One could say that Job is challenging God, reproaching Him for what has happened to him. But in Job's words this time one can also see reverence before the Creator's greatness, submission before His will, and a humble readiness to accept His decisions. Job is not only ready to accept punishment for sins; he also refuses to insist on his genuine merits: even if I am right, I dare not lift up my head. But he wants to know why these disasters have fallen on him, why his former world, so clear and familiar, has collapsed.

When the familiar order collapses, and a way of life that seemed unshakable and the only possible one passes into the past, millions of people amid the ruins ask themselves and others the same questions, or similar ones, that Job asks. But even when an explanation is possible and understandable, it cannot always be heard at the moment when one is living through the consequences of catastrophe, when not every sufferer has the strength to receive the answer. It is not out of the question that the Lord does not always answer directly because He spares us: another heart might be crushed by His answer.

But even in His apparent silence He is near to those who suffer and does not abandon them.

The most terrible thing for Job is an existential catastrophe, as a modern philosopher would call it. It had always been obvious to him that he is God's creation. God did not merely create him: He accompanies Job at every moment of his life. It would seem that with such relations one should already speak of something much deeper than mere human religiosity. In many ways that is true, if not for one "but."

Job is sure that God carefully tracks every righteous or sinful act of his and is ready to reward him for righteousness and punish him for sin. He is sure that evil appears in the world not by chance and that it is nothing other than punishment for sinners. That is why his own situation paralyzes him: the issue is not suffering as such, but the suffering of a righteous man, which for Job is a moral absurdity. By definition sinners are the ones who should suffer. And Job's friends only confirm this with all their arguments: it is not by chance that they keep returning to the theme of sin.

Meanwhile Job's ideas about righteousness and sin, about recompense for the righteous and sinners in this world, do not fit very well with his own relationship with God, at least as Job himself sees it. If God knows him, as they say, "inside and out," what is He waiting for? Or does He not know what Job is capable of, how righteous he is and how sinful? Job is precisely sure that God knows everything about him, and therefore prosperity as a reward for righteousness in life should be taken for granted. Or did God overlook something?

God is not at all going to play at rewards and punishments. For Him all such human accounts and calculations are like a sandbox in kindergarten: serious and deep relations with God cannot be built in a sandbox. And in God's world, when it comes to a person's relationship with God, the question "for what purpose?" is always more appropriate than the question "for what offense?" But Job himself does not yet see this contradiction between the desired quality of relations with God, where everything is grown-up, and the childish sandbox of God's "rewards" and "punishments," where candy alternates childishly with the strap. A moment will come when he sees it.

Understanding that he has nothing left to lose, Job turns to God with a lengthy speech (v. 1). He says to God: why are You against me (v. 2)? After all, You are not a human being; You cannot be bribed. So why do the wicked turn out to be more successful than the righteous in Your world (vv. 3-4)? But Job's main question is different. He says to God: You know me and You know my righteousness, so what do You want from me? Why are You searching out sins in me (vv. 5-7)? Obviously Job, like his friends, understands very well that there are no sinless people in the world, and that righteousness means not sinlessness, but faithfulness to God, who of course can always find some sin in the person who follows Him and remains faithful to Him, some sin of which the righteous person can be accused.

But this kind of digging through another person's sins in order to find grounds for accusation is characteristic of a human being, and specifically of a wicked human being, but certainly not of God! You Yourself, Job says as he addresses God, made me what I am, and You preserved me (vv. 8-12). Of course Job understands very well that this gives him no right to sin and wickedness (vv. 13-14), for God does not make a person a sinner. But in Job's case this is not about a trial, for any trial presupposes an objective and unbiased examination of the substance of the charges brought against the accused. Meanwhile, Job does not really see any trial at all; from God's side he sees only punishment without trial. He says of himself: if I am guilty, woe to me! But even if I am not, that does not make it any easier (vv. 15-16). There is no trial, no arguments in favor of the accused are accepted, and the witnesses for the prosecution become more and more numerous (v. 17).

Of course, to religious consciousness God often appears not so much as a just judge as an unmerciful one. But Job wants to reach the God of revelation, and therefore he says to God: if this is so, then why was I born into the world at all? Why have I lived my life (vv. 18-19)? Even so, Job says, it is still not too late, for death is near (vv. 20-22). At first glance, we seem to have before us the same laments with which Job's first speech begins. But in this case he is speaking of something deeper and more important: Job is trying to reach the God of revelation by reminding Him of meaning, in this case the meaning of his own life, as well as the meaning of every human life in general.

Indeed, if God has no concern for a person, if He is not going to be merciful toward him, then why is a person needed on earth at all? Human life could have some meaning only if God were not simply a force indifferent to a person, but precisely a just Judge, ready to receive a person, even after the severest examination and the strictest assessment. But if God is ready simply to step over a person, whether sinner or righteous, human life loses every meaning, and Job understands this. He understands that life has meaning only before the God of revelation, not before the God of religion. And that is why he so wants to see God face to face, because then and only then will he be able to receive an answer to the question that torments him: who, after all, is his God?