Breaking the Silence

Job 3

In Chapter 3, Job breaks the silence.  After seven days and nights of sitting without saying a word, Job speaks up.  His friends are with him, but he doesn’t address them directly. He does not express gratitude for their presence, which is what I’d like him to do.  He speaks up and out to curse his fate. 

Maybe Job has spent the last few days rehearsing in his head what he was going to say.  All of a sudden, this man has a lot of words.  And none of them are positive.

Job rues the day he was born, the night he was conceived, the hands that raised him, the love that held him.  He wishes it had never happened.  He wishes his life had never happened.  He wishes he had never happened.

Job is feeling his feelings, that’s for sure.

Also, I’d like to point out that Job’s life was not all bad.  In fact, for some time, Job was a wealthy, prosperous man, the greatest man in the East.  His whole life has not been tragedy.  It is easy to lose sight of that, though, when we’re suffering.  We can get so caught up in our pain that it’s all we see.  We lose perspective.

Honestly, this is the kind of reaction I would have expected from the first round of tragedy.  Is this all because of the sores?  Were the sores the straw that broke the camel’s back?  (You know, if the camels hadn’t all been stolen by the Chaldeans.)  I hope this lament is cumulative, accounting for all the pain Job has encountered, not just the affliction of sores. 

Be warned, dear reader: cumulative or not, this lament is just the opening scene of this act.  After two chapters where so many things happen, we enter into the processing part of the story.  Aside from speaking, no other action takes place for the next 39 chapters. 

39 chapters.

1012 verses of people talking. 

That is a lot.  And most of it doesn’t even really appear to be a conversation.  It’s more people talking at each other instead of to each other. 

Job has a lot of processing to do, and he comes out swinging.  The verses that catch my attention are verses 25 and 26:

Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes.

Job has lived in fear.  We are told that Job fears God, but I can’t help but feel like Job has more fear than that.  Maybe he’s afraid of pain.  Maybe he’s afraid to live.  We know he worried about his kids accidentally committing some sin, but these two verses show us that Job has feared other things as well, and the things he’s feared have happened.  Did Job fear losing things?  Not being rich? Being seen as less than perfectly righteous?

Brené Brown calls that foreboding joy.  It’s that feeling where you can’t really appreciate the good things in your life because you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.  You don’t allow yourself the joy because you know that 1) it won’t last and 2) it will hurt when it ends.  Job could well be a joy foreboder; I know the signs because I’m one myself.  I’m trying not to be, though, so to be able to recognize it feels like progress. 

Job’s life of ease and quiet has changed; trouble comes.  And he’s going to use the next 39 chapters to process it.