Job: Where Is My Father? Job 2

In my distress, I cried to Yahweh. He answered me.

After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. Job answered: “Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’ Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it. Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes the day black terrify it. As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein. Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan. Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning, because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes. “Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse? For now I should have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest, with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves; or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver; or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master. “Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it doesn’t come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water. For the thing which I fear comes on me, that which I am afraid of comes to me. I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither do I have rest; but trouble comes.”

I called on your name, Yahweh, out of the lowest dungeon. You heard my voice: “Don’t hide your ear from my sighing, and my cry.” You came near in the day that I called on you. You said, “Don’t be afraid.” Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul. You have redeemed my life.

How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me? Behold, and answer me, Yahweh, my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death; lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him;” lest my adversaries rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your loving kindness. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to Yahweh, because he has been good to me.

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him. When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn’t recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.

As one who takes away a garment in cold weather, or vinegar on soda, so is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.

Then Job answered, “I have heard many such things. You are all miserable comforters! Shall vain words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? I also could speak as you do. If your soul were in my soul’s place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you, but I would strengthen you with my mouth. The solace of my lips would relieve you.

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job didn’t sin with his lips.

Trust in him at all times, you people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Selah.

Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence, For all day long I have been plagued, and punished every morning. If I had said, “I will speak thus”, behold, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. When I tried to understand this, it was too painful for me— until I entered God’s sanctuary, and considered their latter end.

You are righteous, Yahweh, when I contend with you; yet I would like to plead a case with you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are they all at ease who deal very treacherously? You have planted them. Yes, they have taken root. They grow. Yes, they produce fruit. You are near in their mouth, and far from their heart. But you, Yahweh, know me. You see me, and test my heart toward you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter. How long will the land mourn, and the herbs of the whole country wither? Because of the wickedness of those who dwell therein, the animals and birds are consumed; because they said, “He won’t see our latter end.”

Yahweh said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause.” Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.” Yahweh said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.”

So Satan went out from the presence of Yahweh, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head. He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes.

Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked will I return there. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be Yahweh’s name.” In all this, Job didn’t sin, nor charge God with wrongdoing.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says Yahweh. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.