We now make a solemn foray into the nature and content of Job's first "speech" in Job 3. As with any written piece dealing with suffering and catastrophe it is either (1) Not well received because we as humans think we know better and assume no one should suffer (2) We have immense trouble dealing with the fact the we are limited and finite creations that have a limited lifetime and limited threshold for pain and suffering or (3) We have a horrible misunderstanding of God and evil in this world and would be better served brushing up on it and learning about it better rather than opening our mouths knowing only a small fraction of what we should. This is mainly because we have not thought the problem through or we are reacting to it on an emotional level.
It is because of this issue of evil and suffering and God's relation to these two issues in particular that there have been entire denominational breakaways in the Church. Their inability to accept certain truths and doctrines because they cannot stomach them has forced them to reformulate and change doctrine and theology to make it more palatable. It forces people to really take stock of what they believe in terms of God's sovereignty. There is and entire subcategory of doctrine dedicated to this topic called...Theodicy also known as "The Problem of Evil" (and suffering in general). Actually a better understanding of this is that it is a spiritual justification of the goodness of God in regards to his power. It tries to explain why God does what He does or in this case, allows what he allows. To truly have a firm grip on the ideas within this branch we need to be able to reason on a philosophical level, especially when dealing with Augustinian (Augustine of Hippo) philosophy which tells us that evil is not actually a "thing" but rather an absence of something: Good. Just as cold is and absence of heat or a shadow is absence of light. Evil is an "ontological parasite". Something that feeds or exists and has being or essence only because of what it is not.
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Job curses the day he was born. He wishes he hadn’t been born. He goes on with extensive rhetoric and hyperbole of how he wished God played a direct hand in not allowing that day to have light. He speaks of how he wishes the day of his birth didn’t exist nor ever existed. There is a general tone of “darkness” and never having seen light. He wishes he was stillborn or dead at birth (perhaps not even conceived by his mother). There are more allusions to stillbirth in comments like “I would’ve lain down and been quiet” and “I would have slept” which are euphemisms for dead/death. He also mentions that he should’ve met the fate of dead kings and dead princes. He compares his pain and suffering to a prisoner under a taskmaster. He makes an analogy of digging a hole to find death (grave) as if he was a man looking for buried treasure.
Job then turns to a question about God that doesn’t appear to be rhetorical, “Why is light (life) given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” He then goes on to say that basically his efforts produce nothing but more misery. Instead of directing his statements "to" God, he is directing his statements “at” or “towards” God. It is clear that he views God having a direct hand in this and that nothing he can do will fix the problem. This is to say, God is sovereign and nothing happens in His universe without God and that he/Job is powerless right now to affect his outcome or current situation to make it better. What he does not do is talk “to” God or pray, he only talks “about” God in an indirect manner.
The poor man is clearly in abject misery and sees no escape from his pain. He wishes for a day that never was. In the physical world the hands of time rarely get turned back like he asks. Also, if he hadn’t been born this suffering would’ve never happened. Job is essentially asking for something that is not possible to relieve his current suffering. If he is suffering so badly and wishes he was dead, why doesn’t he just take his own life? My guess is that Job realizes that to take his own life is to stand in the place of God as the giver and taker of life. He realizes that man is the highest of God’s creation, created in God’s image. Also, he is a blameless and upright man that clearly fears God and has integrity. This is not the type of person you expect to fold under at the first sign of adversity.
From a prose standpoint I would add that there is a very deliberate and intricate interweaving of emotions, pain, hyperbole and figurative language in this chapter and I believe it has to do with the nature of Hebrew poetry. It also has a repetitive cadence. Like a hammer hitting you in the head over and over. Repetitive images repeatedly impacting you to produce a more pronounced indentation of pain. I believe this was a deliberate rhetorical device used by the author to make the reader “feel” Job’s pain and to leave and indelible mark on the reader also just as an impact leaves a bruise or scar.
“In all this Job did not sin”. His outburst is predicated upon the fact that Job is a blameless and upright man. I believe he understands this about himself as we will later read to some extent. He doesn’t believe he is “better” than others or “more holy” but he does know that God is the center of his life. He accepted the fact that God knew he was suffering and allowed it, he just didn’t understand why. God’s ways are above our ways. He even rebukes his wife in 2:10 when she told him to curse (deny) God and die. Even in his intense suffering he knew she was being faithless. She didn’t realize that, even in this suffering God had the best intents for Job. We too often forget this fact in our day to day lives that are rarely visited by tragedy. On the occasions when it does visit us it is perceived wrongly and not seen for what it often is: a test. In all of this suffering Job has remained meek and humble not unlike Christ. Christ, who was scourged and led to the Cross at Golgotha although. Job definitely takes a turn towards spiritual despondency because of weakness in his spiritulity here whereas Christ never did. Christ maintained faith and within the perfect will of the Father until the bitter end. This episode is an excellent example of the fact that even the most pious of men pales in comparison to the holiness and righteousness of Jesus which is why we need His righteousness imputed to us.
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