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The patience of Job

Ron Carleton

Since long before the biblical text was formalized, the trials of Job have been a source of comfort and encouragement to believers experiencing difficulties. This book is almost certainly older than Moses, and may well date from before the time of Abraham. Yet it has proven to be timeless, as true today as it has always been. Even so, there is an aspect of the story that is often ignored in messages about Job’s sorrows.

When the first stunning catastrophes fell upon him, Job’s response was a shining example of faith in the face of adversity: “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 2:21). This affirmation is a model of godly sincerity and acceptance. Later, Job added to it: “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him” (Job 13:15). These wonderful sentiments are often held up as a pattern to be followed in messages about suffering.

At the end of it all, God gave Job twice as much of everything he had had before, except children, of which he received the same number as he had lost. Most commentators see in that an affirmation of the afterlife: Job’s first children had not ceased to be, but only moved into the blessed realm. This part of the story is also very wonderful, a confirmation of God blessing and vindicating His obedient, faithful child; it is almost always part of sermons about trials. It demonstrates that “He who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22).

Those considerations are certainly true and vital in the believer’s pain, but something perhaps just as essential is very often omitted. Many treatments of suffering skip quickly from Job’s marvellous response at the start of the tale to his vindication and reward at the end. Ignored, or at least not underlined, is the entire middle part of the book, the majority of the story – chapters 3 to 31 – the ash heap interval.

This provides a warning to those of us trying to come alongside people wounded in the struggle of life. Job’s three friends began their visit well: “They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was” (Job 2:13). But as soon as they opened their mouths, things went downhill fast. Simply being there and taking notice of another’s pain may be the most helpful thing we can do. However, when his friends tried to press on Job their answers, their understanding of the situation, they were in fundamental error and “miserable comforters” (Job 16:10). We are not called to give answers, but to “mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15) and to “bear each other’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

We should notice that, as far as the story says, Job never knew the reason for his torment. As we read the Bible account, we are told about the wager between God and Satan, but Job never was informed, as far as we are told. He had to face the ruin of his life and the hurricane of his feelings without knowing why. This makes his patience and perseverance even more remarkable. It also puts him in intimate relationship with sufferers of all times, including the present. Paul was told that his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7) was sent to keep him humble, but only rarely does God give that information to His wounded child. We are left to be faithful because of past experience, or even merely because God is God and He affirms His ultimate goodness over and above what takes place in or around us.

Neither do we know how long Job was on the ash heap. It was more than a week: Job’s friends heard about his trials, came to comfort him and sat down silently with him for seven days. Was it weeks? Months? Even years, if we allow the possibility that he did not spend the entire period physically on the ash heap? Certainly the time until the completion of his reward at the end of the tale took at least some months. More likely, it took several years, allowing time for his one wife – the early chapters suggest he had only one – to bear the ten children born to him after the calamities. Reading the book of Job takes only a few minutes, but it is a serious mistake to think that our trials will be over in that time.

Ron Carleton is a member of Northview Community Church in Abbotsford, B.C.

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Last modified June 27, 2000.

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