Hope In Death (Job 17)

Do we judge or comfort those in trouble? Let’s begin in Job 17.

Is our spirit broken? Are our days extinguished? Are we surrounded by mockers like Job?

My spirit is broken. My days are extinguished. A graveyard awaits me. Surely mockers surround me and my eyes must gaze at their rebellion. (Job 17:1-2 HCSB)

Does Job bewail friends whose hearts are closed to compassion and only spit out disparagement?

Offer, then, some collateral on my behalf. Is there anyone who will be my guarantor? Because you’re the one who closed their hearts to compassion; therefore, you won’t let them triumph. Now as for the one who testifies against his friends to take their property, even the eyes of his children will fail. He has made me a byword among people; I’m being spit on in the face. (Job 17:3-6 ISV)

Did Job seem to have a sense of hopeless sorrow, yet believe his hands were clean?

Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow. Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite. The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger. (Job 17:6-9 KJV)

Did Job lament the lack of wisdom in his friends’ words? Self-deceived, did they believe their advice turned night into day?

But come again all of you now, For I do not find a wise man among you. My days are past; my plans are torn apart, Even the wishes of my heart. They make night into day, saying, ‘The light is near,’ in the presence of darkness. (Job 17:10-12 LSB)

Does Job see the grave as his only hope for relief from suffering?

If I hope for Sheol as my home, I make my bed in the darkness; If I call to the grave, ‘You are my father’; To the maggot, ‘my mother and my sister’; Where then is my hope? And who looks at my hope? Will it go down with me to Sheol? Shall we together go down into the dust?” (Job 17:13-16 NASB)

Whose example should we as a church follow, Job’s friends or God’s compassion and comfort?

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Cor 1:3-4 NIV)

Do we judge or comfort those in trouble? You decide!