Job and Eliphaz

First Presbyterian Church, Fort Scott, KS

Job 23:1-9, 16-17

  

I suggested last week that we can approach the figure of Job as a person who is in pain.  There are lots of other interesting things about him.  But what we cannot miss is that he is in pain.

Job as a figure is fairly well known.  Last week I began with an episode from the Simpsons’ TV show in which Ned Flanders loses his home to a hurricane.  There is a Broadway play running right now in New York based on Job’s life.

Most people, even if they are unfamiliar with the Bible, will know that Job is a figure of suffering.  But they do not know much else about the book of Job.  They will only know that Job is a figure who loses everything but gets it back in the end.  It’s a tragedy with a happy ending.

Most of us are less familiar with the bulk of the book of Job: all the conversations Job has with his friends, and all of Job’s bitter, despairing complaints.  Those complaints begin in chapter 3 and continue throughout the book.

The truth is, Job’s complaints make some of us uncomfortable.  “I wasn’t allowed express myself that way to my own parents or teachers,” we might say.  “So certainly one should never approach God on those terms.”

In the introductory chapters we the readers witness the strange conversation between God and a sinister angel that results in almost unimaginable suffering for Job. 

God suggests to Satan that there is no one as blameless and upright as Job.  The Satan counters that Job only fears God because God has protected and blessed him.  Take all that away, suggests the Satan, and Job will turn and curse you.  So first, God gives the Satan permission to strike Job’s wealth (his animals and servants), his children, and his happiness. Job’s wealth is looted, is servants stolen, his ten children killed.  And Job holds on to his patience and piety, saying:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (1:21).

Then comes round two.  God provokes the Satan again.  “Do you see Job?” God asks.  I let you ruin him, and yet he still maintains his integrity.

“But that’s only because you did not allow me to touch his body with pain,” the Satan responds.  Then this line from God: “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life” (2:6).

What is most disturbing about this opening scene is that God, for reasons not entirely clear to us, agrees to allow his faithful creature and servant to be ambushed, terrified, and emotionally ruined.  Now granted, God is not the one pursuing Job with the intent of crushing him.  But Job doesn’t know that!  Is this the kind of God you can trust?

So, the Satan afflicted Job with painful, oozing, stinking sores from head to foot.  “Then Job took a piece of broken pottery an scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes” (2:8).

Job has fallen as far as a human being can fall.  Once wealthy and respected, he has lost everything and is now a nobody.  Once sustained by a large family, he is left desolate now, hopeless and without a future.  His once rich and rewarding life has now been narrowed to a focus on the intense pain of his sores.  Once proud of his own standing, a man of respect, he is now sitting in ashes, his pain made worse by the shame of his body’s grotesque appearance and rancid stench.

And yet still, Job doesn’t break.  To his wife’s invitation to curse God, Job responds: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

That’s where the book’s introduction leaves us – with Job ruined and writhing in pain.  What comes next in the story is the introduction of Job’s friends.

The Role of Friendship

Even at the end of your rope, if you have good friends, you might be able to carry on.  Intense pain, coupled with loneliness or isolation, is almost unbearable to us.  But pain experienced in the company of sympathetic and caring friends is often pain that can be endured.

We’re introduced to Job’s three friends: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.  When these three friends get word of what has happened to Job, “they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him” (2:11).  These three are to be commended: they are not afraid of their friend’s pain.  They know that they can bring comfort to their friend, and so they go.

Here we glimpse friendship at its very best:

They were visibly moved by their friend’s suffering.  “When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him.”  His oozing sores, and defeated posture disfigured him.  They respond with heaving, bodily grief for their friend.  They wept aloud, they tore their robes, and sprinkled dust on their heads.  These are gestures of grief and loss.  By acting this way, Job’s friends signal to him that they too are in pain for him and with him.

What they do next is the very best kind of friendship: “they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights.  No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was” (2:13).  This is a wonderful gift from friends.  To just be there.  To be there without pretending to fix things.  To just sit there, for a whole week.  Without a word.  Their mere presence on the ground with Job was an admission that no words were needed, no words were useful, no words appropriate to what Job was experiencing. 

I once had pneumonia at Christmas time, and was very sick, and very contagious, and so I couldn’t participate in all the family Christmas gatherings.  But one family member at a time, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, came to sit with me at our house.  I would have rather been with at the party.  But I was glad someone came to sit with me.

Henri Nouwen  tells the story of a student coming to his office to visit him.  The student enters, is offered and takes a sit.  And then he proceeds to sit without saying anything for several minutes.  And then, without a word, he stands, smiles, and leaves.

Let’s take to heart this lesson: we grossly overestimate the importance of our words, and we wildly underestimate the healing power of just being present with others.  With our parents.  With our kids.  With our spouses.  With our friends.

The Role of Complaint

Next I want to turn to consider the way Job gives expression to his pain.  He is in terrible pain, remember.  And after the week-long silence with his friends, he erupts in loud complaint.  The pain has begun something in him that he can no longer contain.

He says he wants to die.  He prefers death to the pain he’s experiencing. 

“May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’” (3:3).

Or again, “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?  Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?  For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest . . . Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day?” (3:11-16).

Notice that Job pictures death as a place of final rest.  There the dead go, never to return again.  There is no hope of another life, no second chances.  Death is the end, and that looks better to Job than his painful life.  He wishes he was never born.  And now his death cannot come soon enough.

What do you think of Job’s complaint?  What do you make of his bitterness?  His anger?  His death-wish? 

Before you answer that, Job’s complaints get angrier, more intense and more irreverent. 

Job says he cannot eat.  Food has lost its flavor.  The very sight of food makes him gag (6:6-7).

And because of his sores, he cannot sleep.  “The night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn.  My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again” (7:4-5).

“I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul” (7:11).

Keep in mind, Job has no knowledge of the deal struck between God and the Satan.  As far as Job’s own experience is concerned, he concludes that God is actively trying to destroy him.

“For the arrows of the almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me” (6:4).

“He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me” (16:9).

“I was at ease, and he broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; his archers surround me.  He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy; he pours out my gall on the ground.  He bursts upon me again and again” (16:12-14).

Job’s pain takes him to the brink of a thought that could derange any of us: what if God is an abusive monster?  “Leave me alone,” Job says to God at one point (7:16).  “Will you not look away from me for awhile, leave me alone until I swallow my spittle” (7:19).  The imagery Job uses in this complaint is hard to bear.  He is picturing God as an abusive bully, a brute and violent monster who is thrashing a smaller, defenseless person.  And Job has his arms up, just trying to cover his face, trying to deflect the blows of the God whom, Job assumes, hates him.

Is it OK for Job to speak this way to God?  Is this kind of directness, this kind of irreverent expression of our feelings, permissible?  What about you?  Do you allow yourself this kind of complaint against God? 

Job and Eliphaz

The first friend we meet is Eliphaz.  Of course it was good of Eliphaz to visit Job.  For seven days Eliphaz sat in silence with Job.  But when Job complained, Eliphaz couldn’t help himself.  He was confident that he could explain and make sense of Job’s pain.  Keep in mind what you as the reader already know from the introduction that Job is blameless and upright.  And now listen to the kinds of things Eliphaz says.

“Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?  Where were the upright ever destroyed?  As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.”  (Job 4:7-8)

“But if I were you, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before him. . . . The lowly God sets on high, and those who mourn are lifted to safety.  He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success.”  (Job 5:8-12)

The arrogance of Eliphaz is most telling when he tells Job that God always rescues and protects his people:

“You will know that your tent is secure; you will take stock of your property and find nothing missing.  You will know that your children will be many, and your descendants like the grass of the earth.  You will come to the grave in full vigor, like sheaves gathered in season.  We have examined this, and it is true.  So hear it and apply it to yourself.”  (Job 5:19, 24-27)

Eliphaz poses as one who is faithful to God.  He is confident.  He knows who God is and how God works.  And he sees himself as called to share what he knows with his suffering friend, Job.  Eliphaz is a foolish buffoon, but he doesn’t know it.  You will, no doubt, encounter people like this in your own life.  Now you have a name for them: Eliphaz.

But he gives voice to something very real and powerful.  When we encounter loss, disappointment, grief, or failure, we too may be tempted to think: I wonder if God is punishing me.  After all, unlike Job, we’re not blameless. 

But let me leave you with this today: the over-arching story the Bible tells about God is that God is on our side.  God is actively at work for our flourishing.  God wants us to thrive as his creatures.  If you doubt this, I ask you to turn your attention squarely to the gospels, to Jesus who is the clearest sign of what God is like.  And there we find God as a compassionate healer.  God binds up the wounded.  God gives strength to the weak.  So IF you have experienced pain, I ask you to remember that God is on your side, working in your life to bring strength and healing.

Can we learn from pain and suffering?  Of course.  If we remain open and alert, God can teach us in any and all circumstances, including periods of intense pain.  But that is different than saying that God is responsible for sending the pain our way.

So why?  Why do we suffer?  Why would God leave us open to such terrible pain?  Why would God create a world in which the creatures God loves have to endure so much hardship? 

Eliphaz was quick with an answer.  Because God is punishing us.  His answer was wrong then.  And it’s still wrong.

Job’s story is teaching us that we must live with our own ignorance.  There is much we do not know.  There is much we cannot know.  Sometimes, faithfulness calls us to confess: I do not know.  I do not understand.  I cannot fathom.  And in the soil of that confessed ignorance there can grow a deepening trust in God’s goodness. 

We see this goodness shining through in Hebrews 4.  God does not send us suffering.  God willingly and freely bears our suffering in the life and death of Jesus Christ.  That doesn’t answer all our questions.  But it can be the beginning of a newfound trust in God, and the beginning of wisdom.