Scripture Daily

Context No. 1600 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 8:17-22: in context

17His roots are wrapped around the rock pile. He sees the place of stones. 18If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, ‘I have not seen you.’ 19Behold, this is the joy of his way. Out of the earth, others will spring. 20“Behold, God will not cast away a blameless man, neither will he uphold the evildoers. 21He will still fill your mouth with laughter, your lips with shouting. 22Those who hate you will be clothed with shame. The tent of the wicked will be no more.”

Bildad, one of Job's friends, is arguing that God deals with people strictly according to their conduct: the wicked wither like a plant torn up by the roots, while the blameless are upheld. He ends his speech with what sounds like comfort: God will not cast away a blameless man, nor uphold evildoers; he will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouting, and those who hate you will be clothed with shame.

Bildad's speech holds a genuine hope tangled up with a flawed theology, and it is worth sorting them out. The flawed part is his neat formula, that suffering is always deserved, that the blameless prosper and only the wicked suffer, so Job's affliction must be evidence of Job's sin. The book of Job as a whole exists to complicate exactly this; Job was not suffering because he was wicked, and Bildad's tidy retribution theology, however confidently stated, was wrong, as God himself would later declare. We should not take from Bildad the lesson that suffering always means we have sinned; that is precisely the false comfort the book refutes. But tangled in with the flawed theology is a genuine hope, and it is worth keeping: he will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouting. Even a mistaken comforter can voice a true thing, and this is true: God can restore joy after sorrow. However deep the grief, however dark the season, God is able to fill a mouth that now weeps with laughter again, to bring shouting where there was silence. Bildad applied it wrongly, as if Job could earn the return of joy by being blameless enough; but the promise itself, that God can bring laughter after weeping, restore gladness after grief, is one scripture affirms again and again. So we take the hope and leave the false formula. Suffering is not always deserved, and joy is not earned by our blamelessness; but the God who lets us weep can and does restore laughter, filling with gladness again the mouth that now is full of sorrow.

Can I hold the genuine hope that God can yet fill my sorrowing mouth with laughter and restore joy after grief, while refusing the false comfort that suffering always means I have sinned, trusting the God who restores gladness without earning it by my own blamelessness?

Sources