Where do you expect to find Job - not sitting in ashes at the garbage dump

 

Job 6:14-30

 

As one looks at Job, he is not sitting in his nice home, his servants are not waiting on him and his friends, no he is sitting in ashes.  From a physical manner he has boils all over his body and they are very painful, oozing and festered.  That pain is small compared to what he is going through, his wife has told him to curse God and die, his children are gone and most of his wealth, his standing in the community and now his friends have shown up.   Beginning in verse 14, “He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.  Job believes his friends are not loyal for he is not receiving love from them.  He feels his friends are fearful to get close to him because they fear God’s judgment might also come on them.

 

In verses 22-23, “Have I said, ‘Make me a gift’?  Or, ‘From your wealth offer a bribe for me’?   Or, ‘Deliver me from the adversary's hand’?  Or, ‘Redeem me from the hand of the ruthless’?  Job has not, nor will he ask his friends for a special gift or favor, but like most of us we expect a friend to stand by in the good and the bad.

 

I find verses 24-25 coming from a man who is searching his mind and heart to find where he has error,  “Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone astray.  How forceful are upright words!  But what does reproof from you reprove?”

What did I do wrong?  A person of integrity and that is what God has told us Job is, he wants to make right all sin even the unintentional ones.  Job feels as if his friends are not being honest with him, their actions show that they are dismissing his claim of being innocent, he’s not looking for kind words but truth.

 

Verses 27-29, Job is pleading for his friends to not forget the man they knew a man of high morals and who fears God and helps the needy.  “You would even cast lots over the fatherless, and bargain over your friend. “But now, be pleased to look at me, for I will not lie to your face. Please turn; let no injustice be done. Turn now; my vindication is at stake.”  A creditor in the time of Job would take and sell a friend into slavery in payment for a debt, and that’s what Job is comparing his friends to.  

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice