Job 19:2

This was the worst of the speeches so far, and under God's hand Job is led far out of and beyond himself… "How long," Job answered, "will you torment me and break me in pieces with words?" — for he felt that in their reproaches there was no weight, nothing but words.

Job did not lose his temper at Bildad's unjust accusations. Still, he shows here that his friends' reproaches have struck deep into his soul. His appeal is simple: the best he can say of their words is that they are unfair. Ten times they had reproached him. Should they not be ashamed that they had wronged him? They accused him of evil without knowing of any evil in him. So if he had gone wrong, only he knew it. They were only making thrusts in the dark.

"Ten times" — a number that means completeness — they had heaped reproaches on him. They shocked him with unjust charges they were not ashamed to make.

Job had not learnt what his own righteousness was worth. He had not learnt how God shows a soul its real state. Neither Job nor his friends understood God's way of grace — how God could ride over the sin by meeting it in grace. Job's friends could philosophise. They could state plenty of truths. But what comfort was that to a broken heart?

Their principle is that all suffering is punishment, not teaching. It rests on God's justice, not on His love — though the two are always joined in all His ways. Such a principle cannot tell the suffering of the righteous apart from the suffering of the wicked.

These answers do not always come from plain cruelty, as you might think. Usually they come from nothing worse than flippancy, a hard heart, and self-sufficiency. "My dear brothers," as Cromwell used to say, "I beg you to consider that it is possible you may be wrong." And consider this too. Whether you are wrong or not, such explanations will most likely fill the sufferer with anger. They will also bring down a rebuke from God on the Zophars, Bildads and Eliphazes who torment His stricken servants with their shallow opinions.

However much Bildad's cruel language pained him, Job's reply shows not the slightest sense of the guilt they had laid at his door… And yet it is wonderful to see this poor crushed spirit rise from the dust in those words of faith and hope: "I know that my Redeemer lives."

He takes it all as from God, without knowing what had taken place in heaven. He had to pass through the deepest trouble. But the man who would become a byword for patience broke out in total impatience… that a man so famous for his patience should fail under trial! Ah, in Christ there is the contrast. This is where people go so wrong: they make Job a picture of Christ. No, he is an example of failure — a man born of God who fails. We want Christ, and cannot do without Christ. That is the true moral of the Book of Job.