Scripture Daily

Context No. 1722 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 30:17-31: in context

17In the night season my bones are pierced in me, and the pains that gnaw me take no rest. 18My garment is disfigured by great force. It binds me about as the collar of my tunic. 19He has cast me into the mire. I have become like dust and ashes. 20I cry to you, and you do not answer me. I stand up, and you gaze at me. 21You have turned to be cruel to me. With the might of your hand you persecute me. 22You lift me up to the wind, and drive me with it. You dissolve me in the storm. 23For I know that you will bring me to death, to the house appointed for all living. 24“However doesn’t one stretch out a hand in his fall? Or in his calamity therefore cry for help? 25Didn’t I weep for him who was in trouble? Wasn’t my soul grieved for the needy? 26When I looked for good, then evil came. When I waited for light, darkness came. 27My heart is troubled, and doesn’t rest. Days of affliction have come on me. 28I go mourning without the sun. I stand up in the assembly, and cry for help. 29I am a brother to jackals, and a companion to ostriches. 30My skin grows black and peels from me. My bones are burned with heat. 31Therefore my harp has turned to mourning, and my pipe into the voice of those who weep.

Job's lament reaches a bleak depth. His bones are pierced in the night, the gnawing pains give no rest; he has been cast into the mire, become like dust and ashes. And most bitterly, he feels that God has turned against him and gone silent. I cry to you, he says, and you do not answer me; I stand up, and you only gaze at me. He had wept for those in trouble and grieved for the needy; but when he looked for good, evil came, and when he waited for light, darkness fell. My harp, he says, is turned to mourning.

The heaviest note in this lament is the silence of God. Job is not only in physical agony; he feels that God, whom he cries out to, will not answer. I cry to you, and you do not answer me. To suffer is hard; to suffer while heaven seems shut, while our cries go up and no answer comes, is harder still, and Job voices it without disguise. He even says it feels as though God has turned against him, become his adversary rather than his help. And it is worth noticing that Job says all this to God. His complaint of God's silence is itself addressed to God; he does not turn away and stop praying, but keeps crying out, even to complain that his crying goes unanswered. There is a strange faithfulness in that. The honest lament of God's silence is not the same as unbelief; it is the cry of one who still believes enough to keep addressing God, even in the dark, even to protest the darkness. There is permission here for our own seasons when God seems silent, when we pray and pray and no answer comes, when it can even feel as though God has turned against us. We may think faith requires us to hide such feelings, to pretend the silence does not trouble us. Job did not pretend; he brought the silence itself to God, cried out about the unanswered crying. And in the book's own witness, this honest lament is not held against him. When God seems silent, the way of faith is not to stop crying out but, like Job, to keep bringing even our complaint of the silence to God, who hears the cry that protests his silence even when we cannot feel that he does.

When God seems silent, when I cry out and no answer comes and it can even feel as though he has turned against me, do I stop praying and turn away, or can I do as Job did and bring even the silence itself to God, continuing to cry out, trusting that the honest lament of his silence is still a way of holding on?

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