Day 147. Job 13-17

Job's comforters continually tell him what he already knows and deliver hackneyed pieties as if they were brilliant insights. The continually "talk down" to him. Job's frustration grows until, halfway through his reply to Zophan, his impatience breaks out in violent anger. "Look," he says, "my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it. What you know, I already know; I am not inferior to you" (13:1). He regards the "comfort" his friends offer as "a whitewash of lies." They are worthless physicians" (13:4), who prescribe but cannot cure.
Silence is the best advice they could offer him (13:5). Job wants to speak directly to God, not to those who presume to speak for God. He asks for—he demands his day in court—"I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God" (13:3), not through intermediaries (13:8). He sees beyond their arguments. Their easy answers are "proverbs of ashes," their justifications of God "are defenses of clay" (13:12).
Job has prepared his case. He is certain of its rightness. But now is there anyone who will contend with him (13:19). Of God he asks only two things--to "withdraw [his] hand" so that the terror of the divine will not overwhelm him, and then to speak or at least answer his burning question—Oh God, how have I sinned so that I should be punished as if I were your enemy? (13:24)
I am not worth wasting your anger upon, Job says. I am only a mortal, my life amounts to only a few days, "and full of trouble." It "comes up like a flower and withers;" it "flees like a shadow and does not last" (14:1). And because a human life is so miserably transitory, why should God concern himself with it. "Look away from [us human beings] and desist, that [we] should enjoy, like laborers, [our] days" (14:6), Job pleads to the LORD: After all death comes quickly enough, and it is the end of all human hope and meaning—"If mortals die, will they live again?" Job asks, and the Old Testament answer is "No." And Job wishes himself in Sheol, the underworld abode of the dead, where the God of living, will "not keep watch over [his] sin" (14:16). But as it is, he only wishes that God would leave him alone to live his short life and enjoy it the best he can before darkness closes in on him forever.
And when this anguished outburst has spent itself, we hear the voice of Eliphaz again, more impatient and strident than before. Job's comforters are exasperated, but more determined than ever to get him to confess the sinfulness that must lie at the root of his suffering. Eliphaz accuses Job of undermining religious faith—"You are doing away with the fear of God," (15:4) he says. All the authority of the ages argues against Job—"The grey-haired and the aged are on our side, those older than your father" (15:10), he tells him. How can Job protest innocence when God can put "no trust even in his holy ones"—his angels—"and [even] the heavens are not clean in his sight' (15:15). How then can a mere man claim to be innocent, "much less one who is abominable and corrupt, one who drinks iniquity like water" (15:16). His misery witnesses against him. God punishes the wicked, Eliphaz says with obvious relish--they "writhe in
pain" and they "despair of returning from darkness." Their fears and calamities are the just punishment of their sins.
But Job strikes back again at his "miserable comforters" (16:2). They cannot understand his situation having never experienced it. To Job God has become not a merciful judge, but a ruthless warrior, the commander of a savage army of sorrows and woes. "I was at ease," Job says, "and he broke me in two; he seized my neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; his archers surround me" (16:12-13). Job reaches to find images violent enough to express his fury over the treatment he has received. His comforters accuse him of being evil, but he is not, he is only mortal—a creature born to die--he is angry because God has treated him as if he were. God has taken advantage of his weakness to torment him.
In his pain and abandonment, Job cries out for a hearing in heaven before he dies, or failing that for death itself as a release. He is an object of disgust for everyone (17:6). He is an object of disgust to himself. Death is his only escape. He regards Sheol as his home now (17:13); he regards the grave as his father, and "the worm" as his mother and his sister. Death is the only hope he has, and oblivion his only comfort. Human beings do not fall further than this.