Now Mine Eye Seeth Thee

A good man loses everything in one afternoon: his herds, his servants, his ten children, and then his skin. His wife tells him to curse God and die. His three best friends come and sit with him in silence for a week, which is the kindest thing anyone does in the book, and then they open their mouths and spend thirty chapters explaining to him why it must be his fault. And then God answers out of a storm, and does not explain anything. Job is the book for the people whose question is why, and its answer is not an answer. It is a Person.

Doth Job fear God for nought?

"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil" (Job 1:1). That is the first verse, and it is the verdict, and the reader is told it before anything happens so that nothing the friends say afterward can be believed. God says the same: "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth" (1:8). And the accuser asks the question the whole book turns on: "Doth Job fear God for nought?… put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face" (1:9-11). Is there such a thing as a man who loves God for God, and not for the hedge? That is what is being tested, and Job is never told.

Four messengers in one day, each arriving before the last has finished. And Job "arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (1:20-21). Worshipped. With ten fresh graves. Augustine, watching Rome burn, reached for that sentence:

Then the boils, "from the sole of his foot unto his crown" (2:7), and the ash heap, and his wife: "Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die" (2:9). And his answer, which is not a rebuke so much as a question he is asking himself: "What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (2:10).

Seven days and seven nights

"So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great" (2:13). Three friends, a week on the ground, not a word. It is the best thing in the book, and the friends should have kept doing it. Then Job speaks first, and what comes out is not blessed be the name of the LORD: "Let the day perish wherein I was born… Why died I not from the womb?" (3:3-11). The man who worshipped in chapter one curses his birthday in chapter three, and the book keeps both, because both are what a man does. And the friends, hearing that, cannot stay quiet.

Thirty chapters follow, and the friends' argument never changes: God is just; the righteous prosper; you are suffering; therefore you have sinned; confess it. It is tidy, and it is what most people believe, and it is wrong, and the reader knows it is wrong from the first verse. Job will not confess to what he did not do, and he will not let go of God either, and the two together produce the strangest and greatest speeches in the Bible. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him" (13:15). Both halves. "Oh that I knew where I might find him!… Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him… But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (23:3-10). I cannot find Him, and He knows where I am. And then, from the ash heap, the sentence the church has sung at funerals ever since:

My redeemer liveth. In my flesh. Mine eyes. A man covered in sores, with dead children, and no explanation, says that he will see God in a body, for himself. He does not know how. He knows Who.

Out of the whirlwind

"Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind" (38:1). At last. And the first thing to notice is that He answered. Thirty chapters of a man demanding a hearing, and the friends saying God does not owe him one, and God comes. The second thing is what He says, which is not one word about the accuser, or the wager, or the reason. "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (38:2-4). Four chapters of questions. The sea, the stars, the snow, the hawk, the horse, the crocodile. "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (38:7). Not one of them is an explanation. All of them are a Presence.

And Job, who had a speech ready, says: "Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth" (40:4). And then the sentence that is the whole book's answer to why: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee" (42:5). Now mine eye seeth thee. He never got the reason. He got God, and it was enough, and it was more than the reason would have been.

My servant Job

Then God turns to the friends, the ones with the tidy theology, and says the thing that should be read in every seminary: "My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath" (42:7). Job, who cursed his birthday and demanded a trial and said God had hidden Himself, spoke of God the thing that is right. The friends, who defended God for thirty chapters, did not. Because Job spoke to Him, and they only spoke about Him. And God makes the friends go to Job for prayer: "my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept" (42:8). "And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends" (42:10). When he prayed for the men who had tormented him. That is when it turned.

Where this lands

James, writing to Christians in trouble, said: "Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy" (James 5:11). The end of the Lord. Not the end of the suffering, though that came; the end the Lord had in view the whole time, which was a man who could say "now mine eye seeth thee." Job never learned about the wager. He never got the reason. What he got was the whirlwind, and the face, and it settled him.

And the question the accuser asked, does anyone fear God for nought, was finally answered, not on an ash heap in Uz, but on a hill outside Jerusalem, by a Man who had the hedge taken away, and His friends scattered, and His skin torn, and who was told from the cross to come down if He were the Son of God, and did not, and said "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," and trusted Him anyway. Though He slay me. He was the one who feared God for nought, all the way down, and because He did, the redeemer Job knew was alive stood at the latter day upon the earth, in the flesh, and everyone who has sat on the ash heap and said "I know not where to find him" will see Him for themselves, and their eyes shall behold, and not another.

Related: Suffering, The Resurrection Body, When the Mind Goes, and But If Not. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.