The Riddleblog

Job -- The Suffering Prophet (12): "The LORD Made Him Prosperous Again”

The Book of Job is known for its wonderful ending. Job’s good name, his wealth, and his family are at long last restored to him. The suffering prophet has endured an intense and terrible period of suffering without cursing God, nor blaming God for his troubles. Satan has been proven wrong and his attack upon the righteous ways of God has utterly failed.

Although Job is a justified sinner, he stands as YHWH’s blameless and upright servant. Job is not the self-centered opportunist who obeyed God only so that he would prosper, as Satan falsely charged. Once everything Job had was taken away, Job still refused to curse God to his face, as Satan predicted. Having successfully graduated from the school of suffering and then personally instructed by YHWH in the nature of true wisdom, Job’s ordeal comes to an end. The Lord restores to Job all the things he has lost, and then some. God is faithful to his covenant promises, his ways are proven righteous and just, and in his word alone is true wisdom to be found.

When we come to the conclusion of the Book of Job, there is much to consider. In an act of grace and condescension, God spoke to Job from the midst of the storm. Job was sick and suffering from sores all over his body. Job was thinking he was about to die, and nearly crossed the line when he demanded that YHWH issue a written indictment against him. Yet, God did not come to Job in judgment, nor confront him with a list of his sins. In fact, God did not answer any of Job’s specific questions about why all of this had come to pass. Nor did God deal with Job as Job demanded.

After the Lord appeared to Job from the midst of the storm and spoke to him about the nature of true wisdom which could be seen in all that God had made, Job knows that everything will be okay. He is reassured. He knows that his Creator-Redeemer is not angry with him, although Job complained of being abandoned. Throughout the dialogue with his friends, Job even wondered out loud whether God was being just with him. But the appearance of God to Job in the storm is actually an act of grace and brings Job’s ordeal to a blessed end.

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Reflections on JobKim RiddlebargerMarch 21, 2022Job vindicatedComment

Job -- The Suffering Prophet (11): Shall You Contend With the Almighty?

Job in YHWH’s School of Wisdom

YHWH’s examination now takes the student (Job) beyond matters of day and night, to matters of weather and the heavenly bodies (the first part of chapter 38). It is self-evident to Job that God rules over heaven and earth, because he has created them. Yet Job, a mere creature, has no control over the world in which he lives. YHWH’s examination of his suffering prophet continues, for there is still much for Job yet to learn. YHWH continues his examination of Job as the ordeal challenge continues. Beginning in verse 22 of Job 38, the Lord asks of Job,

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass? “Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the frost of heaven? The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, when the dust runs into a mass and the clods stick fast together?

No, Job cannot issue commands to the lightening in the storm. No, Job did not hang the constellations in space. Yet, the lightening coming from the storm is the Lord’s servant. The Lord spoke and the constellations came into being. Job is firmly put in his place–he is a creature, a sinful one at that.

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Reflections on JobKim RiddlebargerMarch 9, 2022God answers Job, God challenges JobComment

Job -- The Suffering Prophet (10): God Answers Job from the Whirlwind

God Answers Job from the Whirlwind

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar have had their say. So has Job. So has Elihu. Now Job will get the very thing he has been demanding–an audience before God. But when God speaks to Job, things will be much different than Job has been expecting. There will be no formal indictment with charges for Job to answer. The Lord will not give Job a detailed response to his list of questions, nor respond to Job’s specious charges that YHWH has not treated him fairly. Instead, God will cross-examine Job through a series of questions designed to teach Job true wisdom. In the end, Job not only will be much wiser, he will be humbled. Yet at the same time, Job will be assured of God’s favor toward him, even in the midst of his trial by ordeal, which blessedly comes to an end.

We move to the climatic closing chapters of the Book of Job (38-42). God speaks to Job from the midst of a whirlwind. At long last we get an answer to the question which has dominated this entire story so far–why do the righteous suffer? More specifically, why does Job suffer? But the answer Job receives from God is not one Job expects nor even necessarily likes. In fact, some would consider God’s words to Job no answer at all. In Job 38-42 we finally discover what God means when he says in Isaiah 55:8, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord,” and in Psalm 145:3 and Isaiah 40:28 when we read that God’s “greatness is unsearchable.” In our weakness, God condescends to teach Job that God’s thoughts, ways, and greatness transcend anything humans think or imagine. As a result, Job will be thoroughly humbled and transformed in his thinking before, in his grace, God restores to Job all those things which had been taken from him during his trial by ordeal, which is now blessedly completed (chapter 42).

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Reflections on JobKim RiddlebargerFebruary 14, 2022God answers JobComment

Job -- The Suffering Prophet (8): Job's Argument with Eliphaz About Suffering

The Pain Inflicted by Friends Trying to Help

There is a much greater pain than his sores, sleeplessness, and loss of all his children and possessions–the knowledge that Job’s friends think he has committed some secret sin, that he is guilty before God, is lying when he denies he’s sinned, and has therefore brought about his terrible ordeal.

From the perspective of Job’s friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar), the reason why Job lost all of his possessions, his children and his health is very simple. God is holy, therefore he must punish all sin. In this they are correct. Since it is obvious that Job is being punished by God (to their way of thinking), there can only be one explanation. Either Job, or his children, have committed some horrible sin which has kindled the wrath of God.

But Job knows he is innocent of such a sin. His heart is broken because he has no idea why God is subjecting him to such terrible suffering. Even as he cries out to God, lamenting his sad state and asking “why?” Job knows that his friends have no clue as to why he is suffering. Although arising from a sense of loyal friendship, Job knows their attempts to “comfort him” are actually cruel, self-righteous diatribes which have no basis in fact.

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Reflections on Job, Biblical Events, Biblical TheologyKim RiddlebargerJanuary 17, 2022

Job -- The Suffering Prophet (7): "Why?"

Satan’s Challenge Fails–Job Does Not Curse God

His memories of wealth and joy began to fade, largely erased by Job’s current misery. The presence of Job’s friends mourning his wretched condition brings forth a torrent of heartfelt but provocative words. Job’s doxology gives way to a lament of his birth. The greatest man of the east, is now crushed.

We read in Job 3:1-3, “After this,” [the arrival of his friends and the week spent in mourning] “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: `Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’” Job dares to plead with the Lord to remove that day when Job was conceived from human history. Job continues in verses 4-7, pleading “let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry enter it.” Job’s cry can be summarized, “it would have been better if I had never been born.”

The saddest part of Job’s ordeal is that his present pain has obscured the wonderful memories of all the joys he had known before. When life is viewed through the lens of pain and loss, it is easy for the sufferer to reason, “it would be better to have never existed at all than to endure my present sufferings.” Some of us have been there. Some of us are there now. Sustained pain robs us of so much–our joy often goes first, but at times pain even robs us of the assurance of our salvation.

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Reflections on JobKim RiddlebargerJanuary 10, 2022Job asks `why?'Comment

Job--The Suffering Prophet (6): Job's Counselors Arrive

Job’s Counselors Arrive

As the story of Job unfolds, we learn that there was a reason why Satan did not kill Job’s wife, when he took the lives of Job’s seven sons and three daughters. Satan used Mrs. Job in the same way in which he had used Eve in Eden–to vocalize the ends which Satan hoped to bring to pass, that Job would curse God to his face. The same holds true of Job’s three friends, who respond to their friend’s predicament with every intention of comforting Job in his suffering, but who, whether they know it or not, are actually doing the devil’s bidding. It is their presence in the city of Uz, which plunges Job into greater depths of despair than previously witnessed. With the arrival of these three “wise men,” Job descends from a state of physical misery into a state of spiritual torment and lament, as will be revealed in Job 3.

We are introduced to Job’s three friends in verses 11-13 of Job 2. According to Job 2:11, “When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.” The fact that Job’s three friends had to travel from their homes indicates that several months had transpired (cf. Job 7:3) between the time of Job’s loss of everything and the speeches from Job and his friends which begin in Job 3:1 ff. Some months earlier, when Job’s wife told him to admit that he had sinned and then to curse God and die, Job’s response was resolute (2:10). “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

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Reflections on Job, Biblical TheologyKim RiddlebargerJanuary 4, 2022Job's CounselorsComment

Job -- The Suffering Prophet (5): Job Loses Everything

Satan Comes to Rob, Steal, and Destroy

Everyone reading this essay has suffered loss. We have all lost something we prize. Some of us have suffered greatly and must live in constant pain, either physical or emotional, and sometimes both. Yet, no one reading this has lost as much as Job. Like a series of Tsunamis, the bad news of Satan’s handiwork begins to come, wave after wave after wave.

As we continue our look at Job, the suffering prophet, we come to verse 13 of chapter one, where we read “one day [probably that day when Job offered burnt offerings] when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, `The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!” The Sabeans are Arab Bedouins, who not only took all of Job’s livestock, they killed all of the servants. But this is only the beginning.

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Reflections on JobKim RiddlebargerDecember 20, 2021Job loses all, Job praises God despite his lossComment

Job -- The Suffering Prophet (4): Satan Before the Heavenly Court

As the story Job continues to unfold, the veil between the seen and the unseen is lifted. We discover that the heavenly court is in session. The Lord is on his throne and legions of angels are present. Summoned by God, Satan comes before the court as the accuser of God’s people. But this time it is the Lord who directs Satan’s attention to his righteous servant, Job. Seeing an opportunity to attack the foundation of the gospel, Satan takes the up the Lord’s challenge, calling into question Job’s righteousness. According to Satan the Accuser, Job is a hypocrite. Job is blameless and upright, fears God and shuns evil, only because God bribes him to do so by giving Job great wealth and personal comfort. Take all these things away–Satan argues–and Job’s supposed piety will be exposed for what it is–a falsehood. Once God’s challenge has been issued and accepted by Satan, the wisdom and goodness of God is at stake. Job must enter into a trial by ordeal, a trial he must endure and from which he must emerge victorious, so that God’s wisdom will be vindicated and that all his ways–mysterious as they may be–will be proven right.

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Job -- The Suffering Prophet (3): Who Was Job?

So, who was this man whom God called to suffer great loss and play such an important role in redemptive history?

Job is introduced to the reader in the opening verses of the first chapter. “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (v. 1). The land of Uz is east of the River Jordan (Qedem–“the east”), likely in what is now the nation of Jordan. Uz could be anywhere between Edom on the south, Moab on the east, and the land of the Aram to the north. While Job was not an Israelite–since no tribal or family identification is given–he clearly worships Israel’s God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. [1] So, apparently, do his friends and family.

As the story opens and we meet the central character, what stands out is the assertion that Job was “blameless and upright” and that “he feared God and turned away evil.” What, exactly, does this mean? One thing it does not mean is that Job was sinless, or that he had attained a state of justifying righteousness because he lived a blameless and upright life. We must not confuse cause and effect. We know this to be the case because elsewhere in this book Job declares himself to be a sinner. In Job 7:20, Job laments, “If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you?” In Job 13:26, he laments “for you write bitter things against me and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.” Finally, in Job 14:16 -17, Job confesses that “you would number my steps; you would not keep watch over my sin; my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity.”

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Reflections on Job, Biblical EventsKim RiddlebargerDecember 6, 2021Upright and blameless, Job as sinnerComment

Job -- The Suffering Prophet: "God's Sovereignty and Human Suffering" (2)

The story of Job is so compelling to us because it deals with a reality with which every Christian must wrestle–God’s sovereign control over every area of our lives. We have no problem accepting that God determines how tall we will be, whether we are born male or female, who our parents are, and what nationality we will be. We readily accept the fact that God determines what gifts and skills we will have, as well as whether or not we are born to means or poverty. We accept the fact that God determines the circumstances of our lives–including our height, skin color, health, length of life, and those calamities which may befall us. We accept these things without question because they are taught in Scripture and jive with our experience and common sense. God’s people nod in agreement to the assertion that “God is sovereign.” At least we nod in agreement until God does something we may not like or do not understand.

As Christians, we believe in original sin. All people who enter this world are guilty for Adam’s sin as well as their own (Psalm 51, Romans 5:12-19). Therefore, whenever someone suffers, the easy answer as to why they suffer is to go to our theological default setting. Why do people suffer? We suffer because we are sinners. We are being punished for what we have done.

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Job -- The Suffering Prophet: "Introduction"

The Book of Job is one of the most moving and profound stories known to humanity. Here is the account of a righteous and godly man, nearly overwhelmed by the loss of everything he owned and by the death of most everyone he loved, and who, now sick and afflicted beyond words, comes face to face with the sovereign God who brought all of these things to pass. And all the while, Job struggles to believe God’s promise to rescue him from his plight when every circumstance and every word offered in explanation only serves to call into question either Job’s righteousness or God’s goodness. It is not only a moving and fascinating story, but almost all of us can relate to what we read in this book. Many of us have been called to suffer and we certainly empathize with Job’s plight. It is also likely that we all know people like Job’s wife and friends who mean well, but who only make things worse every time they open their mouths when trying to help.

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