I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me.
Job is no longer arguing with his friends. He turns to God, and meets silence — then something worse. God looks on, and does not seem moved. His complaint raises the hardest question a sufferer can ask: has God changed toward me?
The cry that was heard
Job says God gives him no answer. William Kelly quotes an older translation, which reads "you do not hear me." He separates hearing from answering:
William KellyThere is no reference to his three friends now. He is looking at this tremendous trial that afflicted his body, and that exposed him to all this disrespect and contempt from the very lowest people on earth. "I cry to you and you do not hear me." But God did hear him. There was a reason why He did not answer; but God did hear. "I stand up, and you do not regard me. You have become cruel to me." There he was quite wrong.
What the second half says
Some translations read the second half as "you do not regard me." The ESV has "you only look at me." One writer argues that the second is right, and that this is what makes the complaint so bitter:
Samuel RidoutHe cries to Him for help, but no answer comes from above. He stands in all his wretchedness before God, who looks upon him but does not pity. This is the force of verse 20. It is not merely "You do not regard me." The negative is not in the original. God does regard him: He looks upon him and remains unmoved by his sufferings. "You change Yourself into a cruel being toward me."
The verdict Job passed on God
Men had already turned cruel to Job. In verse 20 he says the same of God. One commentator asks us to be slow in blaming him:
F. B. HoleIn verse 20 however he turned to God and made bitter complaint to Him, and even against Him. He felt that He had opposed him and cast him down and disregarded his prayers and pleas, and so had "become cruel" to him. Poor Job! Without any question men had become cruel to him. He now felt that God had become cruel too… Let us not judge Job harshly. In such a fearful plight as his we should probably have said far worse things than he.
What Job could have said instead
There was another way to speak in the dark. Ridout sets Job's words beside a psalmist who questioned his own soul instead of God:
Samuel RidoutDo we hear him taking counsel with his soul in this time of suffering? — "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God" (Psalm 42:11). No; instead of encouraging himself in this way, he accuses his Maker.
The delay was love
Job read the silence as proof that God had turned against him. Another commentator reads it the other way. What Job counted as cruelty was care:
Leslie M. GrantWhat seems the most devastating misery for Job is that he considers God is against him. He cries to God but is not heard (v.20). Of course God heard him, but God answers only at the right time and in the right way. Had God become cruel to him? He thought so, but it was the love of God that delayed an answer. What he considered God's hand strong against him was really the strength of God's love for him.
The outcome Job could not see
Job could not see the end of his own story while he sat in the ashes. That end changes how his suffering reads:
The Christian's FriendJob did not feel happy when he was tested almost beyond what he could bear. He was happy in this: he was in the Lord's care, and the Lord was leading him to a sure and certain goal of blessing. For the present his affliction was not joyful but painful. Yet it was about to yield him the peaceful fruit of righteousness, because it was training him. We see the Lord's purpose in the last chapters of Job's history. There he is restored to blessing and to the Lord's favour: the discipline had done its work, and God blessed the close of his life more than its beginning.
Commentators differ here. Ridout calls Job's outlook unbelief, and traces it to how taken up with himself Job is in these chapters. Hole asks us not to judge him at all.
Summary
- Cry — God heard Job, but did not answer him. Hearing and answering are not the same, and Job could not see God's reason for the delay.
- Gaze — the deeper wound is not that God ignored him. God looked on and seemed unmoved, and Job says God has changed into a cruel being toward him.
- Transfer — men had turned cruel to him first. In verse 20 he says the same of God. When people turn cruel, the heart is quick to accuse God too.
- Reversal — the hand Job read as strong against him was the strength of God's love. The delay was love choosing the right time and the right way.
- End — Job judged God by the middle of his story. The last chapters show him restored and blessed, with the discipline over and its purpose reached.