Job 6:6

"Does the wild donkey bray when he has grass?" If he has got his proper food does he bray as if he were suffering from great hunger? "Or does the ox low over his fodder?" No, he thankfully eats it. "Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt?" Here am I. Not one scrap of food comes to me without pain. I have nothing to make it pleasant, no salt with it. It is all poison, so to speak — poison that entered and drank up his spirit. "Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?" The best thing he could get was that which was altogether insipid and disagreeable.

Job uses several pictures to show that he has good reason for the complaints his friends criticize him for. Even a donkey or an ox will be content if he has his proper food. If he makes complaint, we know he has not received it. And can anyone expect Job to take his sufferings as if they were pleasant food — swallow them down, more sickening than the slime of the egg? It is as though he said, "See what loathsome things are set before me, and can you expect me to eat them without a murmur?"

Here we have the part of his sufferings that was probably more intense than the physical pain. It was the sense that God's wrath was upon him, that the dreadful poison of His indignation was consuming him, that gave a sharpness to his grief. We know this was a mistake, and that it was another proof of God's love that He was chastening His poor servant in this way. But he did not know it, and we should not be harsh with one who felt that the Lord was dealing bitterly with him.

This was a great mistake. They were the arrows of Satan. God was not against Job. If only Job had known it, God was for him.

One only, and He for no sin of His own, has felt the arrows of God piercing His holy soul. "Why have you forsaken Me?" He asks. But not for one moment does He doubt the holiness or goodness of God. "You are holy," is enough for Him, and in meekness He drinks the bitter cup; perfect in His sufferings, as in all else. God could never lay the sin of mankind on poor Job, though there was no one else like him on earth. Of Another He can say, "I have found a ransom."

But is this the language of faith — even of Old Testament faith? What of that noble army of martyrs? They "were tortured, refusing to accept release." They "suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment," and were "destitute, afflicted, mistreated" (Heb. 11:35–38). Would we expect to hear from these the complaints which fall from Job's lips? Paul could "take pleasure" in what fell upon him. But Job needs light, and must learn to trust God when he cannot understand Him.