Many scholars grow impatient with Job’s complaints about his suffering and desire for death. They seem to want to impute knowledge to him that wasn’t available until after the cross. They paint a picture that simply isn’t there, seemingly, so they could point out that Job was in error in not clinging to or believing the fact that there is value in suffering for its own sake. The fact remains, however, that folks in Job’s day believed suffering, while indeed chastisement from God and intended for good, could also be understood as judgment, the wrath of God upon the wicked. There were two, and the only two, sides of that coin, as far as Job’s generation was concerned. Job accepted the fact his worldview was in error, and sought clarity, but the friends continued to embrace that erroneous worldview, despite its contradictions.
To expect Job and his generation to know and understand New Covenant theology, concerning suffering or one’s relationship with God, is to expect something similar to our having the ability to describe a color that has never been seen. The reader may go ahead and describe a color that isn’t yellow, red or blue or a combination of two or all three. Describe it in terms we can all understand. It is this kind of thing that modern scholarship demands of Job and the friends. If it is fair that scholars actually believe one should be able to do such a thing, why was it necessary for Christ to come, declaring and teaching the things about the Kingdom of God (cp. Matthew 13:35)?
Job is thoroughly confused, but not only confused, he is embarrassed, because he is unable to explain why he is suffering. For all intents and purposes, he is laboring under the wrath of God, because God had found him guilty of sin. Yet, Job’s experience would deny such a conclusion. Eliphaz, on the other hand, claims experience tells him Job must be a great sinner, who had for quite some time enjoyed the blessings of life. On the other hand, Bildad has taken the approach that tradition, the teachings of wiser men who lived in the past, have concluded that suffering, such as Job is experiencing, comes from the wrath of God upon the wicked. Job, therefore, must be wicked and needs to repent. Nevertheless, Job has concluded that men are not just before God (Job 9:2), so how could men know and understand the proposes of a totally just God? Such a thing would be like trying to describe how one’s dinner tastes, when one lacks the sense of taste. If one is unrighteous before God, how can one describe the Lord’s righteousness?
Hence, Job’s utter confusion. Why has God done this? Why am I accounted a wicked man, when I have no consciousness of being as wicked as the Lord’s wrath advertises? If all of this is his design, why, had he brought me into this world in the first place? Why didn’t’ I die at birth, if he would be so displeased with the work of his own hands? “Wouldn’t it have been better, if I had died before anyone’s eye had been cast upon me” (Job 10:18-19)? Such depressing thoughts made more sense to Job than what the Lord seemed to be doing to him, in the presence of everyone Job had ever known.
Therefore, Job cries out to God for mercy: “Aren’t my days few? Cease then. Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort…” (Job 10:20). Would it matter so much to the Lord’s sense of justice, if I didn’t suffer up until my very last breath? Surely, some mercy could be granted, that I might catch my breath and derive a little comfort, before I die. Would that be asking too much? Am I so wicked, or are you so displeased with me that you couldn’t grant me this one act of mercy, before the light of my life goes out, and I enter into the land of darkness (Job 10:21)?
Thus, Job requested a final act of mercy, before he would go to a place, from which there was no return.[1] It was a land so dark that, if light could be found, vis-à-vis if life were there, it, too, would be dark (death). In other words, there was no consciousness in the grave (Psalm 6:5; 146:4; Ecclesiastes 9:10). One ceased to exist! All order crumbled into chaos, and nothing of the Lord’s creation existed there (Job 10:22).
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[1] That is, Job wouldn’t ever again return to his body, which was the vehicle given him to experience life in this world (cp. Genesis 3:21). This, by no means, meant he despaired of living again. He trusted both in a future resurrection and in a Redeemer who would save him (Job 14:14; 19:25).
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