Pain Management

Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great. Job 2:13  NASB

No one speaking a word – In the last verse we discovered that nûd and nāḥam are really circumlocutions for what really matters when it comes to pain.  The words are there, but the true reality is the manifestation of human connection that they intend to describe.  Without that actual exhibition of connection, these words are empty containers, like digital greeting cards with pre-packaged generalities.  Press the “Delete” key.  “It’s the thought that counts” doesn’t count.

Job’s friends connect.  They come to sympathize.  They come to comfort.  But before anything else, they come to connect.  And they connect by just being there!  Seven days without a word.  Why?  Because it takes a long time to become truly present to another person’s pain.   At the end of seven days—seven days of observing, feeling, sensing, breathing, and hearing—then they realize the depth of his agony.  In fact, the previous verse tells us that Job’s appearance was so distressful to his friends that they could do nothing but weep and groan.  They tore their robes—a sign of intenseheartache—and covered themselves with ashes—a symbol of their great despair.  The translated text reads, “lifted up their voices” but we should not imagine that they spoke.  What they did was make noise—the noise of personal wretchedness.  I’m sure you know what that sounds like—and it’s not words.

Now they sit with Job for seven days.  Of course, the number is symbolically significant, the number of completion.  The days of tangible connection have been accomplished.  Now we can converse.

It’s interesting to note that no one spoke during this time, not even Job.  Have you been there—in the place where words not only do not come but are somehow irrelevant?  Have you found it almost vulgar to hear someone try to ease pain’s reality by offering an inane explanation?  I shudder when I hear, “God’s ways are not our ways,” offered as if that thought should erase our trauma.  What abuse!  Of course God’s ways are not our ways, but that doesn’t change any of the reality of our ways.  The promise of heaven does not remove the tragedy of the grave.  Resurrection doesn’t happen until after death!  So, Job’s friends wait.  They wait until they have absorbed the full impact of his near-death experience.  They wait until their sensitivity has reached the same level as his.  They wait until there is nothing left to wait for.

And then—they have earned the right to speak.

The Hebrew word translated as “no one” is really completely contextual.  “This word is basically a negative substantive used most frequently in the construct form (ʾên). The word therefore has no single meaning and the exact translation must be determined in each context. The negative concept is always present wherever the word is used.”^[1] “No one said anything” is the gist of it.  Do you find this particularly unusual?  I don’t mean atypical.  Certainly, for our culture, seven days of sitting without a word would be almost unheard of.  But that’s not what I find unusual.  What I find unusual is that Job’s world is an oral culture.  To not speak is to cut out the very foundation of cultural existence.  It’s like descending into the pit, the grave, oblivion.  It’s one of the other meanings of ʾayin, that is, nothing—to not be.  That’s what Job is experiencing, as he will later divulge, but now, with his friends surrounding him, they are all experiencing the world of nothing.  And perhaps that’s what sympathy and comfort must do—guide us to the place where we confront the nothingness of real loss.

Topical Index:  no one, nothing, ʾayin, sympathy, comfort, Job 2:13

^[1] Scott, J. B. (1999). 81 אַיִן. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 37). Moody Press.