ao:eng_webu
Job 13
1“Behold, my eye has seen all this. My ear has heard and understood it.
2What you know, I know also. I am not inferior to you.
3“Surely I would speak to the Almighty. I to reason with God.
4But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value.
5Oh that you would be completely silent! Then you would be wise.
6Hear now my reasoning. Listen to the pleadings of my lips.
7Will you speak unrighteously for God, and talk deceitfully for him?
8Will you show partiality to him? Will you contend for God?
9Is it good that he should search you out? Or as one deceives a man, will you him?
10He will surely reprove you if you secretly show partiality.
11Won’t his majesty make you afraid and his dread fall on you?
12Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes. Your defenses are defenses of clay.
13“Be silent! Leave me alone, that I may speak. Let come on me what will.
14Why should I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hand?
15Behold, he will kill me. I have no hope. Nevertheless, I will maintain my ways before him.
16This also will be my , that a godless man will not come before him.
17Listen carefully to my speech. Let my declaration be in your ears.
18See now, I have set my cause in order. I know that I am .
19Who is he who will contend with me? For then I would hold my peace and give up the spirit.
20“Only don’t do two things to me, then I will not hide myself from your face:
21withdraw your hand far from me, and don’t let your terror make me afraid.
22Then call, and I will answer, or let me speak, and you answer me.
23How many are my iniquities and sins? Make me know my disobedience and my sin.
24Why do you hide your face, and consider me your enemy?
25Will you harass a driven leaf? Will you pursue the dry stubble?
26For you write bitter things against me, and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.
27You also put my feet in the stocks, and mark all my paths. You set a bound to the soles of my feet,
28though I am decaying like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.
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Questions this passage answers
Why does God allow suffering?
Scripture never gives one tidy reason for all suffering. It says that pain entered a good world through sin, that God is neither its author nor its prisoner, that he uses it without approving of it, and that he entered it himself in Christ rather than explaining it from a distance. The Bible answers the question with a person before it answers it with an argument.
Why does God seem silent?
God's apparent silence is felt by some of the most faithful people in Scripture, not only by the weak in faith. David, Job and Habakkuk all cried out into what felt like empty air. Scripture never rebukes them for asking. It records their words as prayer, answers them in its own time, and teaches that God's silence is never his absence.