Job 6:7

Job uses several figures to show that he has just cause for the complaints his friends reproach him for. Even a donkey or an ox will be content if it has its proper food. If it complains, we know it has not been fed. And can Job be expected to take his sufferings as if they were pleasant food — to swallow them down, more sickening than the slime of an egg? It is as though he said, "See what disgusting things are set before me. Can you expect me to eat them without a murmur?" His "sorrowful food" was the things his soul hated.

Here am I, and not a morsel of food that does not cost me pain, and I have nothing to make it agreeable; no salt with it; it is all poison, as it were — poison that entered and drank up his spirit. The best thing he could get was completely tasteless and unpleasant.

Severe chastening pains come upon him, and his bones seem to wither in a struggle for life. He is brought so low that he hates even the food that would sustain his life.

Does he not have a perfect right to complain? He would not complain if all were well with him. But his afflictions are like disgusting food, and should he not murmur and complain? It is all the language of despairing grief.

That Eliphaz's argument counted for nothing in Job's case is clear. As soon as he stopped speaking, Job went on with the tale of his own sorrows. He gave no attention at all to those words, and mixed in much self-defence and bitter complaints against God's dealings (Job 6:7).

Here we have the element in his sufferings that probably exceeds the physical side in intensity. It was the sense that God's wrath was on him, that the dreadful poison of His anger was consuming him, that gave his grief its sharpness. We know this was a mistake, and that his being chastened like this was one more proof of God's love. But he did not know it, and we should not be harsh with a man who felt that the Lord was dealing bitterly with him. He could not have the full light that is ours now, so he could not "count it all joy" that he had fallen into such trouble. Dreadful doubts about God's love and goodness had begun to gnaw at his heart, with a pain beyond his losses and his sores.

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 everything else. God could not for a moment lay on poor Job — though there was no one else like him on earth — the sin of mankind.