Scripture Daily

Context No. 1858 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 6:17-30: in context

17In the dry season, they vanish. When it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. 18The caravans that travel beside them turn away. They go up into the waste, and perish. 19The caravans of Tema looked. The companies of Sheba waited for them. 20They were distressed because they were confident. They came there, and were confounded. 21For now you are nothing. You see a terror, and are afraid. 22Did I ever say, ‘Give to me’? or, ‘Offer a present for me from your substance’? 23or, ‘Deliver me from the adversary’s hand’? or, ‘Redeem me from the hand of the oppressors’? 24“Teach me, and I will hold my peace. Cause me to understand my error. 25How forcible are words of uprightness! But your reproof, what does it reprove? 26Do you intend to reprove words, since the speeches of one who is desperate are as wind? 27Yes, you would even cast lots for the fatherless, and make merchandise of your friend. 28Now therefore be pleased to look at me, for surely I will not lie to your face. 29Please return. Let there be no injustice. Yes, return again. My cause is righteous. 30Is there injustice on my tongue? Can’t my taste discern mischievous things?

Job likens his friends to a seasonal stream that fails just when it is needed. In the wet season the brook runs, but in the dry heat it vanishes, consumed out of its place; and the caravans that turn aside to it, counting on water, come and find nothing, and are confounded. So you, he tells his friends, have become nothing to me; you see my terror and are afraid. He pleads with them: teach me where I am wrong, look at me honestly, do not merely reprove the desperate words of a suffering man.

The image Job reaches for is painfully apt: friends like a stream that dries up in the heat. A desert traveler counts on the brook, turns aside to it thirsty, and finds the bed dry, the water gone just when it was most needed. That, Job says, is what his friends have been to him: present, perhaps, in good times, but failing him in his hour of deepest need, their comfort evaporating when he was most desperate for it. Instead of water, they brought him reproof; instead of standing by him, they drew back, afraid, useless. There is a particular pain in this, the pain of friends who fail us when we most need them. Many have known it: the friends who were there in the easy times but vanished in the hard ones, whose support dried up just when the crisis came, who offered criticism when we needed comfort, or simply withdrew. It is a bitter thing to reach, thirsty, for the friendship we counted on, and find the bed dry. Job's lament names this real grief. And it holds up, by contrast, a call to be a different kind of friend, one who does not run dry in the heat. There is a friend, the proverb says, who sticks closer than a brother; and confidence in an unfaithful friend in time of trouble, another proverb says, is like a broken tooth. The friend worth being, and worth having, is the one who does not fail in the dry season, who is present precisely when the need is greatest, whose comfort does not evaporate when the crisis comes. When a friend is suffering, the temptation is to draw back, to offer reproof from a safe distance, to fail them when they most need us; the call is to be the stream that still runs in the heat, present and faithful in the hour of need. Job's friends dried up when he was thirsty; and his lament is a summons to be the kind of friend who does not.

Have I known the pain of friends who dried up in my hour of deepest need, present in the easy times but failing me in the hard ones, and am I willing to be a different kind of friend, one who does not run dry in the heat but stays present and faithful precisely when a friend's need is greatest, rather than drawing back as Job's friends did?

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