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Job Prays for His Friends

Overheard in class: God blesses Job after Job prays for his friends. This is an interesting observation about this text:

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. (Job 42.10a, ESV)


Job has just revealed his contrition regarding why God would cause him such sorrow and God had lectured Job's friends for their misunderstandings about God and Job's situation. God then tells the friends to ask Job to pray for them, and they do. They bring sacrifices and they ask for Job's intercession on their behalf.

Get this picture. Job is, presumably, still sitting in ashes, covered with sores that he scrapes with a potsherd. He has suffered the loss of his children and his physical wealth, and his wife has suggested that he should just curse God and die. He has just sat through 40-ish chapters of being lectured by these same friends and finally, challenged by God.

...and his friends show up with sacrifices for themselves, asking Job to pray for them.

Put yourself in Job's place. Ashes, sores, bereaved. Still wondering why all this has happened to him and having been given no answers. And now - did his friends tell him that God had sent them to him - he is expected to bless these three guys by praying for them. I can almost hear Job asking, "Should not someone be praying for me?! I am the one sitting in ashes-for no apparent reason!"

I wonder if Job would have felt better if God's response would have been, "You are right, Job, you have not sinned. I am doing this to you for no reason other than to cause you pain." At least Job would have known something about why he was in his condition. But God does not say even that. God simply asks, who are you to wonder? Who are you to blame Me? No answers. No closure. Just more drifting. Alone.

Now that we have abused you to this extent, Job, your task - still sitting in those ashes without answers - is to intercede for these three guys. In the midst of your pain and confusion, bless others.

Others who have blamed you for your circumstances; accused you of sinning.

It is only after Job intercedes for these three people that God restores the fortunes of Job. Only after blessing others in the midst of his own pain and lostness, does God bless him.

How often do you and I reach out to bless others when in the midst of our own pain? Do we focus on ourselves, asking 'why me,' and ignoring the needs of those around us, or do we accept our condition as our current reality and look out of ourselves for the good of others?

This is what God expects of Job.

This sort of idea is echoed in the New Testament in passages such as
    When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
    In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself.
    Forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.

Job reveals God. For us.

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