Job needs a savior, and he knows it. And in Jesus, he gets one.
“He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him” (Matt. 27:43).
I do not believe it’s accidental that what most scholars argue is the oldest book in the Bible is a story about a righteous man suffering while those around him insist that God has abandoned him. Job isn’t a short, fun read. It’s 42 chapters of suffering and confusion before God finally vindicates his righteous sufferer. The affliction of Job feels long and drawn out while simultaneously feeling repetitive and circular. However, Job isn’t just a story to show people of faith how to suffer well. And Job’s life is more than a picture of Jesus. The suffering of Job is a prophecy to be fulfilled on a Friday afternoon 2,000 years later.
In the height of Job’s suffering, we hear him wrestle with faith, hope, and death. He trusts in God, but it appears God has forsaken him. Job states repeatedly in several different ways that his only hope is also his afflicter. It is impossible to read Job and not expect to hear “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” come from his lips at any moment. The cry of dereliction taken from the pen of David in Psalm 22 and placed in the mouth of Jesus while hanging on a cross at Calvary was first cried out by Job using many different words to express the same faith and forsakenness.
The suffering of Job is a prophecy to be fulfilled on a Friday afternoon 2,000 years later.
One instance of this is in chapter 13, where Job says, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him…” (Job 13:15). It is hard to imagine a verse more cruciform than this one. Job is getting out ahead of the Prophet Isaiah, who writes the words read on Good Friday around the world: “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief…” (Isa. 53:10). One of Job’s chief concerns is that his hope will die with him, and he will be remembered as one whom God rejected.
“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me (Job 17:1).
Here Job confesses that he is shattered in spirit. His grave has been dug. The headstone has been engraved. The casket is ready. The only thing remaining is for his broken body to be placed inside. And while Job continually states that he longs for death, he also fears the death of hope. This is why he will say that he wishes he had not been born (Job 3). Job does not believe it is better to have hoped and lost than to have never hoped at all.
“He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom men spit. My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow” (Job 17:6-7).
Job states that he has become the definitive example of what happens when God forsakes you. This will be his legacy. He has cried his eyes dim and God has not taken notice. His body has wasted away, and God has not acted. People will spit at the very sight of him, thinking this is what happens when you desire God, but he doesn’t desire you.
Hope is not unfamiliar with the grave. Hope has been buried before and is the casket partner of all who believe.
“If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness, if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?” (Job 17:13-16)
Now Job gets to his real fear. What does death do to hope? Can hope live with the grave as its dwelling? When the pit and the worm become your only family, does hope remain? And if it does, who will bear witness to it? And as your body becomes dust, does hope do the same?
What Job needs now is a preacher. Someone to tell him that all his suffering and forsakenness is a prophetic word to the world about the true righteous sufferer who would be slayed so that hope in God would never be in vain. God eventually redeems and restores Job because Job is not Jesus. Job needs a savior, and he knows it. And in Jesus, he gets one.
When you read Job, read it with Good Friday on your mind. Read it knowing that hope itself was spat on, mocked, wept, suffered, forsaken, and died. Hope is not unfamiliar with the grave. Hope has been buried before and is the casket partner of all who believe. The book of Job is a very long Friday with a Sunday morning at the end.
