Beyond the Ashes – Part 16

By saying Job served God from fear, we imply his knowledge of God’s loving nature was incomplete. Job was praised for being blameless and upright but, as the twelfth century Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides observes, Job’s experience of God was never described as perfect.³

It’s not wrong to serve God out of fear. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7); and fear has value redirecting a destructive life into a pro­ductive one. The Satan certainly had no fear of God, leaving him a long way from wisdom or godliness. But the scriptures clarify that serving God from fear is not the best one can do, nor is it an enjoyable way to live! Job’s fear-based discipleship affected his fine service as a priest, too. While he offered sacrifices for his children from fear, the Great High Priest of Melchizedek’s order sacrificed for his friends from love (John 17:9-26).

So God finds a solution for Job. He brings the very destruction of which Job is terrified. It looks like a bit of a brutal solution, if I’m perfectly honest; though that’s doubtless because of the limitations of my perception, not any limitations of God’s love. The solution is logically perfect: by bringing the destruction Job feared was triggered by disobedience, entirely without disobedience, God proves that fear­ful service, even blameless fearful service, is not the discipleship He seeks. It also proves God cannot be controlled by blameless service. He cannot be controlled at all. But He does love His children. If Job is prepared to trust that God is a loving parent, he can learn to love his Father while relaxing to enjoy his discipleship; all without compromising his piety.

God always intends that fear of Him should blossom into a love-centered com­munion; with love directed upwards to Him and outwards to fellow children (1 John 4:16-18). Love elicits trust. We can bear times of suffering when we trust we’re not victims of malicious wounding or profitless pain.

This was the work God performed with Job. Using exactly the same mechanism He used to bring salvation to the three friends (Job’s intense suffering), He brings Job from a life of fear to a life of faith: a victory in Job’s own discipleship.

16.2 Repentance Of Dust and Ashes

When Job saw he had been employed as a priest in the salvation of his friends; and had been saved from Satan’s infection — the pride with which his friends had assaulted him — he would have felt a tremendous release. The suffering through which he had persevered suddenly had a reason — a fantastic reason — it saved his friends’ lives! More personally important, Job realized that if God was utilizing his suffering then his most intense pain, his perceived separation from God, was unfounded. God had never left his side. So he cries:

“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3-6).

Previously we noted the closing sentence starkly contradicts the suggestion that Job is feeling joyful and relieved. It sounds like a man beaten into submission by a Powerful God rather than released from pride by a Loving One.

But the context is vital. First, Job has been sitting in dust and ashes for the entire debate (Job 2:8). So to ‘repent in dust and ashes’ is almost an absurdity: Job is already sitting there!

Job also explained why he is sitting on the ash heap:

“[God] throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes” (Job 30:19).

I suggest Job’s comment is not, unfortunately, a man’s humility recognizing his mortal state, because Job is not saying he has always been dust and ashes. This is a man’s embitterment complaining of God’s destruction. To use a modern metaphor, Job is saying: “God has trashed my life. He treats me like garbage. So I guess the garbage heap is where I belong!” His presence on the ashes pile, I suggest, is Job’s silently angry enacted complaint of God’s injustice. Yet after God’s revelations, Job sees God hasn’t been cruel at all! God has, through his intense suffering, saved his three friends. What a revelation! Job has been highly honored to be a chosen vessel employed in God’s eternal plan of salvation.

But how does that square with the apparent lament: “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes”?

The apparent contradiction is not in the Hebrew: specifically the preposition “in” (dust and ashes) is absent. Prepositions are only inferred in Hebrew, making it notoriously difficult to translate. In fact, the original Hebrew verse has only four words: “despise, repent, dust, ashes.”

Gutierrez proposes an excellent solution,⁴based on the work of Patrick,⁵which interprets the verse: “I despise and repent of dust and ashes.” This has two sig­nificant upgrades from the common translation. First, Job no longer states he despises himself, (although he doubtless felt foolish that he had railed against the God who had employed him so powerfully), so there is no longer a demoralized tone. (Other commentators ratify this view.⁶) More importantly Job is saying he repents of dust and ashes! This has massive impact on our appreciation of God’s work in Job’s life! Job can now be seen to be saying:

“I’ve seen God first hand! I was never abandoned! I was completely wrong about God reducing me to dust and ashes. I should never have seated myself on this ashes pile and I’m leaving immediately!” (Job 42:5-6, my paraphrase)

By contrast Balchin suggests any revelation of God is a debilitating experience which drives us to dust and ashes, not beyond them: “[Job] returns to his mound of dust and ashes. This is what the privilege of seeing God does for a man: to keep the vision he must recant in dust and ashes.” ⁷

I wholeheartedly disagree! I see Job repenting of dust and ashes; and I find that beautiful. It resolves the contradiction between the relieved happiness we an­ticipated Job to feel from God saving him from Leviathan and the traditional rendering of the text portraying him as disconsolate. Best of all, it confounds the notion that God was only interested in demonstrating that “He was number One,” which is tragically all that some expositors are able to see. God is not so insecure that He needed to prove to Job, Satan, or anyone else that He controls the world! God’s primary interest is the salvation of any and all who are willing to be His children, and always improving the closeness they share with Him. No wonder Job abandons dust and ashes! At that moment, I am convinced he got up from the ashes pile and, though yet unhealed from his physical ailments, limped away with lightened heart, never to seat himself there again.

16.3 The Promise of Resurrection

After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before (Job 42:10).

Ironically, where Job’s suffering causes many readers to be angry at God, his res­toration seems to irritate expositors just as much! Gutierrez morosely concludes: “the ending evidently displays a certain naivety,”⁸while Weiss goes further: “the story ends… with an inadequate attempt by God to make amends to Job by mak­ing him wealthy and respected once again, and by endowing him with a new set of children.”⁹Worse yet, since righteous Job is rewarded, doesn’t this imply the doctrine of retribution was right all along? After all, the good guy finishes with all the toys!

The doctrine of retribution is not justified by the ending. God was not obliged to reward Job’s faithfulness. Is Job’s blessing completely random, then? Again no, but its causal trigger is the goodness of the Father, not the goodness of His faithful servant. Jesus reveals God has a desire to give pleasurable gifts to His children (Matt 7:9-11). In fact, since the doctrine of retribution demands God must reward Job, then when God does so we cannot praise Him. So it is belief in the doctrine of retribution that prevents us from speaking well of God.

This philosophy is non-trivial. Now we have seen Job’s faithfulness, we must not fall into the trap of insisting that God is not allowed to reward him simply to ensure we can prove that the doctrine of retribution is false. The falsity of the doctrine of retribution does not constrain God from blessing His children as and when He chooses. And He chooses to do so here, in which we can rejoice.

The scripture tells us Job received a ‘double portion’ of all he had before (Table 16_1)

Table 16_1: The arithmetic of Job’s double-portion blessing

An obvious contradiction stares us in the face. The treasures Job will value more than anything are doubtless his children, yet precisely here the double-portion appears to have fallen short. Job hasn’t received twice as many sons and daughters as previously. Why not?

The subtlety and beauty of what God is doing here is profound. Only one expla­nation is possible (if we dismiss the spurious notion that God has cheated Job). The only way Job can have 14 sons and 6 daughters, the ‘double portion,’ is if the original ten children can, in some way, be considered to be alive. I’m not sug­gesting they somehow survived the collapse of the house; that simply contradicts scripture. But they are alive in a way in the deceased animals are not. I believe God is giving Job assurance that his children will be resurrected! This makes God’s actions in the epilogue all the more beautiful, as we witness Job’s first illumination of resurrection. We’ve already considered how much joyful relief Job felt to realize he was employed as a priest to salvation. How much greater will that joy amplify to perceive the fullness of God’s plan!

This also clarifies why Job’s flocks and herds were explicitly numbered in the pro­logue (Job 1:3). We could be forgiven for thinking: “Why would I possibly need to know Job had 3,000 sheep? What a pointless verse!” Yet without that fact we would have been unable to perceive God’s promise of Job’s children’s resurrection.

The timescale over which Job came to know his blessings is also fascinating.¹⁰It’s not recorded that Job knew he would get twice as many flocks, yet only the same number of children. Only as the years passed, and the window of human fertility drew closed, would he realize that he would not father twenty more children, but only ten. I can only imagine how the realization would have gently and beautifully blossomed in the heart and mind of both Job and his wife of what God was there­fore promising concerning their former children. And thus, by the same token, I can only imagine how deeply the import of that gift was imprinted.

Job and his wife are not the only couple to have lost their children. But they are, perhaps, unique in receiving the assurance that all original children are secured a place in the Kingdom of God!¹¹And this message comes embedded within numbers of flocks, herds and children, a message medium so subtle it won’t be noticed by any but the most careful listener. But Job is such a careful listener to God, as we have seen. This is a unique and amazing promise given to a unique and amazing man. Most importantly of all, it enables us to speak well of God, as it powerfully illustrates the unfailing love our Father displays towards His children.

Another subtle hint at Job’s double portion may be seen in his resulting life length.¹²Job lives 140 years after the drama’s events and at the start he had ten children, suggesting a total lifespan of ~200 years. He is likely a contemporary of Moses, who was blessed to live to 120 (Deut 34:7), which implies Job likely received a ‘double-portion’ even of life itself.

I muse on how God viewed Job’s development. Job was stuck in the mode of serv­ing God because he was terrified of otherwise being crushed by a Mighty Blow from Above. What a tragedy! I sense God observed his blameless servant with some sadness. While Job tiptoed around in faultless service, for fear of calamity pouncing like a huge, hidden predator, God must only have lamented from above: “Job! You’re my dear son whom I love. Why serve Me this way? Neither of us is enjoying this relationship as we could!”

Consider the corollary. What parent wants their child’s obedience solely derived from naked terror of being soundly thrashed otherwise? Is that any decent parent’s dream? What parent wants to be viewed as an exacting overseer by the child for whom they would gladly sacrifice everything? Even if the child’s resulting obedi­ence is flawless, as Job’s was, if it is fear-based it necessarily implies the parent doesn’t know love or mercy.

So we have to know who the Father is, to enjoy a meaningful relationship with Him. Interestingly, scripture defines “knowing God” as the very essence of eternal life.

“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

This verse fascinates me, because I believe the statement cuts both ways. It is eternal life to know God. Therefore, the fact we don’t live eternally proves we don’t know God. I believe the reversible logic can change our driving motivation towards sal­vation. The ultimate promise of salvation is not to live eternally; living eternally is the consequence of the promise. The ultimate promise of salvation is to know God.

And the more I know God, the more I am enabled to speak well of Him.