Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Job 10-12
Key Verse
Job 11:12 — “For vain men would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.”
Devotional Thought
Job has lost his children, his livestock, and his health, and now three friends sit with him and speak. In Job 10, he turns from them to God directly. His soul is weary of his life, and he does not hide it. He asks God not to condemn him but to show him why He contends with him. He remembers that God’s own hands made him and fashioned him like clay poured out and curdled like cheese, clothed with skin and flesh and fenced with bones and sinews. Yet the same God who granted him life and favour now seems to hunt him like a fierce lion. Job does not pretend. He speaks in the bitterness of his soul, and the words are raw and unpolished.
Then Zophar the Naamathite answers. He is the harshest of the three friends. He accuses Job of a multitude of words and of lies, and he wishes that God would speak and show Job the secrets of wisdom. He insists that God exacts of Job less than his iniquity deserves. Yet even Zophar speaks a true word in verse 7: “Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” God is higher than heaven and deeper than hell, longer than the earth and broader than the sea. Zophar’s theology is right in the abstract, but his application to Job is cruel. He assumes that suffering always proves sin, and he offers Job a formula: prepare your heart, put iniquity away, and then your life will shine as the morning. It is a tidy answer to a messy reality.
Job answers in chapter 12 with a rebuke that stings: “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.” He is not inferior to them. He knows the same truths they do. But he has become a laughingstock to his neighbours, while the tents of robbers prosper and those who provoke God are secure. Job looks at the world and sees that the simple equation of righteousness with ease and wickedness with ruin does not hold. He turns to the beasts, the fowls, the earth, and the fishes: all of them know that the hand of the LORD has wrought this. In His hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind. God breaks down and no one builds again; He shuts up a man and there is no opening. He leads counsellors away spoiled and makes judges fools. He removes the speech of the trusty and takes away the understanding of the aged. He brings deep things out of darkness and brings the shadow of death to light. Job does not understand his suffering, but he knows who holds the world.
We read this in May, when the earth is green and the days are lengthening, and it can feel jarring to sit with a man in such darkness. Yet ordinary life knows this season too. A diagnosis comes, a job disappears, a marriage strains, a child wanders, and the tidy formulas of well-meaning friends fall flat. Job teaches us that we do not have to pretend. We can pour out our complaint to God. And when our friends offer easy answers, we can remember that God is not small enough to be captured by our equations. He is higher than heaven and deeper than hell. He is not a formula to be managed but a God to be trusted, even in the dark.
Reflection
- When you have suffered, have you been more like Job—honest with God in your bitterness—or more like Zophar, offering tidy explanations that do not fit the pain?
- Job says the beasts and the earth itself testify that the hand of the LORD has wrought this. Where in your ordinary life this week can you see the hand of God holding the breath of every living thing?
Prayer
Lord, You are higher than heaven and deeper than hell, longer than the earth and broader than the sea. We cannot by searching find You out unto perfection, yet You have made us and fashioned us, clothed us with skin and flesh, and granted us life and favour. When our souls are weary and our complaints rise bitter within us, do not condemn us. Teach us to speak honestly to You, and give us friends who will sit with us in silence rather than hand us formulas. Hold the breath of our lives in Your hand, and let us rest in Your wisdom even when we cannot see Your way. Amen.