Context No. 2997 of 4322 · Job

Job 19:1-16: in context

1Then Job answered, 2“How long will you torment me, and crush me with words? 3You have reproached me ten times. You aren’t ashamed that you attack me. 4If it is true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. 5If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach, 6know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with his net. 7“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice. 8He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths. 9He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. 10He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. He has plucked my hope up like a tree. 11He has also kindled his wrath against me. He counts me among his adversaries. 12His troops come on together, build a siege ramp against me, and encamp around my tent. 13“He has put my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. 14My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me. 15Those who dwell in my house and my maids consider me a stranger. I am an alien in their sight. 16I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer. I beg him with my mouth.

Job answers his friends' relentless assault: how long will you torment me and crush me with words? Ten times over you have reproached me. And he feels that God himself has turned against him, walled up his path, stripped his glory, counted him an enemy, laid siege to his very tent. Worse still, every human relationship has failed: his family stands far off, his friends have forgotten him, even his own servants treat him as a stranger.

This is the depth of Job's suffering, and it asks for compassion, not correction. He feels doubly abandoned, by God, whom he believes has become his adversary, and by every human bond around him. His friends wound him with their words, his relatives estrange themselves, his servants ignore his call. It is the crushing loneliness of the sufferer who feels forsaken on every side. And yet, only a few verses later, this same Job will cry out, I know that my Redeemer lives. Even from the pit of total abandonment, faith can reach for a Redeemer.

When I feel abandoned by God and everyone, can I, like Job, keep crying out and reaching for the Redeemer who lives even when I cannot feel him?

Sources

Job 19:14: "My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me."
Job 19:25: "But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth."
Psalm 27:10: "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up."