Scripture Daily

Context No. 1642 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 17:1-16: in context

1“My spirit is consumed. My days are extinct and the grave is ready for me. 2Surely there are mockers with me. My eye dwells on their provocation. 3“Now give a pledge. Be collateral for me with yourself. Who is there who will strike hands with me? 4For you have hidden their heart from understanding, therefore you will not exalt them. 5He who denounces his friends for plunder, even the eyes of his children will fail. 6“But he has made me a byword of the people. They spit in my face. 7My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow. All my members are as a shadow. 8Upright men will be astonished at this. The innocent will stir himself up against the godless. 9Yet the righteous will hold to his way. He who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger. 10But as for you all, come back. I will not find a wise man among you. 11My days are past. My plans are broken off, as are the thoughts of my heart. 12They change the night into day, saying ‘The light is near’ in the presence of darkness. 13If I look for Sheol as my house, if I have spread my couch in the darkness, 14if I have said to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ and ‘My sister,’ 15where then is my hope? As for my hope, who will see it? 16Shall it go down with me to the gates of Sheol, or descend together into the dust?”

Job has sunk to the depths of despair. My spirit is broken, he says, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me. He is surrounded by mockers, made a byword among the people, spat upon; his eye grows dim with grief, his whole body a shadow. He speaks of making his bed in darkness, calling the pit his home and the worm his mother. And he cries out the question of the despairing: where then is my hope? Who will see any hope for me? Will it go down with me to the gates of the grave?

This is one of the darkest passages in Job, and it is worth noticing that scripture gives it a place. Job is not pretending to be fine; he is at the very bottom, broken, despairing, barely able to see any hope at all, crying out, where then is my hope? And God's word does not censor this; it records the raw, honest despair of a suffering man without rebuke, without demanding that he put on a brave face. There is a real mercy in that. We sometimes feel that faith requires us to hide our despair, to pretend before God and others that we are holding up when we are not, that honest lament is a failure of trust. Job shows otherwise. He brings his despair to God unvarnished, even the terrible question, where is my hope, and this honest lament is preserved in scripture as part of a faithful man's story. God does not require us to pretend we are fine; there is room before him for the raw cry of the despairing. And yet, even in this darkness, a thread holds. Earlier in the same speech Job says the righteous will hold to his way, and he who has clean hands will grow stronger; and for all his despair, Job does not let go of God, does not curse him, keeps addressing him even in the depths. His hope is nearly gone, but he is still speaking to God, still bringing the darkness to him rather than turning away. That is faith at its lowest ebb, not the absence of despair but the refusal to stop turning toward God even in it. Where then is my hope, Job cries, and he cries it to God, which is itself a kind of holding on.

When I am in the depths, barely able to see any hope, can I bring my despair to God honestly, as Job did, without pretending I am fine, and can I keep turning toward him even at my lowest, so that the very crying out to God is itself a holding on?

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