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The Hardest Verse in Job
The Hardest Verse in Job
Job 42:11 - “…they consoled Job and comforted him for all the adversities that the LORD had brought on him.” Wait, what? Shouldn’t the text say, “for all the adversities that Satan brought on him”? We shudder to think God was responsible for Job’s calamity, but it all started with God’s challenge to Satan (Job 1:8)! Even today, when bad things happen, we try to put the blame somewhere else. We blame sin, but God knew we were going to sin when He created us, so it comes back to Him. We blame Satan, but God created Satan and allows him to do what he does, so it comes back to Him. We blame “time and chance,” but God allows time and chance to operate in the universe, so again it comes back to God.
The book of Job faces this difficulty head on, and so should we. Unless we obviously brought the suffering on ourselves, Job teaches us we don’t have to shift blame somewhere else, we need to direct our prayers to the One in charge, stay faithful, and guard our tongues from charging God with wrongdoing. The buck stops with God. He is the One we must wrestle with in prayer to gain wisdom in suffering and come out stronger on the other side.
