Monday, May 25, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Job 22-24
Key Verse
Job 23:7 — “There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge.”
Devotional Thought
Eliphaz speaks again, and this time his accusation is brutally specific. He charges Job with stripping the naked of their clothing, withholding water from the weary, sending widows away empty, and breaking the arms of the fatherless (22:6-9). None of it is true. Job will later answer that he clothed the naked and fed the hungry (31:16-22), but Eliphaz has already built his case on fiction. His logic is tidy and cruel: suffering proves sin, so Job must have crushed the poor. Then he offers a genuine invitation wrapped in a false premise: “Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace” (22:21). The words are beautiful. The hands offering them are unclean.
Job’s reply in chapter 23 is one of the loneliest passages in Scripture. He longs to find God, to stand before His seat and argue his case, but he goes forward and God is not there; backward, and he cannot perceive Him; left and right, and he is hidden (23:8-9). Many of us know that geography. We pray and hear nothing. We look for God in the very place we have served Him faithfully, and He seems absent. Yet Job plants one of the great confessions of faith in the middle of the fog: “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (23:10). He cannot see God, but he trusts that God sees him. Gold is not made in the sunshine; it is proved in the furnace, and the Refiner never takes His eyes off the metal.
Then chapter 24 turns Job’s gaze outward, and the ache widens. He looks at the world and asks why the wicked seem to go unpunished. Men move boundary stones, drive away the orphan’s donkey, take the widow’s ox as a pledge, and push the needy off the road (24:2-4). The poor huddle in the rocks, wet with mountain rain, with no covering from the cold (24:7-8). Murderers rise with the light; adulterers wait for twilight, saying, “No eye shall see me” (24:14-15). And yet, Job observes, “God layeth not folly to them” (24:12). The wicked are exalted for a little while, then gone, cut off like the tops of grain (24:24) — but the “little while” can feel unbearably long when you are the one being crushed.
This is the honesty Scripture permits us. We are not required to pretend that the world makes sense. We may bring our bitter complaint, our unanswered questions, and our grief over the fatherless and the widow straight to God. Job never gets his day in court, yet he holds fast to two things: God knows the way he takes, and God will finally judge. That is enough to keep walking. If today finds you in the fog — unable to perceive Him on the left or the right — take heart. The Refiner still watches the gold.
Reflection
- Eliphaz described sins Job had not committed, then offered comfort built on a lie. When you counsel a suffering friend, are you slower to diagnose and quicker to listen?
- Job could not see God in any direction, yet said, “He knoweth the way that I take.” What would it look like this week to trust that God sees you even when you cannot see Him?
Prayer
Lord, we come to You as Job came, longing to find Your seat though we cannot perceive You on the left or the right. You know the way that we take. When we are tried, bring us forth as gold, and keep our feet in Your steps. Guard us from the counsel of friends who wound with false words, and make us gentle comforters to those who suffer. We grieve with You over the widow, the fatherless, and the poor who have no covering in the cold. Remember them, O God. Hold us fast until the morning, when every hidden thing is brought to light and You are seen at last. Amen.