Job’s Justified Complaints

Job 6:1-13

1 Then Job answered and said:

2 "Oh, that my grief were fully weighed,
And my calamity laid with it on the scales!

3 For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea—
Therefore my words have been rash.

4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me;
My spirit drinks in their poison;
The terrors of God are arrayed against me.

5 Does the wild donkey bray when it has grass,
Or does the ox low over its fodder?

6 Can flavorless food be eaten without salt?
Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?

7 My soul refuses to touch them;
They are as loathsome food to me.

8 "Oh, that I might have my request,
That God would grant me the thing that I long for!

9 That it would please God to crush me,
That He would loose His hand and cut me off!

10 Then I would still have comfort;
Though in anguish I would exult,
He will not spare;
For I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.

11 "What strength do I have, that I should hope?
And what is my end, that I should prolong my life?

12 Is my strength the strength of stones?
Or is my flesh bronze?

13 Is my help not within me?
And is success driven from me?

Job answers Eliphaz and his other friends gathered around him to offer counsel with their pointed blame of the unrighteousness of their friend being the sole reason for the suffering.  Job then replies with how his suffering has made his words rash and impetuous in his complaints.  But he justifies these by saying that nobody understands how much he suffers in the adversity.  He points to God’s arrows of pain shot into his body, as if poisoned with terror on their sharp tips of anguish.  They all seem to be pointing at him by God to cause all this.  He refuses to desire to eat in his agonizing pain and just wants God to end it all.  Job wants the suffering from the God he desperately holds to just to go away, that He would take his life away.  That is his prayer at this time.  That would be his comfort.  He justifies his end by saying how in ending this anguish he would find great joy in knowing that he has not held back God words from the others.  His hope is the strength of help within himself, yet success to accomplish that has been run out of him as there seems to be no good or immediate end to the suffering he is enduring.  We learn then from the first half of this chapter how Job justifies his words and actions based on his previous standing of counsel and upright living to all around him before he lost it all and began suffering under God’s apparent wrath targeting him for unknown reasons.  He does not see nor understand the adversary who is working in the spiritual realm to prove how Job’s righteousness is all because God is protecting him and giving him health and wealth.  God has allowed this attack of satan’s arrows of suffering, not His, to test and prove Job through the refining fire of adversity’s suffering.  This work of the LORD will prove to be Job’s justification, not what comes out of himself.  We can take this to heart as we suffer, knowing God is using it for our good and His glory as we pass through the fires of adversity by the adversary’s hand as permitted by God’s sovereign will.  There is hope in God, not the circumstances.  We do not need to justify our complaints, but rest in hope because we are in His hands of good and sovereign grace.