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In our text Job makes his lament to God loud and clear, "Today also my complaint is bitter." The word bitter seems to carry the feeling of defiance in the wake of grievance and complaint. Job earlier has spoken of the bitterness of his soul:

Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. (7:11)

I loathe my life;
I will give free utterance to my complaint. (10:1)

Here Job is correlating his own bitter defiance with the unrelenting pressure of God's hand upon his life. Job insists on seeking a resolution for his complaint not through the traditional religious practices of prayer and lament (as in the Psalms), but through a legal hearing, because he feels that he has a case against God. But Job is confronted with a dilemma: he does not know how to find his way into God's presence.1 Previously, Job felt that he was blocked in his desire to have a hearing with God by God's overwhelming power.

For he is not a mortal, as I am, that I might answer him,
that we could come to trial together.
There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand on us both.
If he would take his rod away from me,
then I would speak without fear of him,
for I know I am not what I am thought to be. (9:32-35)

Only grant two things to me,
then I will not hide myself from your face.
Withdraw your hand far from me,
and do not let dread of you terrify me. (13:20-21)

Then Job senses God's dread.

Would he contend with me in the
greatness of his power?
No, but he would give heed to me.

His desire for trial is blocked by God's elusiveness.

If I go forward, he is not there;

or backward, I cannot perceive him;

on the left he hides me, and I cannot behold him;

I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.

Each of these half lines ends by reiterating the crucial point: "He is not there," "I cannot not perceive him," "I cannot see him," "I cannot glimpse him." Job's frustrated search for God is such a contrast to Psalm 139. Even though he cannot perceive God, he senses that God perceives him: "But he knows the way I take" (v. 10a). He now has the feeling that God's knowledge of him will ensure his vindication: "when he has tested me I shall come out like gold" (v. 10b).

One of the remarkable things regarding the Scriptures is how they give feeling to the personal lament of men and women. At no time does the Bible hide such feelings. The anger, the frustration, and the disappointment that people feel in regard to God's apparent absence from human life along with the feelings of a lack of justice and fair play on God's part is all played out in the Scriptures for all to see and hear. Job is permitted to lay it all out before God for all to see. These feelings are still with us today, if not more so.

We identify with Job and the lament of the other Old Testament writers because they express our own feelings. Life today is marked by what Walter Brueggemann calls, "disequilibrium, incoherence, and unrelieved assymetry."2 It is clear that a church or a Christian who goes on singing "happy songs" in the face of such glaring disorientation is very different from what the Bible itself portrays, particularly in Job. The reason for the lack of lament, as seen in our text, stems from the thought that the acknowledgment of such negativity is somehow an act of unfaith, suggesting that God has lost control. Some would see such statements of unfaith or failure, whereas the biblical laments are to be seen as acts of bold faith. Brueggemann points out that

it is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. On the one hand, it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs to this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. 3


The frank language of Job taking God to task and seeking to have a trial before God so that he can lay his feelings bare is something the church and the Christian have intuitively avoided. The reason for such avoidance of speech as seen in Job and other biblical writers is that it leads one into the dangerous acknowledgment of how life really is. Through such speech Job leads us into the presence of God where everything is not polite and civil. As Brueggemann suggests, they cause us to think unthinkable thoughts and to utter the unutterable to the surprise of many. But at no time did God reprimand Job for making his feelings known. Notice that Job brings his case directly to God. What he so earnestly and honestly feels in his heart is brought to speech, and everything that is brought to speech is directed to God. In Job's speech nothing is out of bounds, nothing is considered as inappropriate. The deep feelings of his heart are expressed to God, who is the final reference for all of life. For both Job and ourselves, honest confession is a catharsis cleansing the heart, and such honest confession produces transformation. Every biblical writer who, in the midst of doubt and despair, makes his feelings known to God breaks forth into a new discovery of faith. (An exception would be Psalm 88).

The Book of Job after all is not a book on suffering, but rather one of faith. Job has had a devastating experience losing all of his possessions and his family. What makes this so difficult for Job is that it does not fit his understanding of God. The problem for Job in all of this is that it has happened as though there was no God, and if there was a God, God did not care one whit for justice. This is Job's problem.

But this is also our problem. Richard Rubenstein, the outstanding Jewish theologian, said, "God died at Auschwitz." For many God seemed to die in the midst of their personal tragedy and suffering. So much suffering appears senseless, meaningless, unexplainable, and causes many to express their personal lament and anguish by calling into question the goodness, as well as the very existence of God. Many have cried out as Job, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him" (v. 3).





The storms of life come to us as they came to Job. We learn what he learned: we cannot rely on our friends; we cannot rely on our wealth; we cannot rely on our family. We can only and ultimately do as Job did: cast ourselves completely on God, who cradles us in the bosom of God's love and grace bringing assurance that God is totally in control.

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1. Carol Newson, "Job," New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 4, p. 508.

2. Walter Brueggemann, Message of the Psalms, p. 53.

3. Ibid., p. 52.