Acquiescence

Why then do You not forgive my wrongdoing and take away my guilt?  For now I will lie down in the dust; and You will search for me, but I will no longer exist.”  Job 7:21 NASB

Forgive my wrongdoing – Job stands in our place.  He may not know why God seems to be punishing him, but if God is, then it must follow that somehow he has done something wrong.  He expresses implicitly the ancient idea of divine retribution.  In that world, often the gods did not reveal the actual infraction.  Men merely assumed their guilt when life turned sour.  Unfortunately, Job does not have the perspective of the storyteller.  If he did, he would know that his suffering is not the result of sin.  It is, in fact, much more serious.  It is the suffering of the righteous.  But Job doesn’t see this.  The true meaning of his circumstances is hidden and that only serves to make his agony all the more difficult.  This verse expresses his phenomenological state: moral confusion.  It is our state too.  Why God does what He does and allows what He allows is too often a theological and experiential conundrum.  We don’t have the perspective of the external storyteller.  We’re right there with Job, trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t make sense.

With this in mind, what does Job really ask of God?  Forgiveness?  The Hebrew verb is nāśāʾ, to bear or carry away, especially the guilt or punishment of sin.  Job appeals to God for divine mercy in the light of divine omniscience.  If there is a breach in the relationship, certainly God knows what it is, and therefore God is able to repair the damage even if Job is unaware of the infraction.  Job has performed a fearless moral inventory and finds nothing amiss.  What he asks for is not relief from punishment over a religious or ritual infraction.  No, he uses another term to describe his supposed sin, pešaʿ.  The essential characteristic of pešaʿ is rebellion.

The fundamental idea of the root is a breach of relationships, civil or religious, between two parties.

Predominantly pešaʿ is rebellion against God’s law and covenant and thus the term is a collective which denotes the sum of misdeeds and a fractured relationship. . . Not only does pešaʿ create a gulf between God and man, it generates distortions within himself, i.e. a tendency to hide his actions (Job 34:6),^[1]

But Job has found no evidence of a breach of the Law, therefore he can only conclude that whatever the cause of this fractured relationship, it must be a deep rebellion that even his conscious mind does not apprehend.  Since Job is unaware that his circumstances are a cultural lesson in righteous suffering, he pleads for God’s omniscience to motive mercy.  The problem for the reader is that there is nothing to forgive.  The real story is about divine gamesmanship.  Job is merely the pawn in this play.

Perhaps you’ve felt the same kind of moral confusion.  You’ve done the fearless inventory.  You’ve confessed even unconscious sins.  Yet life implodes.  Job’s story helps us see behind the curtain.  Righteous suffering is a game played in worlds far beyond us.  Maybe that helps.  Maybe it doesn’t.

Topical Index: nāśāʾ, bear, carry away, pešaʿ, rebellion, righteous suffering, Job 7:21

^[1] Livingston, G. H. (1999). 1846 פָּשַׁע. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 742). Moody Press.