Job Replies: Where Is God?
1 Job longest to appear before God, 6 in confidence of his mercy. 8 God, who is invisible, observed our ways. 11 Job’s innocence. 13 God’s decree is immutable.
Job 23:1 Then Job replied:
Job replies to Eliphaz in a speech occupying two chapters (chs. 23 and 24) of 42 verses. Unlike Job’s previous replies, this speech is in the form of a monologue, without direct address to the friends.
He begins by justifying the vehemence of his complaints. In ch. 24 he reviews his previous arguments, maintaining that the wicked enjoy prosperity. He closes with a challenge to his opponents to disprove the truth of what he has said.
Job 23:2 “Even today my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy in spite of my groaning.
“His hand” is the reading of the Syriac, the Vulgate, and the Targums. Job does not apologize for his complaints. He acknowledges that, notwithstanding all his opponents have said about his right to complain, he still complains as bitterly as ever.
The LXX renders the sentence, “His hand has been made heavy upon my groaning.”
Job 23:3 If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling!
Job is plagued with a sense of the remoteness and inaccessibility of God. He feels that he must somehow find God. He repeats his desire to carry his case directly to God.
Job 23:4 I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments.
Job 23:5 I would find out what he would answer me, and consider what he would say to me.
Job is weary of human reasoning. He is anxious to know God’s attitude.
Job 23:6 Would he vigorously oppose me? No, he would not press charges against me.
Job manifests confidence in divine justice.
Job 23:7 There the upright can establish their innocence before him, and there I would be delivered forever from my judge.
Job’s conscience testifies to his basic integrity and uprightness. He feels that if he can obtain the ear of God, he will be vindicated, once and for all. His basic complaint in vs. 1–7 is that he does not know how to find his way to God. He seems to feel that God will be kind to him, if only he can come into His presence.
Job 23:8 “But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him.
A new stanza begins here. Verses 8 and 9 graphically describe Job’s futile search for God. Job looks to all points of the compass in his search for God, but all in vain. The Oriental geographers considered themselves as facing the east instead of the north, as we do. The west was behind them. The south was on the right hand and the north on the left.
no glimpse of him.
Job 23:9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
This is one of the key verses of the book. Although Job could not seem to find God, he believed that God was aware of his ways and purposeful in His dealings with him. Job was beginning to understand that he was being tried. He still did not know of Satan’s challenge regarding him. One of the rungs of the ladder by which Job climbed from despair to faith was the recognition on his part that he was not being punished or unjustly treated but rather was being tested that he might emerge as pure gold from a furnace. Job 23:11 My feet have closely followed his steps; I have kept to his way without turning aside.
Job 23:12 I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.
Job intimates that the words of God’s mouth are to him a most precious treasure. Job clearly understood the sovereignty of God.
Job 23:13 “But he stands alone, and who can oppose him? He does whatever he pleases.
Job 23:14 He carries out his decree against me, and many such plans he still has in store.
Job 23:15 That is why I am terrified before him; when I think of all this, I fear him.
Job’s fear was provoked by his suffering and his uncertain future. One of the great purposes of the message of God to Job (chs. 38 to 41) was to dispel this fear and uncertainty. God does not leave His children in fear.
Job 23:16 God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me.
Job 23:17 Yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.
The thing that crushed Job was not so much his suffering as the thought that the God whom he had loved and served had caused the suffering to come upon him. He acknowledges the darkness that surrounds him and wonders why God did not destroy him before his calamity or remove it from him. He continues his complaints in ch. 24.