Scripture Daily

Context No. 1018 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 24:17-25: in context

17For the morning is to all of them like thick darkness, for they know the terrors of the thick darkness. 18“They are foam on the surface of the waters. Their portion is cursed on the earth. They don’t turn into the way of the vineyards. 19Drought and heat consume the snow waters, so does Sheol those who have sinned. 20The womb will forget him. The worm will feed sweetly on him. He will be no more remembered. Unrighteousness will be broken as a tree. 21He devours the barren who don’t bear. He shows no kindness to the widow. 22Yet God preserves the mighty by his power. He rises up who has no assurance of life. 23God gives them security, and they rest in it. His eyes are on their ways. 24They are exalted; yet a little while, and they are gone. Yes, they are brought low, they are taken out of the way as all others, and are cut off as the tops of the ears of grain. 25If it isn’t so now, who will prove me a liar, and make my speech worth nothing?”

Job is still arguing against his friends' neat theology. They insist the wicked always get punished promptly in this life; Job keeps pointing at the world as it actually is. In these verses he describes the wicked realistically: they do terrible things, prey on the barren and the widow, and yet God seems to give them security, and they rest in it, propped up and prosperous, God's eye on them but no lightning falling. And then Job grants the friends part of their point: yes, in the end they are brought low, exalted for a little while and then gone, cut off like heads of grain. But he insists on the honest timeline, that the reckoning is often not now.

What makes Job's argument important is its refusal to lie about the present for the sake of a tidy doctrine. His friends need the wicked to fall visibly and soon, because their whole system depends on suffering being proof of sin and prosperity proof of righteousness. Job looks at the same world and tells the truth: often the cruel are secure, comfortable, undisturbed, resting in their success while the widow they robbed gets no justice this year. He does not deny that judgment finally comes, they are cut off at the last, but he will not pretend it comes on schedule, in a way we can watch. This is a deeply honest faith, one that can hold both that God is just and that his justice is often not visible on our timetable, that the wicked may prosper for a long while before the end. Job dares God to prove him a liar, and God never does, because Job is telling the truth the friends could not bear. Faith does not require lying about how the world looks.

Can I hold, like Job, both that God is just and that his justice often is not visible on my timetable, without lying about a world where the wicked sometimes prosper long?

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