ROOTED - Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Job 6:24, 25; 8:3, 4

24 “Teach me,
and I will be silent;

    make me understand how I have gone astray.

25 How forceful are upright words!

    But what does reproof from you reprove?

8:3  Does God pervert justice?

    Or does the Almighty pervert the right?

4 If your children have sinned against him,

    he has delivered them into the hand of their
transgression.

Reflection: Understanding Job and
the Nature of God

Written By: Pastor Jesse Caro

Job is certainly difficult to understand, and reading most of the
book can be very confusing. There are several things that make it especially
hard to understand: 1) In the original language there were no quotation marks.
This is important toward the end of the book… but Bible translators don’t
really know when one person starts talking and another stops. 2) More
importantly, Job’s friends seem to be giving good advice, however it really is
not. Let me explain.

As far as I am concerned, Job is easy to understand when you
realize this principle: YOU CAN NOT PUT GOD IN A BOX. The first few chapters
illustrate this. Notice Jobs first complaint against God: he believes God is
unjustly punishing him, though he is innocent. So, he is interpreting his
circumstances as coming from God’s bad motives. In 6:25 he says, “what does
reproof from you reprove?” In other words, “when you correct me, what will that
accomplish, because I am innocent!” So, Job has put God in a box, accusing him
of being cruelly unfair. His “friend” equally puts God in a box, basically
saying, “if you have sinned, God will punish you.” His friend assumes that Job
has sinned and is therefore punishing him. That is, he believes that if you do
such and such God will always respond with such and such.

The problem is that God does not operate like a math equation.
Because we are having a bad day it neither means God hates us, or that we are
sinners being punished. God is God and he is not going to be made into an
equation. The difficulty in this book is that occasionally both Job and his
friends say accurate things about God, but they think they have him all figured
out. By the end of the book God will speak, basically saying, “you guys know
nothing!” And so, in my mind, the major tip for reading the book is: God cannot
be figured out as neatly as we would like.

Prayer

Lord, your wisdom and ways are far beyond us. You are mysterious.
Give us wisdom to not think so highly of ourselves that we have figured you
out.