Scripture Daily

Context No. 3830 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 10:1-16: in context

1“My soul is weary of my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 2I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me. Show me why you contend with me. 3Is it good to you that you should oppress, that you should despise the work of your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked? 4Do you have eyes of flesh? Or do you see as man sees? 5Are your days as the days of mortals, or your years as man’s years, 6that you inquire after my iniquity, and search after my sin? 7Although you know that I am not wicked, there is no one who can deliver out of your hand. 8“‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, yet you destroy me. 9Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again? 10Haven’t you poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? 11You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. 12You have granted me life and loving kindness. Your visitation has preserved my spirit. 13Yet you hid these things in your heart. I know that this is with you: 14if I sin, then you mark me. You will not acquit me from my iniquity. 15If I am wicked, woe to me. If I am righteous, I still will not lift up my head, being filled with disgrace, and conscious of my affliction. 16If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion. Again you show yourself powerful to me.

Job, in the depth of his suffering, does not fall silent or turn away from God; he turns toward him and pours out his anguish with raw honesty: I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. He questions God directly, asking why the God who made him, who fashioned him with such care, like clay, like curded milk, and granted him life and steadfast love, now seems to contend against him.

There is something important in the very form of Job's grief. He is not blaspheming into the void or abandoning his faith; he is bringing his bitter complaint to God himself, arguing with the One he still, at bottom, trusts enough to argue with. Scripture does not hide such raw lament; it gives it a place. When we are overwhelmed and cannot understand what God is doing, we are not required to pretend a serenity we do not feel. Like Job, we can bring our honest anguish and even our complaints directly to God, for it is a strange mark of faith to keep speaking to the God we do not understand.

When I am overwhelmed and cannot understand what God is doing, do I turn toward him with honest lament rather than away from him in silence, bringing even my bitterness to the God I still trust enough to address?

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