Wrestling in the Dark Text: Job 3:20-26
Introduction: The Gift of Honest Lament
We live in a sentimental age. Our Christianity is often a mile wide and an inch deep, perfectly suited for birthday parties and polite company, but utterly useless in an emergency room or at a graveside. We have been taught, by a thousand subtle and not so subtle cues, that the proper Christian response to profound suffering is a serene, plastic smile and a handful of pious platitudes. We are told to "trust God" in a way that means we must never ask Him any hard questions. To voice the kind of raw, ragged anguish we find in our text today is considered a failure of faith, a spiritual embarrassment.
But the Bible is not a sentimental book. It is a book of blood and dust, of wrestling and weeping, of saints who shouted their confusion and pain into the teeth of heaven. And they did so without being rebuked for it. The book of Job is God's inspired case study on the nature of righteous suffering, and it refuses to give us easy answers. After seven days of silent shock, Job finally opens his mouth, not to bless God, as he did in chapter one, but to curse the day he was born. And now, in our text, he moves from cursing his own existence to questioning the God who gave it.
This is not the language of a man having a "bad day." This is the language of a man whose entire world has been systematically dismantled by the very hand of the God he served. He has lost his wealth, his children, and his health. He is sitting in an ash heap, scraping his boils with a piece of pottery. And his question is not, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" That is a philosopher's question. Job's question is far more personal, far more pointed. It is, "Why, God, are You doing this to me?"
We must understand that what Job is doing here is not unbelief. It is the very essence of a rugged, honest faith. Unbelief doesn't bother to argue with God; it simply dismisses Him. Faith, true faith, is what drives a man to wrestle with God all night, demanding a blessing. Job is not turning his back on God. He is turning toward God with his complaint, which is precisely what a covenant man is supposed to do. He is taking God at His word that He is sovereign, and he is demanding to know the meaning of that sovereignty in the midst of his agony. This is a lesson our soft generation desperately needs to learn. God is not afraid of your questions, but He demands that you bring them to Him, and not to the court of your own autonomous reason.
The Text
"Why is light given to him who is troubled, And life to the bitter of soul, Who long for death, but there is none, And dig for it more than for hidden treasures, Who are glad with joy, And rejoice when they find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, And whom God has hedged in? For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, And my roaring pours out like water. For the dread that I dread comes upon me, And what I am afraid of befalls me. I am not complacent, nor am I quiet, And I am not at rest, and raging comes."
(Job 3:20-26 LSB)
The Unwanted Gift (v. 20-22)
Job begins with a universal question, born from his particular agony.
"Why is light given to him who is troubled, And life to the bitter of soul, Who long for death, but there is none, And dig for it more than for hidden treasures, Who are glad with joy, And rejoice when they find the grave?" (Job 3:20-22)
Job's complaint is that life itself, the "light" of existence, feels like a cruel joke when it is filled with nothing but misery. He is speaking of those who are "bitter of soul," a profound Hebrew expression for a life that has lost all its savor and sweetness. For such a man, continued existence is not a gift but a burden, a forced march with no destination. God is keeping him alive, and Job wants to know why.
Notice the intensity of his desire for an exit. He says these sufferers "long for death," but it eludes them. They "dig for it more than for hidden treasures." This is a powerful metaphor. A man digging for treasure is single minded, relentless, and expends enormous energy. This is the energy Job now wishes he could apply to finding the grave. The finality of death, which our culture fears above all else, has become for Job the ultimate treasure, the one thing that could bring him relief.
He goes even further, saying they would "rejoice" and be "glad with joy" if they could just find the grave. This is the logic of suffering pushed to its absolute limit. When pain is all you have, the cessation of pain becomes the greatest conceivable good. Job is not being morbid for the sake of being morbid. He is being brutally honest. He is describing a state where the natural love of life has been completely inverted by the sheer weight of his affliction. This is not a philosophical problem for him; it is his lived reality. And in all this, his question is aimed squarely at the Giver of life. Why would a sovereign God sustain a life that has become an instrument of pure torture?
The Divine Hedge (v. 23)
In this next verse, Job brings the question home and identifies the source of his predicament.
"Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, And whom God has hedged in?" (Job 3:23 LSB)
Here, Job stops speaking in generalities and speaks of himself: "a man whose way is hidden." He cannot see the path forward. He has no understanding of the purpose or meaning of his suffering. All the moral and theological maps he used to navigate the world have been rendered useless. He was a righteous man, and yet calamity came. He cannot make sense of it. His "way" is hidden from him.
And who has hidden it? Job is unflinchingly orthodox on this point. It is God. "Whom God has hedged in." This is a brilliant and bitter piece of theological irony. In the first chapter, Satan complains to God that He has put a "hedge" of protection around Job (Job 1:10). That hedge was a sign of God's blessing and favor. Now, from Job's perspective on the ash heap, that same divine hedge has become the wall of a prison. The same sovereign power that once protected him is now confining him in his misery.
This is the central issue of the book. Job knows he is not dealing with fate, or bad luck, or impersonal cosmic forces. He is dealing directly with the personal, sovereign God of the universe. He knows God is in complete control. This is both the source of his faith and the source of his torment. Because God is in control, his suffering must have a purpose, but because that purpose is hidden, it feels like arbitrary cruelty. Job is not an atheist questioning if there is a God. He is a believer questioning what in the world God is doing. This is a far more profound and difficult place to be.
The Relentless Invasion (v. 24-26)
Job concludes this section by describing the all consuming nature of his state.
"For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, And my roaring pours out like water. For the dread that I dread comes upon me, And what I am afraid of befalls me. I am not complacent, nor am I quiet, And I am not at rest, and raging comes." (Job 3:24-26 LSB)
His grief is as constant as his daily meals. "My groaning comes at the sight of my food." The normal rhythms of life that bring comfort and sustenance are now just occasions for more sorrow. His anguish is not a quiet, dignified affair. His "roaring pours out like water," uncontrollably and ceaselessly. This is not the stiff upper lip of the Stoic; this is the raw cry of a man being torn apart.
Verse 25 is particularly revealing: "For the dread that I dread comes upon me." Before this disaster, Job was not a careless man. He feared for his children, offering sacrifices just in case they had sinned (Job 1:5). He was a man who understood the precariousness of life in a fallen world. But his careful piety could not prevent the disaster. The very thing he was afraid of, the collapse of his world, has happened. This is a devastating blow to anyone who believes their righteousness is a shield. God is teaching Job, in the most severe way possible, that He is to be trusted and worshiped for who He is in Himself, not because He keeps our fears at bay.
And so, his conclusion is one of utter turmoil. "I am not complacent, nor am I quiet, And I am not at rest, and raging comes." The Hebrew word for "raging" is turmoil, agitation. There is no peace. There is no respite. There is only a constant, churning storm within his soul. This is the honest report from the front lines of a spiritual war. And it is a war that God Himself has initiated.
The Answer in the Whirlwind
Job asks, "Why?" and for thirty-five chapters, he will get no answer, at least not the kind he is looking for. His friends will offer their tidy, cruel, and wrong-headed explanations. They represent the folly of all human attempts to systematize God's justice from our limited perspective. They operate on a simple principle: God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked, therefore Job must be wicked. It is a neat formula, and it is a lie in this context.
The answer to Job's "why" does not come in a proposition, but in a Person. At the end of the book, God shows up in a whirlwind. And what does He do? He does not explain the backstory with Satan. He does not give Job a list of reasons. Instead, He unleashes a torrent of rhetorical questions about the glories of His creation. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" (Job 38:4). The point is to overwhelm Job with the sheer magnitude of God's wisdom, power, and sovereignty. The answer to the problem of suffering is not an explanation that satisfies our reason, but a revelation of God that commands our worship.
And this points us directly to the ultimate answer, the ultimate Job, the Lord Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus was the truly innocent one whose way was hidden. He was the one truly hedged in by the wrath of God. He cried out the ultimate question of the sufferer: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). He experienced the full force of the dread that we all deserve. He descended into the ultimate darkness so that we might be brought into the light.
Because of Christ, our suffering is never meaningless. Because He entered into the heart of the whirlwind for us, we can know that our trials are governed by a wise and loving Father. Job's questions are legitimate, but they are not the final word. The final word is the Word made flesh, who suffered, died, and was raised again. In Him, God is not just the one who hedges us in, but the one who, through the affliction, is conforming us to the image of His glorious Son. He is the hidden treasure that we find not by digging for the grave, but by looking to the cross. And when we find Him, we find the answer to all our roaring.