Bible Commentaries

REMONSTRANCE WITH GOD

‘I will say unto God, etc.’

Job 10:2

I. After the audacious words at the close of chapter 9 Job turns to God in the very bitterness of his soul, and ‘Show me,’ he says, ‘wherefore Thou contendest with me. Thy hands have made me and fashioned me long ago. Why, like a malignant human foe, dost Thou deal so cruelly with Thine own creature, one whose innocence Thou knowest? Oh, why didst Thou give me the gift of this weary life? Having given it, why not give me some respite that I may take comfort some little before I go where I shall never return, to the land of darkness, and the shadow of death, a land of darkness as darkness itself, without any order—where the light is as darkness—from the sunlight to the sunless land.’

II. There is not, you see, one word, as it were, left of resignation or patience.—Only a moan now loud, now low, of one who feels himself Wronged, deserted of the God Who loves him, Who lifts up his cry for mercy and relief. Neither is there, so far, a word of hope for redress beyond the grave. His friends’ words seem full to overflowing of the even current of pious and indisputable truths; his much the reverse. Yet somehow, as we read, our hearts go and seem meant to go with him, rather than with them. If we are tempted to criticise we should ever remember that in the whole book God lays no charge against His child. Terrible things are these which Job utters concerning God, but at least they are honest.

Illustration

‘To Job it seemed so great an anomaly that God should have done so much for him in his creation, preservation, and continual providence, and that yet He did not save him from suffering, but seemed to delight in heaping it upon his head. There seemed to be a variableness about God which was inconsistent with His immutable love. But there is one underlying purpose which is now revealed to the eye of faith, that God’s one desire is to do the best He can for us, and if He cannot realise this except through pain, He loves us well enough to give us pain that He may bring us to His ideal of blessedness. It is one purpose pursued through various processes of light and shade, joy and pain.’