Comforting the downcast: some thoughts on the friends of Job

“...For He casts down the pride of the arrogant,

but He saves those of downcast eyes. He rescues

anyone who is innocent...”

--Job 22:29-30

“Have your hands clean, and you will be saved...” is how the above passage ends.  Eliphaz is telling Job what sounds like good advice.  It seems true. I think that is part of what makes it sound so strange to me.  Here we have one of those famous friends of Job who have come to comfort him in his hour of need. According to the story, this man has sat in the dirt in silence with Job for three days out of sympathy for his friend.  He (along with Bildad, Zophar and Job) has –at this point in the story—now engaged in a spirited debate about God’s justice and mercy for almost 20 chapters (and there are still a few more to come).  And in the end the main thrust of his argument (and of Zophar & Bildad) is that if you repent and confess your sins, God will be merciful. God saves “...those of downcast eyes. He rescues anyone who is innocent...”  And one can imagine these same words coming out of a minister today:

Brothers and sisters!

The cleansing power of Jesus has come to wash your sins away!

He will wash the stain of sin from your hands.  His saving blood

will wash your whiter than snow. Let Jesus wash you! Let Jesus

wash the stain of sin off your hands and you will be saved!

I can hear it.  But the problem is –the complication here in this particular story is—that Job is not being punished for any particular sin.  And though this supposedly wise friend doesn’t know that, we do –because we read chapters 1 and 2 and we saw God talking with Satan and handing Job over to him.  We know that what has befallen Job has nothing to do with any sin Job has committed but simply because God has allowed it. God has allowed Satan power over his servant Job as part of some heavenly “test.”  And so, in the back of my head as I read this advice, what am I supposed to make of it? What am I to make of Job’s friends and their seemingly wise (if banal) theological advice?

Too often these three are simply dismissed as stooges; straw men.  The fact that they don’t have any idea what is going on between God and Job, is used as an excuse to dismiss without consideration them and the theology they rode in on.  And this is all because of the context.  We know the story and so we know their basic premise –that Job has brought these afflictions upon himself—is wrong.  And in the context of the book, it begins to seem a little ironic that such seemingly good advice (or theology) is so very wrong.  Which leaves me only to remark on the inspired use of irony by the author of this book:  A character (3 of them, in fact) propose something we believe to be true about God and His justice, His mercy, and yet the in the context of the narrative these truths are shown (ironically) to be completely false.  That seems kind of bold –on both a literary and a theological level.  And yet, to push my point a little further, let me move forward to chapter 25 & 26 where Bildad offers a vision of God that prefigures God’s own response to Job at the end of the book. Bildad asks whether anyone can be virtuous in God’s eyes? God, who “spreads the North above the void” who “fastens up the water in the clouds” who sets a boundary between light and dark, who crushes Rahab (i.e. the behemoth, not the woman from Jericho), whose breath gives light to the heavens; a God who transcends human imagining... who of us can be virtuous in His eyes? What right do we have to question His judgment? Well, that’s certainly true.  And yet, Job responds to this with a statement so bitter and sarcastic that it made my heart leap.  He says:

“To one so weak, what a help you are...” (26:1)

I almost laughed out loud when I read this; it caught me off guard to stumble upon something so sarcastic and obviously humorous in the midst of all this suffering.  It is as if Job says to his friends:

Oh, of course you are right. Yes. It is such a comfort to know

that my children died, my crops failed, my property has been destroyed

and my skin is falling off and my wife is encouraging me to commit

suicide –but God is so amazing and transcendent that I shouldn’t
question His plans!  Anyway, I’m sure I must have done something
wrong. Yes, even these running sores must be part of God’s amazing plan.
Thank you. Now I understand and now everything feels better. 
Thank you. What a comfort and a help you are; such dear dear friends!

Please come again!  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
–If only I still had a door.

It also struck me as a kind of slap in the face.  I recognized in it an honest and bitter response to such theologizing of pain.  “To one so weak, what a help you are...” Those words spoke to me about the value of such talk; to speak of suffering and God’s majesty in such a way suddenly felt sacrilegious. And I began to wonder, how many times have I been like Bildad or Eliphaz?  How many times have I –sincerely trying to comfort someone—fell into the trap of platitudes about God’s glory and mercy and love and how we can’t understand –but God has His plans and we just need to repent and... And I wondered, how much harm have I done?  How many hearts have I hardened by my words of comfort?

And looking back into the story and wondering what should his friends have done? What should I do when faced with someone who is in crisis and in need of comfort?  And I keep coming back to one moment in the story:

“The news of all the disasters that had fallen on Job

came to the ears of three of his friends.  Each of them

set out from home... and by common consent they decided

to go and offer him sympathy and consolation.  Looking

at him from a distance, they could not recognize him;

they wept aloud and tore their robes and threw dust over

their heads.  They sat there on the ground beside him

for seven days and seven nights; never speaking a word

for they saw how much he was suffering.”

–Job 2:11-13

I am thinking about those times I went into a hospital room and began to theologize about suffering and I wonder if my words weren’t more to protect and comfort me than the person I was visiting.  I wonder if perhaps I shouldn’t learn a lesson from Job’s three friends.  Perhaps the best thing we can do when we are faced with suffering is just that: sit with them in silence as best and for as long as we can, and if there is something needing to be said, perhaps you can just let your tears speak for themselves.  There is a lot of comfort in a friend’s silence and in a friend’s tears, and a lot of truth in someone willing to just sit and be present with us in our time of need.

And I can speak to that, from experience.  I remember waking up in the ICU and seeing an unexpected face sitting nearby, just waiting with me, in silence, tears glistening in her eyes.  There was no need to speak. That unexpected presence was all the theology I needed.

If Job’s friends had only remained silent... but that would be a different story.