Job 10:22

And so this awful lament goes on to its close. The wailing passes from blaming God for His injustice to lamenting his birth. Pitifully, Job asks for a brief pause, a break from sorrow, before he goes away and is no more. It is the lament of chapter 3 again.

We must remember that the book of Job is inspired, but it would be a great mistake to grant that the speeches are inspired. Satan's words were surely not inspired, and yet the book records them. Part of the value of the book is that we have the mistakes of the speakers. Every one of the three friends was very much mistaken in what he said, and Job himself also.

The New Testament weighs all these expressions and finds them wanting. Death is not a friend whose visit we should want, but an enemy. In the light of the gospel, the hope of God's people in trouble and sorrow is not relief by death, but the coming of the Lord.

But such as Job's was the Old Testament hope. Outside the present scene there was little light. Death was a deep, dark "shadow," almost impossible to see through. What was solid and plain to them was resurrection and restoration to a scene of earthly blessing. There were, indeed, scattered hints of other things. Enoch had of old gone to God, and not seen death. Elijah in a later day had followed him. A little gleam of light had broken in there. But that was still not the revelation of the heavenly places. Nor was death abolished, or life and incorruption brought to light.

Whatever else was true, Job was a saint of God after all, and he had confidence in God. He was not thinking about the portion of the wicked, but about what his own would be. In death a "land of darkness" stretched before him, and his eye could hardly see into it. Yet he had something of the Psalmist's confidence in One who would be with him there.

In the past death was a shadow over souls. We hear it in the cry of a Hezekiah, and we see it in Job's picture of "the land of gloom like thick darkness... where light is as thick darkness" (Job 10:22). But now the Light has come with the Life, and it pierces the shadow of death. The one who had the power of death is met and defeated, and the captives go free.

The victory is complete! Christ Himself has gone through the narrow pass of death. He has cleared the way for all His followers, free of every difficulty and danger. He who was in the lowest parts of the earth is now in glory. And from that glory — the glory of God in the risen Man — divine light now shines in these low and lonely depths. The gloom of death is gone. The darkness of the grave is lit up. The shadows of death are only on the human side, and only our poor human hearts feel them.

"As long as I am in the world," Jesus had said, "I am the light of the world." Judas, captured by the devil, went out from the rays of that blessed light. So, of necessity, when the door closed behind him, it was night — the night of death. Its awful darkness wrapped his soul for ever, for he had entered that land Job speaks of — a land dark because, it may be added, God's judgment lies upon it.