Today’s passage: Job 3
Helpful thoughts:
- With chapter 3, we begin to hear Job, his friends, and eventually the Lord speak. These chapters (The majority of the book) are written as Hebrew poetry.
- As Job breaks the silence, he laments his own birth and life. He is in great distress, grieving, mourning.
- Job expresses his belief in this moment that it would be easier to be dead (To be at rest) than to continue to endure the pain he was in.
- In his lament, Job certainly confirms that the “hedge” Satan had accused God of surrounding him with was gone. He was now well acquainted with pain and suffering.
Questions to consider:
- What does Job understand to be true of those who have already died? Do they carry their social and economic status with them beyond this life? Why might death look better to him at this point as opposed to the days prior to all these calamities?
- What did Satan say Job would do if all was taken away? Has Job cursed God?
- If you were Job’s friend, what might have been your response to this lament? What is the right response, and what (at different times in your life) might you have been prone to do or say? What would have been the most helpful to him? (Romans 12:9-16)