Job 30:19

Ashes, usually from burnt wood, served as a sign of sorrow or mourning. People put them on the head, or on the body with sackcloth, or spread them on a couch to lie on. To eat ashes expresses great sorrow, and to be reduced to ashes is a picture of complete destruction. "Dust and ashes" was the figure Abraham used of himself before the LORD, and Job said he had become like them by the hand of God.

His soul is poured out, and days of suffering are his lot. The nights are no better, for the gnawing disease does not sleep as it bares his bones out of his very flesh. His clothing no longer adorns him. It clings to his wasted body, and his collar shows the poor bony neck. It is all vivid as a picture, and as repulsive. All this Job ascribes to God. It is His great force that has wasted him away and laid his honour in the dust. He has brought him into the mire and made him as worthless as the dust and ashes in which he sits.

He no longer talks of the persecution of callous men. Instead he traces his sufferings to God, saying, "God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes." It is good that he recognises one thing. Whatever his suffering, and whatever its source, God is the One who has allowed it. But Job ought to have realised that God would not allow it if it was not going to be of pure blessing to Job in the end. Later he did realise the truth of Romans 8:28: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." But at that moment his disaster overwhelmed him. He would not give God credit for being who He is.

God loves His saints too well to leave in them anything that dishonours Him and that they cannot see in themselves. Such a thing would block the fullest blessing. So in grace He uses trial to bring that blessing about. He gives us a comfort beyond words. Satan is not the one who plans and carries things out. God Himself does, and He does it in perfect wisdom and righteousness, and as the God of grace too. That holds despite these huge calamities, which sin has brought in, and which He allows Satan to wield against His servants.

Then the will comes in (Job 29), tied to self, and it makes self the centre — sadly — even while God is owned. Compare that chapter of conscience before God with his self-satisfaction: satisfaction with himself, in his own eyes and before men. And then see how (Job 30) pride, contempt of others, being taken up with evil, and love of self all break out.

The LORD's voice out of the whirlwind ceased, and Job humbled himself in full measure. He confessed the wrongness of his former words. He had to despise himself and repent in the place of death — dust and ashes. These moments in the presence of God had produced a result which all the talk of the three friends, and even of Elihu, had not achieved. This man stood out among men, and God Himself had spoken well of him. Yet he had now discovered his own utter sinfulness, down in the deepest springs of his being. A discovery we all in our turn have to make.

If, in the presence of suffering and wrongs, we patiently endure, we shall find that in the end, "the Lord is compassionate and merciful." Job's case is specially instructive, as in his troubles we learn that, whatever trials we are permitted to pass through, God uses them for our discipline.