When I was reading through the Bible in 2011, and posting my reflections on the passages, for the book of Job, I wrote extensively (and intensively!) on suffering, as well as on helping and encouraging those who suffer, with Job’s friends, unfortunately, providing negative examples after the second chapter.
I want you to know the 2011 posts from Job 1 through chapter 26 were written in real-time suffering. They didn’t come after the fact, but from the midst of my own valley of affliction. I’ve heard the lectures and moralistic platitudes that Job heard, and you also may have endured them. The posts I later added on Job are the fruit of years of God’s work and His help in the valleys of my life. Some were also written in real-time suffering!
I consider the book of Job to be God’s gift to those who suffer intensely without apparent or traceable reason, because in Job we hear the words of a man, a good man, who struggles in pain with his doubt and his longing to trust God. Job’s horrific circumstances drive him to grapple with life at its depths. There are no glib answers here, and the fact that there are no glib answers means our pain is not trivialized and that in turn offsets the depersonalization that suffering afflicts on our heart because we see that what we are going through is taken seriously by God.
I cannot tell you how comforting I have found the book of Job as I have read, studied, and written on it because I have heard the speeches Job heard, and I have know the emotions and struggles he felt. His eloquent, and at times biting words, in both their expression and intensity give words to my own feelings. Indeed, when I cannot find solace anywhere else, I still find it in Job.
We serve as lights, you and I, as we persevere in the midst of anguish, to those in darkness who are crushed and broken by evil. As they are, we, too, are caught up in living in a world that groans in its rebellion against God, and ofttimes reasons for suffering are beyond ourselves and our understanding. We demonstrate an authenticity to others when we don’t hand out platitudes, but instead with love identify with them and in our patience and endurance point them to God who is full of compassion and mercy. We serve as an example and pattern of walking with God to our fellow believers.
Finally, and most importantly, as we persevere in our suffering—even though we wrestle with our doubts and despair—we prove ourselves servants of God. Do you know what God calls Job over and over again? “My servant Job.” At the beginning of the book and at the end of the book, God gives Job that accolade. You and I, my dear friend, as our eye weeps to God in our suffering, and as we bear the scoffing of others, can also be servants of God; there is no greater purpose, there is no greater praise.
Below are links to the posts with some comments on each one. Because the posts build on each other, I’d suggest starting with Job 1–2, and reading from the beginning.
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked I shall return there.
Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away.
Blessed be the name of Yahweh.”
His friends search for a defect in Job that will explain his suffering—not to alleviate his anguish, but to relieve their own fears.
While pious words present a façade of spirituality, there is no comfort there for pain.
Job’s need was to believe in God’s goodness, benevolence and personal care for him in the face of God’s inscrutable sovereignty in allowing his suffering.
From Job’s perspective he is at the point of finding no help from these men and believing there is none to be had from God.
Someone like Job, however, who suffers without overt cause or comprehension, needs help trusting God in the face of no explanation of his affliction.
Those who suffer do not need pat answers, indeed, there are none to be had, for you cannot explain the inexplicable, and to attempt to do so is to find yourself in ashes and clay territory.
Job 15–16: Scoffers & Struggle
Job is grappling with life at its depths as he struggles with his inability to bring into accord his horrific circumstances with his understanding of God.
Job 17–18: Torn Plans & Trite Words
It’s shocking to see the way in which Bildad doesn’t even take the time before he speaks to think about who Job is and what he knows about Job from the past. He has no empathy for Job and doesn’t bother to understand Job and to consider whether or not his words are even appropriate. Job is the invisible man to Bildad.
Job feels God considers him an enemy, and he tells of his abandonment by relatives and friends and being despised by all whom he knows.
Job 21–22: False Answers & Accusations
Eliphaz’ words reveal the sin of his own heart, not Job’s, because making these unfounded charges reveals he would rather lie than acknowledge that his explanation for Job’s sorrows is wrong.
Job knows Eliphaz’ ideas about God’s providence are wrong; Job can look at his own life and his affliction, and he has also seen the prosperity of the wicked, and the reality is that sometimes the righteous suffer greatly, while those who are evil do not.
Job 25–26: Feeble Friends & A Holy God
Bildad’s purpose in speaking was obviously not to help Job or provide counsel or insight—it was more of a feeble protest to Job, as if Bildad knew in advance what he would say was insufficient—hence Job’s scathing opening in chapter 26. Job 26 begins Job’s longest discourse that continues for six chapters until the end of chapter 31.
Job declares his integrity again in chapter 27. Job 28 is a beautiful poem on wisdom. Job realizes that man cannot find wisdom, in and of himself; he must look to God. I think Job has reached the point where he knows he has said and asked all that he can. He realizes he has no answers to the why of suffering. He certainly knows his friends don’t. To find a wisdom that can answer the why of suffering and understand justice is beyond Job. To find that wisdom is beyond us.
Chapters 29 and 30 are heart-rending. Job contrasts the past when he was both blessed and a blessing with his present suffering: “But now.” Job 30 contains his last lament as Job cries out to God in anguish.
Job 31–32: Questions & A Final Cry
Job finishes speaking in Job 31. Francis Anderson calls chapter 31, Job’s ultimate challenge, in an appeal to God “by a miserable outcast on the city rubbish dump.”1 In Job 32, Elihu, who has been listening to what Job and his friends have to say, explodes into speech.
Job 33–34: Listening & Not Hearing
Elihu continue to speak in these chapters. It’s clear he’s been listening to Job and his friends, but he hasn’t been hearing what Job was saying. Elihu has jumped to some conclusions, and I think misread Job’s heart.
Job 35–36: Reality & God’s Song in the Night
There’s a lot to sort through in these two chapters in Elihu’s words and attitude as he says things that are true and things that are not true. Francis Andersen and David Atkinson both comment that Elihu sees God as “manageable and predictable” while Job has seen God’s ways are beyond his ken.
Job 36–37: God’s Majesty & Power
Elihu is at his best at the end of Job 36 and in Job 37 as he describes the majesty and power of God as seen in the wonders and intensity of weather. Francis Andersen writes, “It begins to move in the direction of the Lord’s speeches that follow and so serves as a transition to the concluding cycle (chapters 38 – 42).”
Job 38–39: God’s Understanding & Wisdom
In Job 38 God speaks. For the first time since the first two chapters in Job, God is referred to as Yahweh, His personal covenant name. The opening verses of Job 38 set the stage, “I will ask you, and you instruct Me!” God’s questions to Job are rhetorical—Job knows the obvious answer. (In some instances the obvious answer is that Job cannot know the answer!). All of the questions drive home to Job that all of Creation is God’s, and God’s understanding and wisdom are far beyond what Job is able to comprehend.
Job 40–41: God’s Justice & Power
After His deluge of questions about creation to Job, God has still more questions for Job. This next set of questions in Job 40:8–14, are at the heart of God’s answer to Job’s cries because here, as E. S. P. Heavenor writes, they are about the moral order of the world: justice and judgment of the proud, and the wicked. In the last set of questions in Job 40:15–41:34, God returns to creation with questions about two specific creatures: Behemoth and Leviathan.
God’s answer to Job is found is His questions to Job. E. S. P. Heavenor was the first to bring the threads in Job 38–41 of God’s wisdom, justice, and power together for me when I was in the midst of a long, hard period of suffering that made no sense to me.
“God brings Job to his final position of repentance and faith. He cannot argue his way out of his difficulty by denying the wisdom, justice or power of God, but he can, after he has seen just how wise, just and powerful God is, rest humbly and trustfully upon him.”2
Job 42: Job’s Confession & Restoration
In Job 42:3a Job quotes God’s first question to him in Job 38: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” and acknowledges he declared what he did not understand. God’s questions have brought to Job the realization that God’s wisdom, justice, and power are beyond his grasp, and bows before God in humility and trust.
It’s vital to realize that when Job speaks these words to God, he has yet to be restored. His wealth is still lost, he is still childless, and he is still diseased. Here we have the answer to Satan’s cynical question at the beginning of the book in chapter 1: Does Job fear God for nothing? The answer is a resounding, yes! When all is still lost to him, Job still fears God.
Now after all this time, after all Job has been through, and after all the accusations Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar made to Job and all the harsh and condemning things they said to Job’s face, God says he is My servant Job. God sets the record straight. He vindicates Job.
And then God restores Job.
Job: Suffering, Evil, & Hard Questions
Suffering is not only hard to experience, it’s hard to read about, and I know Job is a difficult book to go through. As I’ve written about Job I’m trying to give you handholds from Scripture to encourage you to trust God.
I share a lot from commentaries I’ve read because those men have helped me so much with their words. I mean in real life—not as an intellectual undertaking to explain a book—but in my suffering. I cannot tell you how much E. S. P. Heavenor and Francis Andersen have given me encouragement and helped me to know God and trust Him. Their depth had indicated to me, they’re not simply doing analysis, they’re writing out of things they’ve learned from God in their own lives.
There are some horrific things that happen in this world. If we’re not experiencing them, we can keep blinders on, but when they affect us or those we love, then we’re face to face with the reality of trusting God when our soul is among lions.
Don’t be afraid of the hard questions of suffering and evil because I’ve found that God hasn’t wanted me—and I believe He doesn’t want you—to be afraid of the hard questions of suffering and evil. We may not know why God has decided to let us go through valleys, but God in His Word calls us to know Him and teaches us that He walks with us through our valleys and that we can trust Him.
As Derek Kidner has said, the truth we live by as Christians is valid through and through, and its writ does run everywhere. God invites us to ask the hard questions. Look at some of the things written in the psalms, and elsewhere in the Wisdom literature and throughout the Bible. David and other psalmists—Jeremiah, Job, Solomon—all say some bare-bones things about this world without a glossy coat of pretense. Look also at their prayers: what those men say about who God is, and how they turn to Him for help.
Incomprehensible pain can be overwhelming. In your struggles and failings go to His Word. God gives you a voice for your questions, your pain, and your prayers in His Word. God will teach you how to live in awe before Him through His Word. God will strengthen you with courage, consolation, and help in your time of need from His Word. And in His Word God will tell you about His great love for you in sending His Son Jesus to die for you.
By no means am I perfect or complete in these things. Paul said he pressed on. So must we. We live and stand in God’s surpassing grace. Stand fast.
And when we enter that eternal glory, we will hear the Lord Jesus say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
With love,
Job at Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center: Avishai Teicher via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project. (CC BY 2.5). Click the photo to enlarge.
Job and his friends, Ilya Yefimovich Repin: Public Domain.
1See the posts for notes. I found the following men to be of immense help in their commentaries, not only in their scholarship, but as in the best of commentaries, in their insight and spiritual wisdom to help me in my questions about suffering.
Francis Andersen, Job (Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove IL: 1976).
David Atkinson, The Message of Job: Suffering and grace (Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester, England; Downers Grove IL: 1991)
E. S. P. Heavenor, “Job,” The New Bible Commentary: Revised, third ed., D. Guthrie, J. A. Motyer, eds., A. M. Stibbs, D. J. Wiseman, contributing eds. (Inter-Varsity Press, London: 1970).
Derek Kidner, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job & Ecclesiastes (Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove IL: 1985).
2E. S. P. Heavenor, “Job,” The New Bible Commentary: Revised, third ed., D. Guthrie, J. A. Motyer, eds., A. M. Stibbs, D. J. Wiseman, contributing eds. (Inter-Varsity Press, London: 1970) 443.
3Edmund Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove IL: 1988) 22. This is Clowney’s translation of 1 Peter 5:12.
Original content: Copyright ©2011–2023 Iwana Carpenter
Kindling for Candles 
As you can tell, I have not yet finished writing through the book of Job. I hope to be able to do so in the future.