Job 16-17

I'm continuing my exploration of Job and now Job answers the rebuke of Eliphaz. Eliphaz had been continuing his original position (16 chapters later) that God must have a reason to punish Job so it must be Job's fault. Job now continues his original position (16 chapters later): my comforters are lousy, I'm dieing in despair and have no one to comfort me despite my innocence.

What really struck me was the end of Job's speech: "If I hope for the grave as my house, if I make my bed the darkness, if I say to the pit 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'My mother,' or 'My sister,' where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of the grave? Shall we descend together into the dust?" (17:13-16)

Before I knew Christ's love I wasn't too different from Job. I certainly imagined myself innocent, and perhaps I was like Job in having no role in the calamity that befell my life. But what really pained me and brought me to despair was not what actually happened in my life. That was bad sure, but that wasn't my problem. It was this sense that I was completely alone and without any hope. The general trend of all life seemed like a steady downward spiral, perhaps I could find some comfort that the descent was slow or steady but it was all leading to a big, dark drain from which there was no escape.

I had had plenty of comforters who told me (perhaps correctly) that my life wasn't that bad. "Just be happy" Liz Cassidy would always say. But these Eliphaz and Bildad's failed to recognize was that the problem was that life did not have a recognizable hope.

Maybe if I had read Sartre I could have made up my own hope but in so far as life has actual reality that would only been a comfort before the abyss swallowed me up.

The only real comfort, is the comfort Job sought: to know God as a father rather than judge. That can make sense of our comfort and wipe away all tears in the way nothing else can. That is the hope I proclaim, found through Jesus Christ, trust worthy and true.