***
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. (Job 13:15; KJV)
Job is praying in his great affliction. In a series of sudden and catastrophic events, Job, who is described in the very first verse as “blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil,” loses nearly everything that makes up his life: first, his oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels, and all his servants who tended them; then, his daughters and sons; and finally, his own health and reputation. His wife blames him. His friends deride him and suspect him of some hidden sin. Hardest of all to bear, God seems to have deserted him, after blessing him for so many years. Without Job’s awareness, God has consented to let Satan test him in the most severe of trials, just short of taking Job’s life.
Yet, his statement of faith and trust is one of the strongest in all of Scripture. It is worth much long reflection and prayer. The arguments that Job and his friends exchange about God and the nature of suffering are sublime and revelatory–especially after Job’s climactic dialogue with God himself–but the linchpin of this profound book is Job’s unwavering faith. It is inexplicable to his friends, yet it plunges him into the heart of God, provoking an even deeper confession of faith at the end. God knew Job, as he knew Jeremiah (“before I formed you in the womb I knew you” Jeremiah 1:5), and He trusted Job–enough to honor Job’s righteous questioning with an answer from the whirlwind, a manifestation of God’s glory so powerful that Job was led to “repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). What is inexplicable to Job’s censorious friends must become explicable to us, if we seek to trust the Lord as Job did.
In his book Hebrew Word Study: Revealing the Heart of God, Chaim Bentorah devotes a full chapter to this verse and explains how the Hebrew verbs chosen, here translated as “slay” and “trust,” reveal the force and conviction of Job’s declaration.
The root word for “slay” is a rare word, qatal (קָטַל).* Bentorah says that it “can mean not only a physical killing but also a killing of the spirit or the killing of all hope” (p. 341). The root of the verb used for “trust,” yachal (יָחַל) is also rare, and has the connotation of “waiting with expectant hope.” In other words, Job, though fully expecting to die, utterly bereft of God’s support–still he will persist in trust and hope, never breaking the relationship himself.
For comparison, consider Psalm 27, a Psalm of David, in which, surrounded by adversaries, with a host of enemies encamped around him, David begs the Lord not to cast him off:
Hide not thy face from me.
Turn not thy servant away in anger,
thou who hast been my help.
Cast me not off, forsake me not,
O God of my salvation!
For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the Lord will take me up.
Teach me thy way, O Lord;
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they breathe out violence.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
yea, wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:9-14; RSV)
Job’s trust is like this, and extends even beyond death, when earthly hope seems exhausted. Job waits and hopes even when the Lord withdraws from him and seems poised to wrench him from the land of the living. He trusts the Lord even into the unknown future.
What is the basis of Job’s trust and can we base our trust on the same foundation?
Job was not an Israelite, but rather from the mysterious land of Uz. He did not have the promises of the God’s covenant with Abraham, nor the further covenant with Moses. Lawrence Feingold describes Job as a “just pagan” and highlights the importance of his outsider status:
“He represents the upright man outside the influence of God’s revelation. His experience of suffering is heightened by the fact that he is not comforted directly by the hope of Israel, but only by the common patrimony of natural religion present in what is best in human culture.” (The Mystery of Israel and the Church, Vol. 2, p. 72)
Nevertheless, he feared God and even had the habit of making atoning sacrifices for his children’s possible sins. He had come to a natural understanding of God’s created order that finds echoes in the other Biblical writings. With the Psalmist Job could say, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2). This was Job’s state in prosperity, but after he suffered God’s testing he might have said, with Isaiah:
All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nought,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble. (Isaiah 40:17, 21-24; RSV)
Job had been a sort of “prince” of Uz with wealth, many animals, many children, and many servants in his care, and indeed God permitted Satan to blow on them and carry them all off like stubble. When they were all gone, he proclaimed:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. (Job 1:21-22)
When his wife despairs and urges him to give up and curse God, Job replies, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10). With all his blessings, Job had also acquired wisdom and fortitude, and possessed a philosophical mind sharpened by self-examination.
In his level of trustful acceptance of God’s will, he reminds me of Abraham, the prototypical giant of faith, who accepted God’s test of his faith, when the Lord commanded him to prepare to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac (Genesis 22). When the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand and provided a ram for the sacrifice instead, He recognized Abraham’s faith and promised him a superabundant blessing: “because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore” (Genesis 22:16-17). But Job’s predicament was quite different. Job’s children were suddenly taken away without his consent, and God’s apparent favor was replaced with unspeakable suffering. Yet the collision of his suffering with his faith yielded a new level of faith and trust, raised to a supernatural degree.
Natural trust may depend on blessings and promises fulfilled, but supernatural trust must come from within, from a heart bonded in relationship to God. By the end of the Book of Job, he knows more deeply who God is and who he is in relation to God. The promises of God are seen in a new light as well–as fulfilled but not without the persistent element of mystery, the veil that still separates the humble creature from the Creator.
In his discussion of Job’s words, “though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” Chaim Bentorah argues persuasively that Job’s faith goes well beyond the realm of promised gifts or favors in this life. Indeed, he says that Job is saying the opposite: even if God appears to break all his promises, yet will I trust in him. Such trust suggests an unshakable love. How else could it survive on so little visible food? Moreover, he was confident in God’s justice, and insisted on a hearing before God: “but I will maintain mine own ways before him. He also shall be my salvation” (Job 13:15-16; KJV). Job would defend his own uprightness, resting assured that God himself would acquit and save him from an unfair judgment.
Bentorah also remarks that the Epilogue (Job 42:10-17), in which Job’s goods and family are doubly “restored” to him, does not contradict the theme of Job’s supernatural faith and fidelity. It never depended on such a visible restoration. He concludes:
“The theme of the story of Job is that when everything was taken away from him, and it seemed like his life was going to end in poverty and shame, he still trusted God; he was waiting and hoping expectantly to be with the God whom he loved.” (p. 343).
So, we can say that love is the basis for Job’s unshakable trust, and it should be ours as well.
The restoration of Job’s possessions, prosperity, and family life may seem to be proof of God’s justice in the end (notwithstanding the irremediable loss of his first sons and daughters). But it was not the sort of just validation that Job had sought. God was just to Job when he heard the cries of anguish from his faithful servant and responded to them, speaking to him out of the whirlwind (Job 38-42). God adjudicated the dispute with Job’s friends, rejecting their simple notion of retribution for sin as the cause of human suffering, and instead ratifying Job’s insistence on God’s justice, truthfulness, and goodness, however hidden they might be from our full understanding. The Lord pronounced his verdict and sentencing to Eliphaz the Temanite:
“My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7-8)
It couldn’t be plainer. All the long-winded speeches of the three friends are swept aside by the voice of God from the whirlwind. The mystery of human suffering remains. But it is equally clear that God hears our cries in suffering, and He is moved. Far from condemning Job, He comes to his defense. He engages Job in dialogue and reveals Himself, as much as his human creature can bear. Perhaps it is merciful that God’s presence is not so dramatic for most of us, as it was for Job. But he is the same God who hears the cries of our hearts in prayer.
In the Bible, there are so many occasions where great promises and blessings to Israel, secured through God’s Covenants (with Noah, Abraham, and Moses), alternated with almost unbearable sufferings for the people, whether attributed to their disobedience or to other evils that God permitted. The kind of faith that survived Israel’s Babylonian exile and return, for example, emerged from this churning of hope and suffering and hope, again and again. Nevertheless, the people of God held fast to one ultimate promise: that peace and justice, mercy and truth, would one day prevail, most especially through the eventual coming of the Messiah. This would be true for the individual soul, a soul like Job, as much as for God’s people as a whole.
Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither.
They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.
For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he.
Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. (Jeremiah 31:8-12; KJV)
In the New Testament, Saint Peter, the apostle, would speak of the “precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:4; RSV) of God, by which Jesus Christ would rescue from eternal death all those who kept faith in him, through trials and persecutions, and he would make them partakers of the glory which was his by nature but became ours by grace. Job prefigures and exemplifies to a very noble degree such persevering faith, which endured throughout his sudden and severe sufferings, and ventured into the hope beyond death, the hope of life eternal.
Job never received an “explanation” from God for the specific sufferings he had to endure. He was never privy to the dialogue between God and Satan in Heaven (Job 1:6-2:8). Rather, he was shown something greater by being drawn more deeply into God’s presence. He saw God’s face in the whirlwind, he heard his voice, and he received a powerful new infusion of “fear of the Lord,” one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit enumerated in Isaiah 11 in one of this prophet’s great Messianic prophecies:
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11:1-3)
Job was already singled out for his exemplary piety and reverence for the Lord, but this personal encounter with God confirmed him in humility, wisdom, and understanding. If we are to be more like Job, we must be constant in prayer, asking for these gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are offered to all who ask with love. Furthermore, our trust must be willing to accept the uncertainty of not knowing, for now, how much we will see fulfilled “in the land of the living” (Psalm 27) here on earth and how much must await “the new heaven and the new earth” promised in the Book of Revelation (or, the Apocalypse of John), where “God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).
Note:
*For Hebrew words, I used the Blue Letter Bible online, which gives word-by-word analysis of the Masoretic text, with pronunciation and roots, and its lexical entries are keyed to Strong’s Concordance numbers. See entry for Job 13:15.
Resources:
Hebrew Word Study: Revealing the Heart of God by Chaim Bentorah. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016.
The Mystery of Israel and the Church, Vol. 2: Things New and Old by Lawrence Feingold. St Louis, MO: Miriam Press, 2010.
Burning Hearts 
