Job 19:11

He would meet their thought, and frankly acknowledge that his trouble did come from God. It was He who had hurled him down, and hemmed him in with inescapable snares. It was He who refused to listen to his cry... It was He who had blocked his way so that he could not escape. He covered his path with darkness, stripped him of honour, and took the crown from his head. He crushed him on every side, so that he was gone, and uprooted even his hope. It was He whose anger burned against him, and who counted him as one of His foes. He massed His troops, raised up mounds against him, and camped all around.

It is perfectly true it must have been God allowing all this. "He has kindled His wrath against me" — there he was wrong — "and counts me as His adversary."

So he considers he is the object of God's bitter anger and that God counts him as His enemy (v.11). How totally wrong Job was in all this. But when someone is bound up in "self" he will always think of God in this accusing way. Yet in all the trouble Job was going through, God was acting toward him in genuine love and compassion. At the moment Job could not see this, as later he would.

This root of suspicion against the Almighty must be searched out, and these men's false charges will never do it. There follows now a terrible accusation against God. It is well for Job that he is accusing infinite patience, or he might have had a real taste of divine anger. But God bears with it all, waiting for His own time to bring the poor distracted man into His own holy presence.

Job thought God was against him; but he has to learn that God was the only One who was truly for him. Satan, Sabeans, the winds and the fire of heaven, his wife and his three friends — all were against him, and set on his destruction or condemnation. And last of all he has to learn that he was against himself. There was only One in the universe who was his Friend, and He was the One Job regarded as his enemy... They would have destroyed Job body and soul if God had let them. But God sets a limit to their power. Like the lance in a skilled surgeon's hand, it can only touch what is destructive to life, and separate the precious from the worthless.

Now God acts in these trials as a father. He chastises us. They come perhaps, as in the case of Job, from the enemy, but the hand and the wisdom of God are in them. He chastises those whom He loves. We must therefore neither despise the chastisement nor be discouraged by it. We must not despise it, for He does not chastise without a motive or a cause — and besides, it is God who does it. Nor must we be discouraged, for He does it in love.