NOTES for Job 6:1-30

Job rightly says that his suffering outweighs his friends' exhortations, and therefore his words are unrestrained. But his sufferings begin to exceed even Job's ability to bear them, and for the first time he expresses the wish to die.

It often happens that sinful desires which we directly and consciously reject take root secretly in the soul, undermine the will, and in one form or another try to take possession of us. Something similar happens to Job. He does not appear to blaspheme God, but in essence he follows the advice of his wife that he had initially rejected: "curse God and die." But refusal of the life given by Him very often reveals a refusal of Him Himself.

Job's position before God is unstable, but in the face of his friends it is stronger; therefore Job firmly rejects their speeches, filled with shallow self-confidence. His friends proceed from general considerations, but they do not understand the real pain of the person before them. Job's confidence that he is right can be challenged and will be challenged by God, but it is supported by pain, which his friends lack.

Job does not argue. What, in fact, could he argue with? Before this Eliphaz says absolutely correct words. Only they do little good. Everything Eliphaz says misses the point. It misses not only because Job himself knows all this perfectly well. It misses above all because what Eliphaz says neither explains nor solves the problem in any way. The point is not that God is higher than man. The point is that this does not make things any easier for a human being. Job's main question is: what, then, does God want from me? What have I done wrong before Him?

If Job's friends had helped him answer this main question, their support would have been invaluable. But this is exactly what they do not do. Eliphaz, for example, speaks only general correct words, whose correctness is of no benefit to Job. Meanwhile Job himself sees perfectly well the main problem of his friends: they were simply frightened. They saw something terrible and became frightened, as Job himself says. What were they frightened of? The calamities that fell on Job? His illness? Hardly: if that were so, they would have left Job long ago, or would not have gone to him at all.

Something else was frightening: the questions Job asks, the words he speaks. And they are frightening precisely for religious people. Because they destroy their religiosity. Not deliberately or intentionally, but simply by bringing them face to face with a situation that does not fit into any religious framework. Then a religious person finds himself compelled somehow to explain this situation. Not so much to the one who is in it, but to himself. Otherwise there is catastrophe. Catastrophe for the religious person himself.

All his religiosity may collapse - nothing more terrible can be imagined. And Job's friends do everything in order to answer for themselves the questions he has raised. For themselves, not for him, Job. They cannot help him at all: they have a different task. Still, they would very much like to return Job to the framework of their own religiosity. Especially since quite recently, before he began to speak, Job himself was the same as his friends. Perhaps he will become his former self again? That would be best of all: then all the questions Job had asked would disappear by themselves. But Job could no longer become his former self.