The Book of Job

Word Study

"cry," Hebrew ashavva (אֲשַׁוַּע) from shava, to cry out for help. Here is one of the sharpest pains in Job's suffering: the silence of God. The verb is the desperate shout of someone calling for rescue, and Job is still shouting. It is not that he has stopped praying, note that he still cries "unto thee", still directs his cry to God.

"hear," ta'aneni (תַעֲנֵנִי) from anah, to answer, respond. The complaint is not that God's ear is deaf but that no reply comes back: "I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me." This is the agony of unanswered prayer, and it is one of the heaviest trials a believer can face. Scripture does not hide this experience of the saints: "O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent" (Psalm 22:2); "how long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever?" (Psalm 13:1).

"regardest," titbonen (תִּתְבֹּנֶן), consider, take notice. Job stands up as a suppliant before God and feels himself not even looked at. Yet his honest cry is recorded without rebuke, for God is not offended by the anguished prayers of His hurting children. The felt silence of God is not the same as His actual absence. Job cannot see it, but God is present, God does hear, and God is working, even in the silence. The unanswered cry is answered in a way and time Job cannot yet perceive.

Explanation

Here is one of the sharpest pains in Job's suffering: the silence of God. "I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me." Job keeps praying, still directing his cry "unto thee", but heaven seems shut. This is the agony of unanswered prayer, one of the heaviest trials a believer can face, and Scripture does not hide it from the saints (Psalm 22:2; 13:1). His honest cry is recorded without rebuke, for God is not offended by the anguished prayers of His children. The felt silence of God is not His actual absence; He hears and works even when we cannot perceive it.

Gospel Focus

"I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me", Job's cry into apparent silence points to the One who cried into a silence deeper than any other, and was truly forsaken, that our cries might always be heard. On the cross, Jesus prayed the very psalm of unanswered prayer: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?... I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not" (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1-2). The sinless Son endured the real silence of God, the forsakenness our sins deserved, so that we who trust Him would never be finally unheard. Because Christ was forsaken, God can say to us, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5). Now our prayers rise through Him who "ever liveth to make intercession" (Hebrews 7:25), and "we have an advocate with the Father" (1 John 2:1). Even when we, like Job, feel unheard, the Gospel assures us that God's silence is not His absence; He hears every cry, and answers in His wisdom and time, sometimes with a "yes," sometimes with "my grace is sufficient for thee" (2 Corinthians 12:9), sometimes with a "wait" whose purpose we see only later. The Lord Jesus, who was heard "in that he feared" (Hebrews 5:7), yet cried in the dark for us, guarantees that no believing prayer is ever lost. When heaven seems silent, keep crying "unto thee", as Job did, for the One who was forsaken in our place makes certain that we never will be.

Word Study

"weep," Hebrew bakhiti (בָּכִיתִי) from bakah, to weep, cry. In the midst of his own suffering, Job appeals to his past compassion: "Did not I weep for him that was in trouble?" This is not sympathy at a distance but actual tears. Job was not a hard-hearted man who ignored the sorrows of others; he genuinely wept with those who wept, obeying the deepest ethic of love: "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep" (Romans 12:15).

"him that was in trouble," liqsheh-yom (לִקְשֵׁה־יוֹם), for the one of a hard day, the one having a difficult time. The Hebrew idiom is "hard of day," the man whose day has turned against him, which is exactly what Job himself has now become. His point carries a note of bewildered lament: he had shown such compassion to others, so why is he now met, in his own hour of trouble, with derision instead of comfort?

"grieved," agmah (עָגְמָה), was grieved, pained. His very soul was pained for the poor and the struggling. The verse shines as a testimony to genuine godliness: a truly godly heart is a tender heart, moved by the troubles of others, weeping real tears for real suffering. This is the very opposite of the cold, formula-driven "comfort" of his friends. Job knew how to weep with the weeping; his friends only knew how to argue. And this compassionate heart is a faint reflection of the heart of God Himself, who is "the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3).

Explanation

In the midst of his own suffering, Job appeals to his past compassion: "Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor?" Job genuinely wept with those who wept, obeying the deepest ethic of love (Romans 12:15). There is a note of bewildered lament, he showed such compassion, yet now meets only derision, but also a shining testimony to true godliness: a godly heart is a tender heart. Job knew how to weep with the weeping; his friends only knew how to argue. His compassion faintly reflects the heart of God, the Father of mercies.

Gospel Focus

"Did not I weep for him that was in trouble?", Job's tears for the suffering point to the Lord Jesus Christ, whose compassion was perfect and whose tears were real. Jesus "wept" at the grave of Lazarus (John 11:35), the shortest and most tender verse in the Bible; He "beheld the city, and wept over it" (Luke 19:41); and again and again He was "moved with compassion" toward the multitudes, the sick, the grieving, the lost (Matthew 9:36; 14:14). More than weeping for us, He entered our trouble to bear it: "in all their affliction he was afflicted" (Isaiah 63:9); He is the "man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). And risen and exalted, He remains the sympathizing High Priest who is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities" (Hebrews 4:15). Where Job's friends failed to weep with him, Christ never fails; He weeps with His weeping people and gathers up their tears, and one day He "shall wipe away all tears from their eyes" (Revelation 21:4). Job's compassionate heart is the pattern Christ perfected and now reproduces in His people: having received the comfort of God, we are called to "weep with them that weep," to have the tender heart of our Saviour toward all who are in trouble. The Gospel gives us a God who not only rules over our suffering but weeps within it alongside us, and who will turn every tear into joy at the last.

Word Study

"looked for," Hebrew qivviti (קִוִּיתִי) from qavah, to wait expectantly, hope. Job voices the bitter disappointment of hopes reversed. The language of waiting here is significant, for qavah is the very word Scripture uses for the hope that does not disappoint: "they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength" (Isaiah 40:31). Job's waiting seemed to yield only darkness, but the God he waited on had not finished the story.

"good," tov (טוֹב). This is what Job expected, as a godly man, to follow his uprightness. It was not an unreasonable expectation; it was the plain assumption of the world he lived in.

"evil," ra (רַע), calamity, misfortune. Instead of the good, calamity came. The word here is not moral wickedness but disaster, the thing that happens to a man. This is the crushing experience of the righteous sufferer whose life has turned upside down against every reasonable expectation.

"light," or (אוֹר). The second half of the reversal: "when I waited for light." Job was watching for the dawn, the ordinary picture of relief and vindication after a long night.

"darkness," ofel (אֹפֶל), gloom. Night fell instead. Job goes on: "I went mourning without the sun... I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls" (v28-29), pictures of desolate loneliness. His harp is "turned to mourning" (v31). This is honest lament, and Scripture makes room for it. Yet the darkness that came when Job looked for light was not the end; beyond it, though he could not see it, the God of light was preparing a dawn that would outshine all his former days.

Explanation

Job voices the bitter disappointment of hopes reversed: "When I looked for good, then evil came... when I waited for light, there came darkness." As a godly man he expected good; calamity came. He waited for dawn; night fell. This is the crushing experience of the righteous sufferer whose life has turned upside down. It is honest lament, and Scripture makes room for it. Yet the very word for "waiting" is the word for hope that does not disappoint (Isaiah 40:31). Job's waiting seemed to yield only darkness, but the God he waited on had not finished the story.

Gospel Focus

"When I waited for light, there came darkness", Job's experience of darkness where he hoped for light is answered by the Gospel of the God who brings light out of darkness. The pattern of Christ Himself is darkness first, then light: the cross before the crown, the tomb before the resurrection. On Good Friday, "there was darkness over all the land" (Matthew 27:45), the deepest darkness where the world looked for its Messiah's triumph; but on the third day came the dawn no darkness could overcome. And this becomes the pattern for His people: "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5); "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17). The God who "commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts" (2 Corinthians 4:6). Job's darkness was real, but it was not final; his book ends in a light brighter than his beginning, a foreshadow of the resurrection glory awaiting all who wait on God through Christ. So when we look for good and evil comes, when we wait for light and darkness falls, we need not despair: we serve the God who turns Friday's darkness into Sunday's light. The night is real, but for those in Christ, "the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth" (1 John 2:8), and the morning is sure. Keep waiting on the LORD; the darkness will not have the last word.