From Job 1-14 (reading time 6 minutes)

The Bible book of Job tells of a man who was "righteous and blameless, he was in awe of God and avoided evil"(Job 1:1). Job was a religious man and also a rich man. He owned sons and daughters, an awful lot of cattle and a large number of slaves. This made him more substantial than all the other people of the East (1:3). It seems he had a happy life until everything was taken away from him. 

In the situation of deep misery, the three friends come to visit Job. In this article, we want to examine the extent to which these friends have a pastoral attitude toward the suffering Job. In doing so, we will focus on chapters 1-14.

 The book of the Bible speaks of a situation of Job, who is on earth, and of God, who is in heaven having a conversation with Satan. Satan sees Job's faith and prosperity, and he challenges God. He proposes to take everything away from Job, to see if he will then still retain his exemplary faith. God allows this, but makes Satan promise not to harm Job himself. 

Then Job is stripped of everything he has. His sons and daughters, his slaves, his livestock... What is Job's response? "The Lord has given, the Lord has taken, the name of the Lord be praised" (1:21). The writer of the story adds, "In spite of everything, Job did not sin and did not reproach God in any way. 

Satan is not satisfied. He suggests to God that he will make Job seriously ill. Then he will bid God farewell, Satan is convinced. Again, God allows Job to be tempted, but He makes Satan promise to spare Job's life. Thereupon Satan afflicts Job with terrible sores. Job sits in the sand and scratches himself with a potsherd (3:8). Nevertheless, Job clings to his faith. He does not sin (3:10). 

The arrival of the three friends 

When Job's three friends, Elifaz, Bildad and Sofar, hear what happened to Job, they agree with each other to visit him, comfort him and show their sympathy (2:11). A beautiful initiative. It is valuable to stand by friends when they are suffering or experiencing difficult things. The three friends do so, and when they see Job, covered in sores, they do not recognize him. They are startled, weep loudly and remain silent (2:12-13).  

Silence 

The three friends have no words for what they see. They are silent. Impressive; they show respect for Job's troubles. In pastoral ministry, this is an art, to be silent. We are often tempted to speak because silence is uncomfortable for us. But it is precisely by being silent that you show that you are there for someone. You allow the other person space to speak out. And as a listener, all you have to do then, what you must do then: listen.

Turnaround

And then it comes. Job throws out all his distress. The resignation he wielded is gone. Job spurns the day of his birth (3:1). He no longer wants to live. Indeed, he wishes he had never been born. Chapter 3 is a low point in the situation Job finds himself in. 

Job resists God. He feels that what is happening to him is unbearable and wants nothing more than to die. The why questions often come up in pastoral conversations. Many people start asking these questions when faced with intense suffering. When everything is going smoothly, these questions don't play a role. But when suffering comes into one's life (and who escapes it?), one can no longer understand it. Often people then cross a line, going from praying to blaming and sometimes even cursing. Job pours out his despair before God and turns to Him in the cursing of his birth day and in his questions. However, he does not turn away from Him. He feels abandoned by God because God does not answer him. Yet Job does not stop calling on God, despite the fact that his wife had said to him, "Say goodbye to God anyway, and die" (2:9).

No, Job doesn't. Job can't. The three friends have come to express their sympathy and to comfort him. All three give a speech in the first part of the book of Job (chapters 4-14). In the following paragraphs we will examine these speeches, asking ourselves how pastoral these men are doing here. 

The speeches of the three friends

Elifaz begins to speak (Job 4-5). First, he points out to Job that he succumbs to the suffering that befalls him, while Job himself in his life has strengthened and encouraged so many people when they were struggling.......

.....Elifaz wonders why Job does not now put his own words into practice himself. In addition, Elifaz says that the upright and innocent do not perish just like that. God punishes sinners. In other words, it cannot really be otherwise than that Job has sinned, otherwise none of this would happen to him. Certainly not the suffering Job goes through; everything is taken away from him! Elifaz underscores his position with a vision he received, in which God made it clear to him that Job cannot be righteous before God (nor can any man). However, there are many arguments for believing that this vision came from Satan, for its content goes against God's characterization of Job as righteous. Elifaz condemns and punishes Job, making it clear to him that he owes his suffering to himself.

Bildad is the second to speak against Job (Job 8). The premise of his account is that God does not act unjustly. According to Bildad, the fact that Job's children perished must be due to their sinful behavior. Bildad calls on Job to repent and repent to God. He must also be pure and righteous (8:5-6). Like Elifaz, Bildad paints a good and rich future for Job when he does these things. For, he says, God rewards the righteous and punishes the unrighteous. 

Sofar also presents a retributive dogma: Job fell into misery through his own fault (Job 11). He makes it clear in various ways that God is very much greater and more powerful than created reality. In doing so, Sofar wants to make clear to Job that man is very void and ignorant. Job can do nothing against God. Nor can Job stop a condemnation from God. God sees the insincere, because that is how great He is, and that is why Job will be punished. After Sofar makes this clear to Job, he tries to convince Job that there is a way to recovery. However, there are a few conditions to this: Job must set his heart on God, stretch out his hands to God, cast off evil from him and give injustice no place in his home (11:13-14). The fact that Sofar says this indicates that he assumes Job has sinned and that this is the cause of his suffering. When Job will confess his guilt and repent to God, this suffering will pass, Sofar is convinced.

The (un)pastoral nature of the speeches 

All three friends try very hard to explain why all this suffering is happening to Job. However, they don't exactly do so in a comforting way. On the contrary, they admonish and punish Job. They believe that Job is on the wrong track, that he owes the suffering that is happening to him to himself. 

The why-questions Job asks receive an answer from the friends that is short-sighted. According to them, Job must ask himself why this suffering is happening to him. It cannot be that God is doing this to Job when Job has committed no sins. No, there must be something Job has done wrong, with which he has incurred God's wrath and for which he is being punished.The friends think Job should ask the why questions to himself, not to God. 

The why-questions Job asks receive an answer from the friends that is short-sighted. According to them, Job must ask himself why this suffering is happening to him. 

Do the speeches help Job? No, they don't seem to. After Sofar's speech, Job wishes his friends would shut up for once, because, according to him, they only speak lies (13:4-5). "I am not your lesser," he even says (13:2, NBV21). Apparently, he got the impression that his friends elevated themselves above him. No wonder too, since the speeches were quite condescending and judgmental! The friends spoke to Job from above. They thought they knew better, had the answer. At the same time, they had nothing at all, for when Job asked them what it was then that he had done wrong, for which he was being punished (6:24), the friends had no answer. It must have been a hidden sin, they argued (chapter 11). Job, however, could do nothing with that.

 Later in the book of the Bible, by the way, it turns out that the friends were indeed wrong, which Job was already convinced of. This, of course, puts the speeches in a different light again. Job turns out to be a righteous man who was tempted by Satan. He didn't know this, and neither did the friends. Having endured all the suffering, he is doubly blessed.

How could it be otherwise?

The above paragraphs have shown how Job's friends did act pastorally by remaining silent, but not in their speaking. How could they have acted differently toward their suffering friend? Although it would go too far to go into this at length, I would like to briefly comment on this. In doing so, I draw on literature in the field of pastoral care in situations of suffering and grief. 

Of course, it is always easy to judge another person's situation from a distance, as the friends spoke of Job's situation. They thought they knew the situation. And that is a danger, especially when it comes to suffering that happens to someone. In the end, there is no one who can answer the why questions except God Himself. And if we humans do try to do that, we are treading on thin ice. The questions that Job has, and with him so many people, we may let stand. It is understandable that they are asked in such a situation, and it can already be healing as visitors to listen to this and give these questions a place. We often have the tendency to immediately come up with answers and thus to wipe away the questions, but this usually does not help the person in need. Here we must remember that Christ Himself also asked the why question when He hung on the cross. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Therefore, we should not and need not dismiss or diminish the why-questions of suffering either.

The three friends speak of God as a just, judgmental God. Is this a good picture of our God? To some extent, yes. God punishes sinful humanity, as with the flood (Gen. 6-9), and also the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18). He also sometimes punishes His own people. Consider the events during the desert time. Most of the people died before reaching the promised land. And Moses, as punishment, was also not allowed to enter the promised land; he was only allowed to see it from afar (Deut. 34).

Yet God is also a God of love. He is patient and never punishes to the degree we deserve. Psalm 103, for example, records that God does not punish us according to our sins and does not repay us for our iniquities (vs. 10). Indeed, as far as the east is from the west, He does our transgressions from us, the Psalm reads (vs. 12). This is true of those who are in awe of Him and obey Him (vs. 13, 17). With Job, this is the case. Then it is to be expected that the severe calamities that befall Job are not punishment, though believers can be disciplined and corrected (1 Cor. 11; Rev. 2-3). It is clear to readers of the book of Job that it is not God but Satan who harms and requests Job.

The above should encourage us to be careful in pastoral care. Sometimes people themselves see a connection between sin or a wrong lifestyle and the illness that befalls them. But outsiders can make many mistakes with their "explanations. Let us leave the judgment to our God! 

So what comfort can we offer in situations of struggle and suffering? God's ultimate goal is restoration and preservation of humanity. Christ has shown us what it is to go through suffering to glory. Thus, we too may imitate Him. God's Son came to this earth to suffer and die with us and for us. God, who wanted to descend so deeply and become One of us, He became like us in everything. God is the God Who has shown in Christ to be IMMANUAL: "God with us. He came to reconcile us to Himself, to give us a future, a prospect of eternal life with Him. Job has already been allowed to see and taste on this side of the grave that God is good. After everything he had endured, God blessed him in such a way that he received even more from God than he had ever received before in his life. We do not experience the same thing by a long shot, but we do know that Jesus is the merciful High Priest and wants to be close to us in a way of suffering and sorrow (Heb. 4:14-16). And once, after death, perfect redemption awaits. That is the Gospel we are privileged to proclaim.

This article was previously published in volume 16, number 2 of Study Bible magazine (December 2022)

Rieke van de Lagemaat works as a content assistant for the Center for Bible Research and is also a pastoral worker in district church De Open Hof in Veenendaal. 

Literature: G. van den Brink, J.C. Bette, M.J. Paul, Study Bible Old Testament: Bible Commentary Ezra-Job. Veenendaal: Center for Bible Research, 2012. Heitink, G., Pastoral care. Kampen: Kok, 1998. Maas, F., Maas, J. and Spronk, K. (ed.), The Bible Spiritual. Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2004. Meulen, H.C. van der (ed.), Loving eye and open ear. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1999. Meulen, H.C. van der, The pastor as travel companion. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2004.