genesis 16:12).
With Zophar there is not the slightest doubt about the relationship of Job to God and God’s dealings with him. God is sovereign and just. He rules the world by rewarding good and punishing evil. He does so in the lives of men on earth. Job is punished, so Job has sinned. That may not be visible to everyone, but the facts don’t lie. Job must be a traitor who secretly commits his sin, hidden from everyone, but not from God.
Job 30:29
All Things Are Open to Him
The infinite exaltation of God above all things and everyone is also evident in His dealings with man. If He passes by a man examining and finds sin, He has such a person confined to pre-trial detention, awaiting trial and sentencing (Job 11:10). He can also call someone to Himself to account before Him without anyone holding Him back. God can act in this way because He knows man through and through.
Again, these are powerful, impressive truths about God. God is indeed sovereign and nothing is hidden to Him. Scripture says to us: “All things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). However, this is not said as a threat, but as comfort and encouragement. It should encourage us to ask Him to search and try us to see if there be any hurtful way in us, so that He may lead us in the everlasting way (Psalms 139:23-24).
This is precisely not the way Zophar speaks about God. He does not apply the truth of God’s knowledge of man to himself, but to Job. He suggests that Job is a false man who does iniquity (Job 11:11). Does Job think that God does not pay attention to this? Zophar wants to make it clear to him that God is aware of him, the deceitful Job. Zophar believes that this can make Job bow down.
What Zophar says looks like shock therapy. He speaks to Job so harshly that it must bring him to his knees. He also suggests that Job is “an idiot”, or an airhead, with even less chance of becoming wise than the chance that the foal of a wild donkey is born a sensible creature (Job 11:12). A wild donkey is the symbol of stubbornness, independency and willfulness, not bothering with any authority. Ishmael is compared to a wild donkey (Genesis 16:12).
With Zophar there is not the slightest doubt about the relationship of Job to God and God’s dealings with him. God is sovereign and just. He rules the world by rewarding good and punishing evil. He does so in the lives of men on earth. Job is punished, so Job has sinned. That may not be visible to everyone, but the facts don’t lie. Job must be a traitor who secretly commits his sin, hidden from everyone, but not from God.
Job 30:30
All Things Are Open to Him
The infinite exaltation of God above all things and everyone is also evident in His dealings with man. If He passes by a man examining and finds sin, He has such a person confined to pre-trial detention, awaiting trial and sentencing (Job 11:10). He can also call someone to Himself to account before Him without anyone holding Him back. God can act in this way because He knows man through and through.
Again, these are powerful, impressive truths about God. God is indeed sovereign and nothing is hidden to Him. Scripture says to us: “All things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). However, this is not said as a threat, but as comfort and encouragement. It should encourage us to ask Him to search and try us to see if there be any hurtful way in us, so that He may lead us in the everlasting way (Psalms 139:23-24).
This is precisely not the way Zophar speaks about God. He does not apply the truth of God’s knowledge of man to himself, but to Job. He suggests that Job is a false man who does iniquity (Job 11:11). Does Job think that God does not pay attention to this? Zophar wants to make it clear to him that God is aware of him, the deceitful Job. Zophar believes that this can make Job bow down.
What Zophar says looks like shock therapy. He speaks to Job so harshly that it must bring him to his knees. He also suggests that Job is “an idiot”, or an airhead, with even less chance of becoming wise than the chance that the foal of a wild donkey is born a sensible creature (Job 11:12). A wild donkey is the symbol of stubbornness, independency and willfulness, not bothering with any authority. Ishmael is compared to a wild donkey (Genesis 16:12).
With Zophar there is not the slightest doubt about the relationship of Job to God and God’s dealings with him. God is sovereign and just. He rules the world by rewarding good and punishing evil. He does so in the lives of men on earth. Job is punished, so Job has sinned. That may not be visible to everyone, but the facts don’t lie. Job must be a traitor who secretly commits his sin, hidden from everyone, but not from God.
Job 30:31
Call to Repentance
Zophar encourages Job to pray to God (Job 11:13). To this end the other two friends have also called (Job 5:8; Job 8:5). The fact that Zophar addresses this call to Job makes his arrogance clear. For him it is certain that Job has sinned, that is his starting point. He also believes that you recover if you confess your sins. From the beginning of this book we know that Job’s suffering was not caused by sin.
What Zophar says is true in itself. First Job has to direct his heart right, that means that he acknowledges God in His government over him. One can only draw near to God if one’s heart is in the right mind. Then one can come to Him with ‘hands spread out’, that is in prayer, as a supplicant. This means that there must first be a confession of iniquity and that he must break with it. Job first has to get rid of the evil things he is doing – “in your hand” – and put them far away from him (Job 11:14). Nor should he allow any wickedness in his dwellings.
Zophar’s call expresses his legal view. He tells Job what he must do to come to terms with God. His call is good if it is made to someone who lives in sin. His call is wrong here because it is made to someone of whom God has testified that he serves Him.