Job’s Second Reply to Eliphaz: Drinking the Cup of God’s Wrath: Job: The Wisdom of the Cross [Job 16-17]

{Pray}

WHEN JAMES AND JOHN asked Jesus if they could sit in the places of honor at his right and his left hand in the kingdom, Jesus asked them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink …?” When they said they could, Jesus replied, “The cup that I drink you will drink” (Mark 10:38, 39). This surprises us. We would expect Jesus to say, “No, you cannot drink this cup of God’s judgment; that is why I am going to drink it for you.” But he says they can and will. Not in the sense of dying as a substitute for sins, but nevertheless in real experience they will know, as disciples of Christ, in some measure what it is to taste the wrath of God against sinners, even though their own sins are forgiven. Job tastes this cup in anticipation. Jesus Christ drinks it on the cross. Christian disciples today continue to drink from this cup in their experience of redemptive suffering.

In Job 16, 17 we get another glimpse into the taste of this cup. In it we learn about Job, we learn in anticipation about Jesus Christ, and we learn in some measure about the experience of Christian discipleship.

Job Has a Deep Longing to Receive and to Give Comfort (16:1–6)

The first facet of Job’s experience that we meet in this speech is a deep longing in his heart, or—to be more accurate—two deep longings, a longing to receive comfort and to give comfort.

Then Job answered and said:

“I have heard many such things;

miserable comforters are you all.

Shall windy words have an end?

Or what provokes you that you answer?

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 appease your pain.

If I speak, my pain is not appeased,

and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?” (vv. 1–6)

The effect of the friends’ speeches upon Job is deeply depressing. “Oh,” he says in essence, “I have heard this kind of thing many times before” (v. 2a). Job knows the religious system well. But its effect on him is “miserable,” (v. 2). His friends had come to bring him “comfort” (2:11), but the paradoxical effect of their attempts to comfort him is to make him all the more miserable. They are, in what has been called “the ultimate oxymoron,” “miserable comforters” (v. 2b). Job has previously described the diet they offer him as disgusting (6:5, 6) and compared them to disappointed parched travelers coming to a dry creek (6:14–23).

Although Eliphaz implies that they have offered him “the comforts of God” (15:11), comfort is not what Job experiences through their grace-free words. The word “miserable” comes from the word “trouble.” Eliphaz has said that Job’s troubles must be because he himself has sown “trouble” (4:8). Job replies that his friends have simply amplified his troubles.

They think Job is a windbag (8:2; 15:2). But it is their words that are “windy” (16:3a), that is, long-winded and empty. “Why must you go on and on arguing with me?” asks Job (v. 3b). “Let’s think about what it would be like if our roles were reversed, if you were suffering and I had come to comfort you. Sure, I could play your game and feed you with The System [v. 4]. I could put together eloquent and confident system speeches and shake my head against you with disapproval.

But in fact I would hope to ‘strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would appease your pain’ [v. 5].” Job has not one longing (to be comforted himself) but two longings; he would also love to be able to comfort others in pain. It is not yet clear how he could do this. But by the end of the book he will indeed be in a position, like Paul, to “comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

At the moment, however, nothing he says seems to make any difference to his pain. Speech doesn’t help, nor does silence (v. 6). The narrator has told us that Job’s pain was “very great” (2:13); he was not exaggerating. It is an inescapable pain.

It is worth reflecting on these longings for comfort. It is natural that Job should long for comfort. It is sobering that no system of grace-free philosophy or religion can bring true comfort. But it is wonderful that in the heart of every true believer longing for comfort, there is also a longing to comfort others. What is more, only those who have known the longing for God’s comfort and then felt that comfort are truly able to comfort others.

These two longings, to receive and to give comfort, are wonderfully fulfilled in the Lord Jesus who, even as he hung on the cross dying, cared for his mother (John 19:26, 27). It is a mark of a disciple of Jesus and an heir and successor to Job that even as we long to be comforted, our hearts contain a matching longing to bring comfort to others in pain. Faith turns us outward even in pain.

Job Endures a Terrible Experience of God’s Wrath (16:7–14)

The root reason why Job is suffering so intensely is not, contrary to what we might expect, because of his bankruptcy, his bereavements, or his bodily pain; it is because he is experiencing the felt hostility of God. God is the actor, the agent, and the attacker in verses 7–14.

First, God has shriveled Job up.

Surely now God has worn me out;

he has made desolate all my company.

And he has shriveled me up,

which is a witness against me,

and my leanness has risen up against me;

it testifies to my face. (vv. 7, 8)

In three parallel statements of climactic intensity, Job says God has “worn me out” (that is, debilitated me), “made desolate all my company” (v. 7; that is, my social world, from my wider reputation in the community to my intimate family), and “shriveled me up” (v. 8) into “a pathetic wrinkled wretch.” Chapters 1–3 have used the idea of a skin or “hedge” around Job, first a protective hedge (1:10, “a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side”) and then an imprisoning hedge (3:23, “whom God has hedged in”). Every human being has not only a physical skin to protect a healthy body, but wider skins or hedges of intimate relationships of home and family and a place in society. God has invaded each of these until all that is left is this pathetic, wrinkled, miserable apology of a man.

We see this so vividly in the Lord Jesus. In his incarnation the protective hedge of Heaven is taken away, he lives with nowhere to lay his head, his natural family does not believe in him, and even when he accumulates a large band of disciples, these too are whittled down so that most leave him (John 6:66), and even those who remain desert him at the end, and on the cross he hangs deeply alone, his skin shriveled.

Second, this attack has been very personal and violent.

He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;

he has gnashed his teeth at me;

my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. (Job 16:9)

God has acted toward Job like a wild predatory beast tearing at its prey with cruel claws and sharp teeth, full of personal hatred, and with sharp, evil, hostile eyes. God has, as it were, given Job the evil eye, watching with hostile intent his every move, waiting to pounce upon him. Astonishingly, we must see this too fulfilled upon the cross when the Lord Jesus was “made … sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21) and the Father’s hostility against sinners was poured out upon him.

Third, this attack has left Job abandoned and exposed.

Men have gaped at me with their mouth;

they have struck me insolently on the cheek;

they mass themselves together against me.

God gives me up to the ungodly

and casts me into the hands of the wicked. (vv. 10, 11)

Evil people, like a pack of scavengers, have gathered around Job, delighted that God’s attack has given them easy pickings. They “have gaped at me” with mouths wide open, not aghast, but open and ready to devour his substance (v. 10). They have “struck me insolently on the cheek,” confident that God would no longer protect him (v. 10). They have come together unitedly—“they mass themselves together against me” (v. 10). But the only reason they can do this with impunity is that “God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked” (v. 11). “After mauling his prey, God, the savage beast, leaves his victim for the gathering packs of the wicked and hurls Job, like a piece of meat, helpless into their midst.”

Yet again we see this terrible loneliness of Job fulfilled in the mockery of Jesus—the Roman soldiers abusing him (Matthew 27:27–31), the strange alliance of the Gentiles with Pontius Pilate and the Jewish leaders (Acts 4:5, 6, 27, fulfilling Psalm 2:1, 2) all massing together against him, free to do so with impunity because the Father has forsaken his Son and abandoned him to the mockery of people.

Fourth, this attack is relentless and unceasing.

I was at ease, and he broke me apart;

he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;

he set me up as his target;

his archers surround me.

He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare;

he pours out my gall on the ground.

He breaks me with breach upon breach;

he runs upon me like a warrior. (vv. 12–14)

The imagery here is visceral in its power. “I was at ease” (v. 12; cf. 1:1–5), not a guilty “ease” but the ease of a virtuous man enjoying the blessings of God. And what did God do? He smashed and smashed me, seized my neck and bashed and bashed me.” And then God “set me up as his target” (v. 12), using him as target practice for his “archers,” who leave him for dead on the ground with his blood and vital juices spilling out on the ground (v. 13).

Finally, he treats Job like a city under siege (v. 14), making “breach upon breach” in his walls (the skin or hedge idea again) and running upon him again and again like a mighty “warrior” (v. 14). All the hosts of Heaven seem to be arrayed against him. Eliphaz has accused Job of “running stubbornly” against God “with a thick shield” (15:26). “The reality is that God is running against me,” Job says. “I did not choose to attack God; God has taken the terrible initiative to attack me.”

We will meet some of these violent images again in chapter 19. They anticipate the image of Leviathan in chapter 41 and will help us when we come to understand that puzzling chapter.

All this is Job’s experience. All his protective skins, hedges, and walls have been breached. He is shriveled up so there is hardly anything of him left inside. He has been attacked violently by God and left exposed to the mockery of people, and all of this relentlessly. Job experiences the violent, hostility of God. And yet all the time we the readers know that Job is actually God’s “servant,” the man God approves of, the man God singles out for his exceptional piety and morality (1:1, 8; 2:3).

All this and more was Jesus’ experience. The reality was that he was the beloved Son, in whom the Father’s heart was well pleased (Mark 1:11; 9:7). And yet in his experience he was God-forsaken (Mark 15:34). And his experience created its own reality, as it does with every sufferer. He knew a real God-forsakenness at the same time he was the Father’s beloved Son.

This feeling of God-forsakenness is also an authentic part of Christian experience. It is possible to be—objectively—a dearly beloved son or daughter of God while also experiencing—subjectively and in part—all the ingredients of Job’s experience here.

And Yet Job Has a Clear Conscience (16:15–17)

I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin

and have laid my strength in the dust.

My face is red with weeping,

and on my eyelids is deep darkness,

although there is no violence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure. (vv. 15–17)

It is vital to the paradoxes of Job’s experience that alongside this felt hostility of God he should have a clear conscience. Verses 15, 16 paint for us a terribly vivid picture of a man in extremis. Because his “skin” is so damaged and punctured, he has to sew “sackcloth” on it (v. 15a). His “strength” (v. 15b; literally, his “horn”) is laid “in the dust” like a defeated ox or rhinoceros putting down its horn. His “face,” the mirror of his soul, “is red with weeping” (v. 16a), and there are dark rings around his eyes (v. 16b), the shadow of death visible in his grief-stricken face.

But all this has happened “although there is no violence in my hands” (he has not been the agent of violent acts), “and my prayer is pure” (v. 17). This does not mean that Job claims sinless perfection; it does mean that he believes his sin has been forgiven. He has “clean hands and a pure heart” (Psalm 24:4) and therefore ought to have access to God (as Psalm 24 teaches). This conscious awareness that there is no unconfessed and unforgiven sin in his life is of enormous importance for the book. It is the trigger, under God, for the wonderful hope toward which Job now begins to reach.

Job Reaches Toward a Wonderful Hope of a Mediator (16:18–21)

O earth, cover not my blood,

and let my cry find no resting place.

Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,

and he who testifies for me is on high.

My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

that he would argue the case of a man with God,

as a son of man does with his neighbor. (vv. 18–21)

Verses 18–21 are a significant development in Job’s heart. It begins with a cry that can be offered only from the clear conscience of a believer and follows directly on from his assertion of innocence in verse 17: “O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place.” Like Abel in Genesis 4, he was being murdered! When Cain murdered Abel, God said to Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). Abel, the innocent man of faith (Matthew 23:35; Hebrews 11:4), is dead, but his blood cries out for vindication. He is buried in Sheol, but his cry finds “no resting place” (v. 18) in Sheol.

In the same way, the “blood” shed by violent acts in the Jerusalem of Ezekiel’s day is, as it were, “set on the bare rock … that it may not be covered” (Ezekiel 24:7, 8). Isaiah looks forward to the day when “the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain” (Isaiah 26:21). Shed blood cries to God for justice. The Christian martyrs of a future day cry to God to bring justice because of their shed blood (Revelation 6:10). These cries as it were echo around the universe until God hears and answers them. In the same way Job believes that his cry from a clear conscience will echo around the universe until justice is done. It will not, it cannot be hushed up.

So Job continues, “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high” (16:19). Job’s broken body witnesses against him to all believers in The System that Job is an unforgiven sinner (e.g., v. 8); but somehow there is—there must be—a higher witness who will give testimony to the truth.

Who is this witness who gives testimony in Heaven and on high? Consistently in Scripture it is God himself who avenges innocent blood. He does so in Genesis 4. In Isaiah we read, “For behold, the LORD is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain” (Isaiah 26:21). The uncovered cry of innocent blood calls upon the Lord to bring justice. Despite the skepticism of many scholars, this witness must be no less than God himself. Job is appealing to God against God, and in so doing he foreshadows the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ. One commentator rightly says this “expresses daring faith and remarkable insight,” an insight that is proved true at the cross of Christ.

Job has no other helper, for his friends scorn him; so he “pours out tears to God” and cries to him “that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man [a mortal] does with his neighbor” (v. 21; that is, with a fellow human being). Job is appealing to one who has the status to argue the case with God as an equal. He appeals to God against God. This appeal was foreshadowed back in chapter 9, where Job wished there was a mediator, lamenting that there is not (9:33). But here “the fierce conviction that there is a witness in heaven is far stronger than the desperate hope of chapter 9.”

But Job Still Has to Face the Last Enemy (16:22–17:16)

But there is more to the picture. Despite the wonderful hope for which Job rightly reaches out, the reality is that he is staring into the jaws of death. Death pervades the final section of the speech. This section is bracketed by the prospect of death: in 16:22–17:1 “the graveyard is ready for me” (17:1), and in 17:13–16 all that he has to look forward to is “Sheol,” the grave.

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. (16:22–17:1)

The eyes of faith have been wonderfully opened, but now Job looks around and sees the reality. Very soon, “when a few years have come,” he will have to take the one-way ticket to the grave and Sheol (16:22). In his mind’s eye he sees the gateway with its inscription “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” His “spirit” (17:1), his vital energy, his desire for life, is “broken,” his “days are extinct,” which means cut short. All that lies ahead is “the graveyard.” There is an emotional intensity in these short lines. Essentially Job is saying:

My spirit is broken.

My days are cut short.

The grave awaits me.

He goes on:

Surely there are mockers about me,

and my eye dwells on their provocation. (17:2)

Job is surrounded by mockers (as in 16:10). All he can see is their “provocation,” that is, their hostility. Even Job’s so-called “comforters” have become mockers of his pain.

Verses 3–5 appear to be a renewal of Job’s plea to God against God from 16:18–21.

Lay down a pledge for me with you;

who is there who will put up security for me?

Since you have closed their hearts to understanding,

therefore you will not let them triumph.

He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property—

the eyes of his children will fail. (vv. 3–5)

The translation of verse 3 is uncertain. Who is Job asking to lay down a pledge and with whom? The NIV translates this, “Give me, O God, the pledge you demand.” Although the words “O God” are not in the Hebrew, they interpret this correctly as an appeal to God. Some suggest that Job is offering himself as a pledge for himself, but this makes no sense. Much more in tune with the flow of the speech is to suppose that Job is crying to God to lay down a pledge before God on Job’s behalf.

To give a pledge means to take responsibility for someone else, perhaps for their debt, to “put up security,” to give a guarantee for one’s well-being (v. 3). If I am deeply in debt and you graciously pledge on my behalf, it means you will guarantee the payment of my debt, if necessary by paying it yourself. So in Genesis 43:9 Judah says to Jacob about Benjamin, “I will be a pledge of his safety.” In Proverbs 11:15 we read, “Whoever puts up security [a pledge] for a stranger will surely suffer harm”; it is a costly thing to do. In Isaiah 38:14 when King Hezekiah is sick he prays, “O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety.” This is what the psalmist asks for in Psalm 119:122: “Give your servant a pledge of good.” John Calvin paraphrases this, “Lord … since the proud cruelly rush upon me to destroy me, interpose thyself between us, as if thou wert my surety.”

Verses 4, 5 warn his friends that if they are disloyal they will face the judgment of the God who will vindicate Job.

But again we return from hope to reality:

He has made me a byword of the peoples,

and I am one before whom men spit.

My eye has grown dim from vexation,

and all my members are like a shadow. (vv. 6, 7)

Job has become a “byword” for a disgraced, impenitent sinner under the judgment of God (v. 6). People spit in his face. His “eye,” the indicator of interior spirit and life, “has grown dim” (v. 7), like Isaac’s in his old age (Genesis 27:1), but unlike Moses (Deuteronomy 34:7). All Job’s “members” (his limbs, his frame) are “like a shadow” (Job 17:7); he has become a shadow of his former self.

The upright are appalled at this,

and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.

Yet the righteous holds to his way,

and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger. (vv. 8, 9)

While it is possible that “the upright” here is a sarcastic reference to his friends, the self-righteous who are appalled to see this sinner getting his punishment, it is more likely Job is appealing to genuinely righteous people who would be sympathetically appalled at Job’s plight (v. 8). In some way Job affirms again his confidence in final vindication.

But you, come on again, all of you,

and I shall not find a wise man among you.

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? (vv. 10–16)

In the final section Job challenges his friends again: “But you, come on again, all of you” (v. 10). The verb “come on again” is literally “turn back”; it may be an appeal for them to repent and relent. More likely it is a sarcastic challenge for them to attack him again. But he has no expectations of wisdom from them. “I shall not find a wise man among you” (v. 10) contrasts with the sarcasm of 12:2 when Job said he is worried that when they die, wisdom will die with them!

But for Job there is no hope (v. 11). As in chapter 3 he has nothing to which to look forward. He used to make plans (“the desires of my heart,” [17:11]) but no longer. The key issue is hope (notice that “hope” appears three times in verses 13–16). And the denial of hope leads to Sheol. The only home Job can see ahead is Sheol, the place of “darkness” (v. 13), “the pit,” the place of corruption and disintegration (“the worm,” v. 14). There can be no hope there (v. 15), for if his hope descends with him to Sheol, it will be in the prison with unbreakable “bars” (v. 16), in the place of utter disintegration (“the dust” [v. 16]).

And yet even in the gloom there is a ray of hope. Why else does Job ruminate about what will happen to his hope that there will be in Heaven a mediator, the hope that God will speak to God for him? Why keep speaking if there is no hope? Those who really have no hope fall silent in despair. There is a paradox of faith in Job’s eloquent expressions of despair; in their very reasonings there is hope.

Job has in his heart both the universal longing for comfort and the believer’s longing to bring comfort to others. Although he experiences the felt hostility of God, he knows he is innocent; his clear conscience testifies that to his heart. And he cannot believe that a clear conscience will ultimately not be vindicated. So he deduces, with the wonderful logic of faith, that God who will intercede for him before God. Yes, he gazes into the jaws of death itself, and all the voices of the world proclaim to him the death of hope in his imminent death. But the voice of faith appeals to God to put up a pledge for Job’s life.

The foreshadowing of the experience of the Lord Jesus Christ is awesome. He too felt the longings both to be comforted and to comfort. He too knew in all its fullness what it was to be identified with sinners, from his baptism to his cross.

He experienced in its unadulterated intensity the holy hatred of God against sinners. He too knew that he had a clear conscience, in fact that every moment of his life he did what pleased the Father (John 8:29), that his life and his death were the expression of a perfect obedience.

And even as he gazed with holy terror into the jaws of death he at the same time knew that he had been given authority both to lay down his life and to take it up again (John 10:18).

It is in Christ alone that Christian disciples may expect to experience some echo of Job’s trials, to feel in our hearts the longing to be comforted and to comfort others with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted, to tremble as we live in a world under the judgment of God and experience in some measure that judgment in our bodies and hearts, to appeal to our divine Mediator to speak for us before our divine Judge, with the appeal of the perfect obedience of the one man who has made us righteous (Romans 5:19), an appeal offered from a clear conscience.

When the day comes for us to gaze into the terrible jaws of death, we may know with a confidence greater than Job’s that our hope will not die with us and that we will rise with Jesus to life eternal.