Thoughts on Job 4-5

Today’s reading: Job 4-5; Romans 9

Job and his friends all believe that God runs the world as a closed system of just retribution, and Job’s situation essentially polarizes them into a couple camps as to how they are going to fit all that is happening into that framework.

When I say, “just retribution,” what I mean is that the world operates in an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” kind of way. If the world operates strictly according to the principle of just retribution, then bad things will never happen to good people. The wicked may flourish for a time, but they will necessarily receive justice for their wickedness, but the good man will flourish continually.

So when Eliphaz speaks up in Job 4, he is gentle about it, but he immediately points this principle out to Job, calling him to admit what he has done wrong. From his perspective, there is no way to explain all of Job’s misfortune other than his having committed some wrong. And in all reality, given this understanding of the world, it wasn’t just “some wrong” that Job must have committed, but a serious and significant wrong to warrant the extreme situation he is in. So while it may seem, on the surface, a little heartless for him to approach his suffering friend with the assumption that he has done wrong, it’s really the only conclusion he can draw, and it is an act of kindness and compassion, from his perspective, to try to draw Job to confess his sin so that he can turn away from it and God will relent of this calamity He has brought on Job. 

I think this is how most people want the world to work, but even considering it at a purely theoretical level, it wouldn’t really work. Consider Job’s situation so far. If his situation is the result of wrongdoing on his part, then what of his wife and children? His children would have died to “pay” for Job’s wrongdoing, and his wife is now destitute and bereft of children for her husband’s sin. And really, more than just them, many of Job’s servants died in the calamity that befell him as well. So for that situation to fall under a principle of just retribution would require that not only Job, but all his children and servants had done something heinous enough to deserve death, and the wives of all his servants who died had done something deserving of losing their husbands, etc. etc. etc. The calamity that befell Job was not limited to only affecting him, so we would have to assume that every ripple out from it was fully deserved as well, and that, alone, should give us pause in thinking the world operates like this.

But this is essentially what the book of Job is exploring; if we believe the world works like this, what do we do with a situation like Job’s, and what conclusions does Job’s situation force us to draw?

Job’s friends see the only reasonable conclusion as being that Job sinned in such a way as warranted such extreme suffering, but Job knows his own heart and righteousness, and will therefore be forced to draw different conclusions than his friends.