Job’s Friends

 Chad Bird

Why Job’s Friends Failed Miserably at Comforting

There sat Job. A man who had lost all ten of his children in one day. A man who had lost all his riches in one day. A man who had lost everything, including his health. There he sat atop an ash heap, his body infested with loathsome sores, scraping his skin.

To such a pain-racked, grief-stricken, disconsolate man, what does one say?

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, the three “friends” of Job, each said the same thing in their own way: “Obviously, Job, you are harboring some secret sin. Confess and turn to God. Then he will restore you.”

In the theology of these men, there was no room for an innocent sufferer. Job must have committed some sin that prompted God to punish him. For these men, the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished. A cut-and-dried theology. A always leads to B.

This same thinking was expressed by the disciples of Jesus, who said of the man born blind, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2).

This same thinking still infests people today, especially those who attribute worldly success or riches to a God-pleasing life, and sickness or suffering to a God-displeasing life. “If you have enough faith, if you please God, then he will reward you with material prosperity or physical healing.” A always leads to B.

The story of Job plants a fist in the face of this lie. Indeed, the only perfect, sinless, truly innocent man who ever lived, Jesus, suffered more than any man before him or since.

Why do people suffer? Yes, sometimes for their sins, but also for any number of reasons—the fallenness of the world, the evildoing of others, and sometimes for reasons of which God alone knows.

Rather than answering “Why?,” the Scriptures point us to the “Who?” Who is with us in suffering, upholds us, and carries us through it? The Man of sorrows and suffering himself, Jesus the crucified, who will one day restore all believers in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.