Job

Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship. He said, “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The LORD gave me what I had, and the LORD has taken it away. Praise the name of the LORD!” In all of this, Job did not sin by blaming God. [Job 1.20-22]

If Job did not accuse God of his losses, then who did he accuse:

The LORD gave me what I had, and the LORD has taken it away.

It looks and sounds to me like the grammar of the passage above reveals a significant contradiction.

Or does it?

I am coming to believe that God genuinely is in control of His Word. Even when factoring in all the possibility for error in translation, I am increasingly more convinced that God has even that under control.

To say God took away all he had sounds like Job accused God, doesn't it? But the Bible says that Job's statement that God took it all away was not an accusation. So, we are left with the task of understanding how Job could say "God took it all away..." and that statement not be an accusation!

Job was simply stating fact. It seems that Job understood that nothing he possessed was his anyway. 

To say that, "Today it is dry and yesterday it rained..." is not an accusation against God - that is was dry or that it rained. We could go so far as to say, "Today God withheld rain and yesterday He gave rain..." It would not be an accusation either way. Our statement would simply be an acknowledgement of fact. AND, we can therefore praise God because He alone controls whether it is dry or whether it rains.

It is God Who gives and it is God Who takes away. Praise God, He alone is in control! You see, my words here are not an accusation.

BUT! There remains a reason WHY God gives and WHY God takes away! Especially when we know God is good. Should we not be interested to know why "not-good" things happen? Herein is where we see Job's indiscretion - the reason Job would eventually be rebuked by God and in need of repentance. Job failed to ask himself, "Why?"

The rest of Job's story reveals that, although Job did NOT blame God, he also did not blame anyone else (and his biggest mistake was not blaming himself). As the story unfolds, Job begins to defend himself and his sinful pride and arrogance are revealed. Yes, the man of complete integrity on the outside finally revealed his pride and arrogance on the inside.

For the record, God was NEVER fooled by Job's exterior righteousness. Satan was though. So, God merely conversed with Satan according to what Satan could deal with - what he saw on the outside. Satan sure thought he was duping God into unfair treatment of Job, but, as it would be revealed, Job had deep sinful pride that needed to be dealt with. Satan, as always, was just a pawn in God's plan.

I know we have come to the point in Christendom where we pretty much believe "stuff just happens." We have built libraries with volume upon volume of books and writings to convince ourselves that bad things "just happen" to good people. If Job's story was all we knew about God, our skewed view might be acceptable. However, we have the entire Bible that should give us pause when we are inclined to have a whatever-will-be-will-be attitude about Job's story.

We cannot forget that before sin, there were no curses upon the earth. No sickness, no lack, no suffering of any kind. It was only after sin surfaced that suffering began. Suffering is always the result of sin - always has been and always will be. Period. Man became sinful and suffering therefore became his default lot in life. So God revealed Plan A, Jesus Christ. But, before Plan A, God revealed Pre-Plan A, the Law - in essence, "If you sin, you must offer blood." God went so far as to clearly define the blessings for obedience and the curses (the wages of sin) upon disobedience in Deuteronomy 28. However, before the Law, blood sacrifices were already being made.

How much did Job know about all this? If the timing of the writing of the book of Job is accurately placed, it would seem it was written before the Law was given - before the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28 were defined through Moses. All Job would have known was that God was God and, as such, deserved Job's sacrifices, prayer and devotion. Job also had some idea about intercession as we see he prayed for his children. If Job knew about Satan, we have no real indication of such (however, if he knew about God, he would have known about Adam and Eve AND he would have known their fall in regard to their communication with Satan). Since he was a man of integrity, devotion, and prayer to God, Job surely would have known that communion with God was good (thus, the Garden of Eden) and that communion with Satan got sin started in the earth (thus, being cast out of the Garden of Eden).

So, what does it all mean? Ha. I probably have no idea, but I sure feel like I am learning more all the time!

Father, thank You for the Bible. Thank You for Job's story. Thank You for all the challenges Job's story brings to us all... making us review our own devotion to You. Help us to rightly ascertain what You intended to teach us all along from Job's story. Yes.