Bible with Brandi Week 35 – Job, chapter 3

Job chapter three opens with Job cursing the day of his birth.

And before we rush past that, I think we need to sit with it for a minute.

Job has lost everything. His children are dead. His wealth is gone. His health has been destroyed. He is sitting in ashes, scraping his sores, and his friends have now sat with him in silence for seven days because his suffering is so great.

And then Job speaks.

But interestingly, Job does not curse God. He curses the day of his birth. There is an interesting distinction here in the Hebrew. The word used for Job cursing the day of his birth is וַיְקַלֵּל (wayqallel), meaning to curse, to treat as contemptible, to bring into contempt. He is essentially saying, “I wish that day had never happened. I wish I had never been born.”

This is different from what ha satan has been trying to get Job to do all along. Remember back in chapter 1? Satan’s accusation was essentially, “Take everything away from Job and he will curse You to Your face.” The Hebrew word there is יְבָרֲכֶךָּ (yebarekheka)—literally, “bless,” but used ironically in the context of cursing or renouncing God. Satan wants Job to turn his back on God just as he did.

But Job doesn’t.

Now, Job is miserable. He is devastated. He is angry. He is questioning his existence. He is asking why he was ever born. But he is still talking to God. There is something profound about that. Job’s faith doesn’t look polished here. It doesn’t sound victorious. It doesn’t sound like a Sunday morning worship song. It sounds like a broken man trying to make sense of unbearable pain.

I think sometimes we have this idea that faith means we don’t get to say what we really feel. That if we are hurting, we need to clean up our words before we bring them to God. Job doesn’t do that. He brings God the raw version. Because God is big enough for our grief. He is big enough for our anger. He is big enough for our questions. He is big enough for the things we don’t understand. Job doesn’t understand what is happening behind the scenes. He doesn’t know about the conversation between God and ha satan. He doesn’t know why this has happened to him. From Job’s perspective, his world has simply collapsed.

And yet, even in the middle of all of this, there is something else in Job’s words that really caught my attention. Job still knows his worth. That may sound like a strange thing to say when the entire chapter is basically Job wishing he had never been born. But listen to where his mind goes. He says that if he had died at birth, he would now be at rest:

“with kings and counselors of the earth,

who built ruins for themselves,

or with princes who had gold,

who filled their houses with silver.” (Job 3:14-15)

Pretty remarkable, huh? Even in the deepest misery imaginable, Job still sees himself among the significant. He doesn’t say, “I was nothing anyway.” He doesn’t say, “My life had no value.” Instead, he says that if he had died at birth, he would have been at rest with kings and counselors and princes. Suffering has not changed who Job knows himself to be. Suffering does not get to rewrite his identity.

And I think there is a lesson here for us. Pain has a way of telling us lies about ourselves. When life falls apart, it is so easy to begin thinking, “Maybe I am forgotten. Maybe I am insignificant. Maybe I don’t matter. Maybe this suffering means God doesn’t see me. Maybe everything I thought about myself was wrong.” But Job’s circumstances haven’t changed the reality of who he is. He is still Job. The man God called blameless and upright. The man who feared God and turned away from evil. “[T]he greatest of all the people of the East.” (Job 1:3) His health changed. His family changed. His finances changed. His emotional state changed. But his identity did not. And neither does ours when tragedy strikes.

We can be suffering and still be beloved. We can be exhausted and still be called. We can be grieving and still have purpose beyond the pain. We can be confused and still belong to God. We can have absolutely no idea what God is doing and still know that He is good.

Job’s suffering is enormous, but it does not get the final word about Job. And our suffering doesn’t get the final word about us either. The enemy may be able to attack Job’s circumstances, but he cannot determine Job’s identity. That belongs to God.

We must not let our circumstances tell us who we are. Grief is real. But circumstances and grief are not the truest things about ourselves. The truest thing about who we are is what God says about us. Even in ashes.

We are children of the Most High God.