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As My Servant Job Has

             After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:7)

If you read the books of Job and the Psalms, one of the things you can’t avoid is the sense that Job and the Psalmist expressed their feelings and ideas about God. Particularly, if you read Job, you’ll find four visitors who clearly tell Job things that we might think are good and true. Job shouldn’t be so arrogant. He should confess his sins, and then God will make everything all right again. And at the end of the book, God reprimands them for speaking what is not true about Him and says that Job was speaking the truth. Time for a close-up of the shocked faces of all concerned. And this is where we usually get stuck in the mud. What truth was Job telling? What truth were his friends not telling?

Someone else has probably already discovered this, but this afternoon, I tripped over the answer that, in retrospect, seems obvious. Job said that God doesn’t always act according to “the rules.” Job’s friends insisted that God does play by the rules. In other words, Job said that he didn’t do anything to deserve the treatment he was getting, while his friends insisted that whatever treatment he was getting, he had done something to deserve. God never explicitly states that this is the way of things. He doesn’t explain what was going on that resulted in Job being treated as he was, but in a way, that’s a good thing, because then, when things aren’t the way we think they should be, we can choose between Job’s response and his friends’ responses. Understanding is not required. Approval is not required. Honesty is. 

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