You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.
Job has fallen from honour into contempt. Here he turns from the men who mock him to God Himself, and pictures himself snatched up by a gale and blown apart. Was his reading of God true?
The image behind the words
The storm is not weather; it is Job's circumstances, and he feels God has put him out in them on purpose.
Leslie M. Grant"You lift me up on the wind" (v.22) — that is, God was exposing Job to the cruel winds of circumstances. So He had blocked any possibility of success for the poor sufferer. All he could look for now was the pain of death (v.23), which he speaks of as "the house appointed for all living."
William Kelly fills out the picture. Job's dread is not only pain, but being undone altogether.
William KellyHe dared to say that the God who had once blessed him was now turning Himself into a cruel being toward him. He was making war on him with all His might. He was lifting him up into a storm-chariot and sweeping him away, only to dissolve his very being all the more completely. So that he knew it was God bringing him to death, and to the house where living men gather at last.
Silence misread as cruelty
Two verses earlier Job says he cries and gets no answer. One writer points out that the Hebrew of that line does not say God ignores him — it says God looks on.
Samuel RidoutHe 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, in the sense of looking upon him and remaining unmoved by his sufferings. "You change Yourself into a cruel being toward me." Oh, if Job had only known that tender love! It would have spared him all this suffering, except that the suffering was for his own good.
Where Job was mistaken
Kelly does not soften the charge Job makes here. He marks it as false, and Job's forecast of his own death as false too.
William Kelly"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... "You have become cruel to me." There he was quite wrong... "For I know that you will bring me to death" — there he was wrong again. God had good things in store for Job.
The same misreading is put even more sharply by another writer, who names what Job did not know rather than what he felt.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinHe brings in God again. "You do not answer me!" Heaven had been silent to all his pleas. What a dreadful charge: "You are turned to be cruel to me; with the might of Your hand You persecute me!" He thinks himself completely forsaken, not knowing that God's thoughts towards him were thoughts of love and peace.
The strength behind the hand
Job took the pressure as hostility. It was the opposite.
Leslie M. GrantHe 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.
Why faith went dark here
The chapter is magnificent poetry. Samuel Ridout still judges the state of soul behind it, and names a cause.
Samuel RidoutThis is the stormy wind that lifts the frail sufferer up like chaff and drives him along to vanish in the warring storm. Beautiful poetry indeed, but this is wretched unbelief. Job sees nothing before him but death, the house appointed for all living. His faith seems to have suffered a great eclipse. May we not see the reason for this in the self-occupation that marks these two chapters and the next?
The outcome Job could not yet see
Job expected the storm to finish him. The end of his story was something else.
The Christian's FriendJob did not feel happy when he was tempted almost beyond what he could bear. But 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... "The end of the Lord" comes in the last chapters of Job's history. There we are allowed to see him restored to blessing and to the favour of the Lord.
Summary
- Storm — Job pictures God lifting him into a chariot of wind to sweep him away and dissolve his very being. The wind is his own circumstances, and God has exposed him to them.
- Silence — God was looking on and hearing all along; the delay was in the answering, not in the listening.
- Charge — "You have become cruel to me" is recorded, not approved. One writer calls it wrong, and calls Job's certainty of death wrong too.
- Cause — Job's faith went dark. One writer traces that to how taken up he is with himself in these chapters.
- End — the strong hand he felt against him was the strength of God's love. The close of the book shows the blessing it was driving him toward.