Commentary - Job 1:20-22

Bird's-eye view

In these three verses, we are brought to the very pinnacle of pious, creaturely submission to the sovereign Creator. Having been systematically stripped of his ten children and all his worldly wealth in a series of catastrophic blows, Job's response is not what our fallen sensibilities would expect. He does not curse God, as Satan predicted. He does not even question God, at least not yet. Instead, he performs the ritual acts of intense grief and then immediately falls to the ground in worship. This is the heart of the matter. His theology, forged in the sunshine of prosperity, now holds fast in the darkest storm of affliction. He confesses the absolute sovereignty of God over life and death, possession and loss, and concludes by blessing the name of the Lord. The Holy Spirit then gives His own inspired verdict on Job's reaction: in all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. This passage sets the stage for the entire drama, establishing Job's initial righteousness and demonstrating that it is possible for a man to suffer horrendously without having committed some secret, disqualifying sin. It is a profound rebuke to all forms of the prosperity gospel and a powerful lesson on the nature of true, God-centered worship.

The central truth on display here is that God is God, and we are not. Job understands that he came into the world with nothing and will leave the same way. Everything in between is a gift, a temporary stewardship from the hand of the Giver. Therefore, when the Giver reclaims what is His, the only proper response for the creature is to bless the name of the Owner. This is a hard lesson, but it is the bedrock of all true faith. Job's response shows that his service to God was not a transaction, as Satan alleged. He did not serve God for the stuff. He served God because God is God, and worthy of worship regardless of circumstances. This is the faith that God vindicates in the end.

Outline

Context In Job

This passage is the climax and conclusion of the first chapter of Job. The chapter opens by establishing Job as a man who was "blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil" (Job 1:1). The scene then shifts to the heavenly court, where Satan, the accuser, challenges God, claiming that Job's righteousness is merely self-serving, a fair-weather faith that would collapse if his blessings were removed (Job 1:9-11). God, in His sovereign wisdom, grants Satan permission to test this claim by striking Job's possessions and his children, but not his person. What follows is a rapid-fire account of four messengers, each bringing news of a disaster that wipes out Job's livestock, his servants, and finally, all ten of his children. Verses 20-22 are Job's immediate, unfiltered response to this overwhelming wave of tragic news. His reaction here is the direct refutation of Satan's slander and the vindication of God's confidence in His servant. This initial, faithful response stands in stark contrast to some of Job's later laments and complaints that arise after the prolonged agony and the unhelpful counsel of his friends. This section is crucial because it establishes the baseline: the calamities that befell Job were not a punishment for sin, and his initial response was one of exemplary, worshipful faith.

Key Issues

The Man on the Ash Heap

We must get the scene firmly in our minds. This is not a man who has had a bad day at the office. This is a man whose entire world has been obliterated in the space of a few minutes. His life's work, his fortune, his legacy, and most devastatingly, all ten of his children, are gone. The messengers have not even stopped arriving, one stumbling in on the heels of the other. The shock and the grief are unimaginable. And what is the first thing he does? He grieves. He tears his robe and shaves his head. These are not signs of a loss of faith; they are the culturally appropriate expressions of profound anguish. Faith is not stoicism. God does not require us to pretend that our hearts are not breaking. But notice where his grief immediately takes him. It takes him to his knees. He falls to the ground, not in a faint of despair, but in a posture of worship. This is the central pivot. For the unbeliever, a tragedy of this magnitude is the final proof that there is no God, or that if there is, He is a monster. For the man of faith, it is the ultimate occasion for worship. It is the moment when faith is stripped of all its earthly supports and must stand on God alone. Job's faith stands.

Verse by Verse Commentary

20 Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped.

Job's response is twofold, and the order is important. First comes the expression of raw, human grief. Tearing the robe was a common sign of mourning or distress in the ancient world. Shaving the head was another. Job does not deny his pain. He does not put on a plastic smile and say, "Praise God anyway." He is a man, and he has suffered a catastrophic loss. The gospel does not cauterize our nerve endings. But his grief does not curdle into bitterness or rebellion. Instead, it serves as the pathway to the second part of his response: worship. He fell to the ground. This could have been a collapse of despair, but the text is explicit. He fell to the ground and worshiped. This is the key. In the very moment of his deepest agony, his immediate instinct is to acknowledge God's rightful place. Worship is the declaration of worth. Even with everything taken from him, Job declares that God is worthy. This is the faith that silences the accuser.

21 And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall return there. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be the name of Yahweh.”

Here we have the content of his worship, a concise and profound statement of theological truth. First, he acknowledges his creatureliness. "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return." He recognizes that he entered this world with nothing and he will leave it with nothing. All the things he possessed, his wealth, his family, were never truly his in an ultimate sense. They were gifts, on loan from the Creator. This perspective is the antidote to entitlement. If we believe we are owed something, then loss will always make us bitter. If we believe everything is a gift, then loss, while painful, can be met with gratitude for the time we had the gift.

Second, he confesses God's absolute sovereignty. "Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away." Notice who he credits. He doesn't blame the Sabeans, or the Chaldeans, or a freak lightning storm, or a tornado. And he doesn't even mention Satan. He knows that behind all secondary causes, the ultimate cause is the Lord of heaven and earth. God is the one who gives, and God is the one who takes. This is not fatalism; it is robust, biblical theism. If God is not sovereign over our calamities, then He is not sovereign at all, and we are left in a universe of meaningless chance. Job's comfort, paradoxically, is found in the fact that his suffering came from the hand of the God who is in control of all things.

Third, he responds with blessing. "Blessed be the name of Yahweh." This is the pinnacle. It is one thing to submit to raw power. It is another thing entirely to bless the one who has afflicted you. To "bless" God means to speak well of Him, to praise Him, to declare His goodness. Job is saying that God is good and worthy of praise when He gives, and He is still good and worthy of praise when He takes away. His character does not change with our circumstances. This is the essence of a God-centered faith, as opposed to a man-centered one.

22 Through all this Job did not sin, nor did he give offense to God.

This is the inspired narrator's conclusion, the divine evaluation of Job's response. The Hebrew for "give offense" can be translated as "charge God with wrong" or "attribute foolishness to God." Job did not sin with his grief, nor with his words. He did not shake his fist at heaven and accuse God of being unjust, or cruel, or incompetent. He accepted his suffering as coming from a sovereign and good God, even though he could not understand the reason for it. This verse is crucial. It tells us explicitly that Job's initial response was righteous. Satan was wrong. A man can fear God for nothing, that is, for no earthly reward. It also sets up the drama to come. Satan couldn't get Job to sin through disaster, so he will try again with physical torment. And when that doesn't work, he will use Job's friends, the grief counselors, to try and push him over the edge. Job made it through the disaster without sinning, but he did not make it through the grief counseling without sinning. But here, at the beginning, his faith is pure and his worship is true.

Application

The immediate application of this text is a direct assault on the health-and-wealth gospel that is so pervasive today. The lie that Satan told about Job is the same lie that many modern preachers tell about God: that our relationship with Him is transactional. If you have enough faith, they say, God will give you health, wealth, and happiness. If you are suffering, it must be because of some hidden sin or a lack of faith. Job's story demolishes this. Here is the most righteous man on earth, and he is suffering, not because of his sin, but because of his righteousness. This passage forces us to ask what our faith is built on. Is it built on the gifts, or on the Giver?

When affliction comes into our lives, and it will, this passage gives us our marching orders. First, it is right to grieve. We are not disembodied spirits. Loss hurts, and we should not pretend otherwise. Second, our grief must lead us to worship. We must fall on our faces before the God who is sovereign over the storm. We must confess that we are creatures and He is the Creator. We own nothing; He owns everything. Third, we must learn to say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away." We must see His hand, not the blind hand of fate. There is no such thing as a maverick molecule in this universe. Everything that comes to us is filtered through the hands of a loving, sovereign Father. And finally, by His grace, we must come to the place where we can say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

How is this possible? It is only possible because of the greater Job, the Lord Jesus Christ. Job sat on an ash heap, but Jesus hung on a cross. Job lost his children, but God the Father gave His only Son. Jesus was stripped naked, not just of His robe, but of His glory and His life. And on that cross, He endured the ultimate dereliction, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He did this so that in all our smaller sufferings, we would never be forsaken. Because He took the ultimate curse, we can receive the ultimate blessing. He is the reason we can bless the name of Yahweh, even in the fire. For we know that our Redeemer lives, and that because He was taken from, we will be given everything in the new creation.