I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Job 6-10.

Job responds to Eliphaz by asking rhetorically if he does not have the right to cry out in pain when he suffers, a right to complain about the pain he experiences.  He then answers his own question by giving examples from nature.  He goes on to tell Eliphaz that his attempt at comfort was no comfort at all.  But he takes Eliphaz’s advice and lays his case before God.  However, Job goes beyond crying out to God for relief.  He accuses God of tormenting him.  Which brings us to Bildad’s response to Job.  Bildad accuses Job of claiming that God is unjust and tells him that if his children died because they were guilty of some grave sin.  Even if it is true, telling that to a grieving parent serves no useful purpose.  Worse still, Bildad uses that as a jumping off point to tell Job that all he has to do to be restored to fortune and happiness is turn from his sins and seek God.  By doing so, Bildad implies that the only reason Job is suffering is because he sinned.

Job replies to Bildad by pointing out that even if he put on a happy face as Eliphaz had suggested his pain would still be there; he would still be suffering.  He points out that while God does things too marvelous to understand, that is the problem; those things are too marvelous to understand.  We know that he does these things, we even see them being done, but we cannot see God, nor understand why He does what He does.  As a result we cannot reason with God, because we do not understand Him. Job points out that there is a disconnect between our understanding and God’s.  Then Job makes a most insightful statement: if only there was a mediator between man and God who could translate God’s thoughts so that we could understand each other.   And we have such a mediator in Jesus Christ.  

A little further on in his cry to God Job says something else very insightful, something which reflects a worldview basic to the Bible.  The New International Version translates Job 10:10-11 as:<blockquote>Did you not pour me out like milk
    and curdle me like cheese,
 clothe me with skin and flesh
    and knit me together with bones and sinews?</blockquote>

God did indeed form each and everyone of us.  So, only God has the right to decide when our lives will come to their end.  This understanding forms the basis for the prohibition against child sacrifice, or human sacrifice of any kind.  Here it is the basis for Job’s complaint: did God form him merely to make him suffer?  And yet Job wonders why God would have allowed him to be born if his only purpose was to suffer.  

I have never truly suffered from depression, but every time I read the Book of Job I feel even more strongly that reading it offers relief from that malady.    The Book of Job does not offer an easy answer to suffering.  In fact it tells us that there is no easy answer.  Which should offer some relief to those who are suffering and do not understand why.