Job 16 & 17

Every couple of years, I like to contemplate my own demise. When I say “like,” I mean I do it, whether I like to or not. When I say “contemplate,” I mean I obsess over the inevitable approach of my last breath. When I say “demise,” I mean when I exit stage right, and the curtain is not closed but forever lifted. This isn’t a planned exercise, but it is trackable, depressing, joyful, poignant, and full of hope. And heavy as the grave.

This contemplation is not a longing to die, but an earnest desire to be Home. I’m homesick, y’all. That’s it. Every couple of years, my brain and my body sigh a really big sigh saying, “Are we there yet?” I blame it on aging, this broken world, wars and rumors of wars. I get bone-tired of the car ride.

I use this time of contemplation as a focused meditation on what Home will really be like. What or Who will I see first? Will I cry? Will I laugh? What about the food? My youngest son says he thinks we’ll be able to hear colors and smell music. I tell him I think we’ll be able to fly. Out of context, our conversation sounds a bit like we’re discussing drugs Walter Bishop mixed up in his Harvard lab.

Job’s response in chapters sixteen and seventeen offer a glimpse into his contemplation of his own death. He is tired of his suffering, and is ready to be done. Eliphaz has just finished accusing him (again) of being wicked and proud. Job, in defending himself, directs blame at God for all his suffering. His friends have offered nothing but accusation, causing Job to title them “miserable comforters” who speak “windy words.” He offers an alternative approach; they could offer solace and strength instead!

“I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and shake my head at you. I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.”

Job 16: 4-5

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

Proverbs 18:21

But they continue to accuse, and Job is weary. He feels the hand of God is heavy against him. In Verses six through fourteen, Job makes a list of ways that God has broken him:

• “…God has worn me out…”
• “…he has made desolate all my company.”
• “And he has shriveled me up…”
• “He has torn me…”
• “…and hated me…”
• “…gnashed his teeth at me…”
• “…sharpened his eyes against me.”
• “God gives me up to the ungodly…”
• “…casts me into the hands of the wicked.”
• “…he broke me apart…”
• “…seized me by the neck…”
• “…dashed me to pieces…”
• “…set me as his target…”
• “…slashes open my kidneys…”
• “…does not spare….”
• “…pours out my gall on the ground.”
• “…He breaks me with breach upon breach…”
• “…he runs upon me like a warrior.”

In this list, Job refers to God as his “adversary.” He has misidentified the enemy. Yes, God has allowed all of the suffering that Job is experiencing. With one word, one thought, God could remove every arrow and heal Job. But God has allowed this suffering for His good reasons.

I guess, what I’m trying to say is that our life journey, however challenging it may be, has a purpose and is good. God makes it good. For those who belong to Him, God is not the enemy. He has not left us alone in our suffering, but is ever-present, strengthening, directing, and comforting. Most comforting is the remembrance that He has suffered on our behalf (Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Mark 14&15). From Isaiah 53…

• “He was despised and rejected by men…”
• “…a man of sorrows…”
• “…acquainted with grief…”
• “…he has borne our griefs…”
• “…and carried our sorrows…”
• “…he was pierced for our transgressions…”
• “…crushed for our iniquities…”
• “…upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace…”
• “…the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
• “He was oppressed…”
• “…afflicted…”
• “…like a lamb that is led to slaughter…”
• “…it was the will of the LORD to crush him…”
• “…he has put him to grief.”

These descriptors should strengthen and encourage us repeatedly. When the weights of the journey are hellish and burdensome, I must remind myself of His great sacrifice and suffering on my behalf. I must remind myself that He is near and He understands. Job knows, though in the fog of grief and suffering, he has lost sight of it temporarily.

It seems that Job is well-studied in the creation accounts. He speaks so often of the dust, evoking creation images. He lays his remaining strength in the dust (v.15), weeps profusely (v.16), and offers his hands and heart to God in prayer (v.17). Then he asks the earth to not hide his blood in the ground, language that calls to mind Abel’s blood that speaks from the ground where it was spilled (Genesis 4:10-12; Hebrews 11:4). Does Job not remember the adversary in these accounts? The serpent that hates, lies, steals, and kills? The sin that has infected the whole world? Does he remember the promised Deliverer? I think he does. He speaks hopefully of the one who testifies on his behalf in heaven.

“Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high.”

Job 16:19

In Mark 14, we read of the precious offering given by the woman with the alabaster flask. She breaks it open and pours the expensive nard ointment all over Jesus’ head. Later, Jesus hands the broken bread to his disciples saying, “This is my body,” and serves the wine to them saying, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” He was broken and spilled out as the perfect offering for sinners. He is the One who testifies on our behalf, our “witness in heaven.”

At the end of chapter sixteen and in chapter seventeen, Job shares his contemplation on his own demise. He knows death waits for him as it does for us all, and he reckons that the grave is as ready for him as he is for the grave. There is a longing that years, experience, sorrow, and suffering bring into sharp focus. Towards the end of her one hundred two years, my grandmother would often sit in silence for a few minutes before saying, “Oh, honey-girl, I need to get home. I just need to get home.”

“For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return.”

“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me.”

“My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow.”

Job 16:22; 17:1, 7

Death comes for all of us. The statistics remain the same, generation after generation; one in one dies. You can change the sample size, demographics, the criteria, the measures and conditions of the experiment however you want; it will not change the outcome. 100% of all participants on the earth will die. Job doesn’t hope to escape death. He knows he will face it, he thinks soon.

“My days are past; my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart. They make night into day: ‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’

“If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness, if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?”

Job 17:11-16

I am grateful beyond words that we have the canon of Scripture. Though Job says, “Where then is my hope,” we can say “My hope is in the LORD.” The One who made all things, created a home for us, gives light and life and breath and everything to us, He is our hope.

“Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.

Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.

Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.”

Psalm 33:18-22