NOTES for Job 3:1-26

Job's first words were words of curse. He curses the day of his birth (vv. 3-10). Of course, the first thing that could come to mind is that Job was simply tired, worn out by the sufferings that had been coming down on him with terrifying regularity in recent days. That is why he dreams of Sheol, the world of shadows, where all are equal and all suffering ceases (vv. 11-19). For an adequate understanding of these complaints, it is important to remember that Jews in antiquity did not have a concept of postmortem recompense in the form that became so widespread in the Christian world beginning in the early Middle Ages, when what later became the traditional ideas of heaven and hell were taking shape.

Judaism of the postexilic era, when the Book of Job was written, knew only the teaching about the last Judgment, the universal resurrection on the day of Judgment, and the messianic Kingdom, which was to come on the day of the Messiah's arrival, a day that in the minds of believing Jews of that era was already inseparable from the day of Judgment and the universal resurrection. The afterlife, as it was believed, was the same for everyone: after death a person turned into a shadow and went down to Sheol, the dwelling place of shadows. Death made everyone equal, and recompense could come no earlier than the day of Judgment and the universal resurrection.

But Job had nothing to lose, and he was ready to go into the world of shadows. Yet the matter was not so simple. For Job, what was most terrible, as it appears, was not that he was suffering, but the hopelessness of these sufferings, their complete lack of motive, and the dead end caused by that lack of motive (vv. 20-23). The righteous man did not deserve suffering, and Job had every reason to be bewildered. But the most terrible thing was that, not knowing what he was guilty of, Job could do nothing to change the situation. His religion connected suffering with sinfulness and ungodliness, with what for Job was more terrible than any suffering. It seemed to him that God was punishing him as the wicked are punished for their sins, that he himself had become wicked in God's eyes, and nothing could be worse than such a turn of events (vv. 24-26). But most terrible of all was that Job's religiosity could not help him in any way. He offered purification sacrifices even when he could suppose sin where it may well not have existed at all; but now he did not understand what he was supposed to repent of or be cleansed from.

Again—but why? We so want to open the Bible and read something... life-affirming... Yet the Church offers us nothing less than words of despair. Why? Perhaps this will be clearer to someone who has been at the bottom of the abyss of despair—and nevertheless emerged into the light. When you are there, you think that you are the only person in the world who is so unhappy, and that absolutely no one can even imagine how much pain and fear you feel... When you have never been there, you do not think about it... But the Church offers us the opportunity to live through the situation of despair—together. Perhaps alone together with God. Perhaps together with one of our brothers.

Today’s reading tells us that the “valley of death” is sometimes a necessary stage. We must not close our eyes and pretend that it does not exist. We must not encourage someone walking through this valley with falsely cheerful slogans. We need to understand that it exists and that God leads us by the hand even through this valley, even when we do not feel His presence.

Even for Job, who was ready to receive everything from God, it was not easy to remain in his first state of inner equilibrium. His monologue expresses despair. He no longer wants to live and admits that everything he feared has overtaken him. Job does not reject God, but he rejects the world God created, and he has a strong desire to refuse the life God gave him. The unwillingness to live is, in essence, also a rebellion against the Creator. One may recall that for Ivan Karamazov, who at first insisted that he was not against God but against the world God created, the "respectful return of the ticket" was nothing other than a form of rejecting the Creator. Only Job, unlike theorists such as Ivan Karamazov, was not proceeding from an intellectual game, but from pain.

It is hard to condemn a suffering person; his feelings are understandable. The friends who came to Job the day before began by grieving as they sat beside him. The apostle's words "weep with those who weep" (Rom. 12:15) had not yet been spoken, but at first the friends act according to this counsel, sharing Job's experience at least to some degree.

Much can be said in reply to a person who voices mistaken thoughts, but if he is not merely speaking, but crying out from unbearable pain, then one should not instruct him from a distance while ignoring his suffering. It is not fitting for the healthy to exalt themselves over the sick, or for the well-fed over the hungry.