Could’a, Would’a, Should’a

“Oh if only my grief were actually weighed and laid in the balances together with my disaster!  For then it would be heavier than the sand of the seas; for that reason my words have been rash.”  Job 6:2-3  NASB

If only – The “do-over” Hebrew word.  lû “marks three degrees of personal desire or agreement: wishes, entreaties, and statements of assent. It also marks two types of potential clauses: ‘perhaps’ clauses and conditional clauses.”^[1]  The translators have added a bit of emotional nuance in order to capture the depth of Job’s despair.  Bowling adds, “When accompanied by a statement of consequence, i.e. an apodosis, the lû clause becomes the protasis of an unreal conditional sentence.”^[2]  “An unreal conditional.”  That’s the key here.  Job’s grief can’t be measured.  It’s so intense, so debilitating that there’s really no comparison.  It’s just the opposite of something Paul wrote centuries later: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).  Job wants to believe what Paul pens, but everything in his present circumstances shouts, “No!”

Does that mean he must accept Eliphaz’ argument and submit to this horror because God wills it?  Be careful how you answer.  If you say, “No, Job has a right to complain,” then aren’t you implying that human discernment is more judicious than the divine, but mysterious, will?  Are you willing to live with that?  But if you say, “Yes, Job must submit even in all this suffering because he doesn’t know God’s real intention,” aren’t you then implying that we as human beings have no choice in the matter of our own lives and must simply capitulate to whatever happens?

Between a rock and a hard place.

If the Hebraic view of Man is the nexus of choice, then how can a theology that asserts capitulation to a divinity that acts contrary to freedom be acceptable, but if God is truly sovereign and His will is behind every circumstance of human life, then how can any human being rebel at whatever evil befalls him?

Is it any wonder that the Torah never answered these questions, or that rabbinic Judaism lives with the inherent contradiction?  Did you imagine that the story of Job was intended to resolve the matter?  Maybe this story only frames the question—and leaves the solution unsettled.  What would happen if you read Job, not to find an answer to the problem of “unjustified” suffering, but to understand that scope of the opposing sides.  What if Job isn’t a theological treatise but rather an existential confession?  Would it be any less valuable if all it did was voice your inner conflict?

Topical Index: if only, lû, choice, Romans 8:38-39, Job 6:2-3

^[1] Bowling, A. (1999). 1085 לוּ. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., pp. 470–471). Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.