After all that comes to Job in pain and suffering, Satan expects Job to curse God. Job’s wife expects Job to curse God. Job’s friends want to know what Job has done to anger God. All signs point to God’s hand in Job’s current situation. For an entire week Job and his friends sit in silence, overwhelmed by what has befallen him.
When the Weight Crashes Down
After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job 3:1
When the weight of the world crashes down on a person, what response should follow? If you live through an army invasion, a destructive earthquake, or a plague that takes all your loved ones and everything you have created, what would your response be? Job cursed the day he was born. He unleashes all this pain and anger, hating the day of his birth.
For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. 26 I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes.” Job 3:25-26 ESV
In the opening of the book of Job we are introduced to Job as a priest for his family, making sacrifices on their behalf and interceding for them with God. Job is a present and loving father. Now his worst fears are realized. What he loves about this world has been destroyed. Trouble has come, and he is transparent before us all that he wishes he had never been born.
Anguish That Echoes the Cross
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:45-46 ESV
Job’s anguish echoes Christ on the cross. It feels as if God has left him, and all he can do is suffer the waves of grief. Job laments and cries in pain. Jesus on the cross experienced grief unimaginable and quoted Psalm 22.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Psalm 22:1-2
Relief Still Comes
This psalm captures the pain of wondering where God has gone. Job, like the psalm of lament, wants rest from the pain. He wants relief. While Job in chapter 3 sits in grief not yet resolved, we dear reader can look at Psalm 22 to see where the relief will come. We can understand that God has not left. God still loves and cares for us even in the depth of agony.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. Psalm 22:3-5 ESV
