Job's three friends represent the wisdom of the world. They come with the best of motives, to ″sympathise with him and comfort him″ (Job 2:11). But they fail. They say nothing to him for seven days, which is the traditional response when mourning for a corpse (see 1 Samuel 31:13). They cannot ″recognise″ Job or get through to him. He is deeply alone.

Job is so alone that in chapter 3 we hear him voice a dark lament that is addressed neither to his friends nor even to God. He doesn't speak it to anybody; it is just squeezed out of him by his misery. He curses the day of his birth (Job 3:3-5) and the night of his conception (vv. 6-10), wishing he had never come to be. Hope is darkened. ″Leviathan″ (v. 8) is a storybook monster that vividly portrays a supernatural power of evil; we shall meet him again in chapter 41, where he seems to be a picture of Satan himself.

In 3:11 and 16, Job asks that desperate question: ″Why?″ If only he had died at birth (v. 11) or been stillborn (v. 16), then he could have lain down at peace and been at rest (v. 13); instead, he now has to live in a world where the wicked cause him endless distress and trouble (v. 17), and his life is like a captive never at ease (v. 18).

Somehow, Job cannot simply lie down under his sufferings. He must begin–as now indeed he does begin–a painful journey of honest faith. It is this journey that drives the remainder of the book and leads to a conclusion full of gospel hope.

In verses 20 to 26, Job broadens his lament to include not just himself in his own suffering, but also the seemingly pointless suffering of ″those in misery . . . the bitter of soul″ (v. 20). Again he asks the question, ″Why?″ (vv. 20, 23). And again he speaks of ″no peace, no quietness . . . no rest, but only turmoil″ (v. 26).

It is important to try to feel the misery of Job. In chapters 1 and 2, we watched, as observers, the trials of Job; in today's reading, however, we enter the inner world of the misery of Job's soul.

It ought to be both poignant and painful for us to hear these words. They help us enter the agony of Jesus Christ as He lived and died under the wrath of God, paying the penalty for sinners. For the darkness of Job anticipates, again and again, the darkness of the cross of Christ.