Arguing from the Ash Heap
Introduction: The Grammar of Grief
We live in an age that is terrified of suffering, and consequently, an age that does not know how to grieve. Our therapeutic culture wants to manage pain, to medicate it, to explain it away with platitudes, or to dismiss it with a sterile and sentimental spirituality. When confronted with the raw, jagged edges of human anguish, we want to sand them down. We want a tidy faith for a messy world, and the result is a faith that is brittle, shallow, and useless when the whirlwind comes.
The book of Job is God's answer to this kind of trivial faith. It is a book that refuses to be tidy. It drags us out to the ash heap, scrapes us with a potsherd, and forces us to listen to a man who has lost everything argue with the God who gave it all and then took it all away. Job is not a stoic. He is not politely sipping tea and saying, "Well, providence is mysterious." He is roaring. He is weeping. He is demanding answers. And in our passage today, he comes to the very precipice of despair, wishing for the blackness of non-existence.
We must understand that there is a way to argue with God that is faithful, and there is a way that is faithless. The Psalms are filled with the first kind. David, Asaph, and the others bring their complaints, their confusion, and their rage, but they do so while standing on the foundation of the covenant. They argue with God based on His own promises. They say, "You promised to be our God, so why does it look like this?" That is a covenantal lawsuit. But Job, in his agony, is teetering on the edge. He is beginning to argue not from the covenant, but from his circumstances. He is looking at the ash heap, not at the heavens, and his vision of God is becoming distorted by the smoke of his suffering. He is questioning the very goodness of his own creation, which is a hair's breadth from questioning the goodness of the Creator.
This passage is a dark and difficult one. It is Job's honest cry from the depths. But it is in the Bible for our instruction. It teaches us what happens when our gaze turns inward to our pain instead of upward to our God. And it shows us, by way of profound contrast, the glorious hope that we have in the gospel, a hope that Job could only see in shadows.
The Text
‘Why then have You brought me out of the womb?
Would that I had breathed my last and no eye had seen me!
I should have been as though I had not been,
Carried from womb to tomb.’
Would He not cease for a few of my days?
Withdraw from me that I may have a little cheer
Before I go, and I shall not return,
To the land of darkness and shadow of death,
The land of utter gloom as the thick darkness itself,
Of the shadow of death, without order,
And which shines as the thick darkness.”
(Job 10:18-22 LSB)
The Cry for Non-Existence (v. 18-19)
Job begins his lament by questioning the very fact of his own life.
"‘Why then have You brought me out of the womb? Would that I had breathed my last and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not been, Carried from womb to tomb.’" (Job 10:18-19)
This is the cry of a man whose suffering has become so total that non-existence seems preferable to a tormented existence. He is looking back at the doorway of life and wishing God had never pushed him through it. He longs for the ultimate cosmic abortion. To be "carried from womb to tomb" is to desire a life that was no life at all, a brief, unseen flicker that never caught flame. This is more than just a death wish; it is an existence-wish-erased.
Now, we must have compassion here. Job is in unimaginable pain. But we must also be theologically astute. What is the root of this cry? Job is making a calculation based on his feelings. His pain is greater than his perceived pleasure, and so he concludes that the entire enterprise of his life was a net loss. He is judging the value of a gift by the pain of its present wrapping. This is a profound error. Our lives are not our own to evaluate. We did not create ourselves, and we do not have the right to declare our existence a mistake. To do so is to place our judgment over God's. It is to say to the Potter, "Your vessel is flawed, and it would have been better had you not made it at all."
This is a temptation common to man. In the depths of sorrow, we are tempted to believe that our suffering is the ultimate reality. But the ultimate reality is the sovereign purpose of God. God does not make mistakes. He did not accidentally let Job slip out of the womb. Every life, even one wracked with pain, is woven into His unsearchable plan. Job's suffering was not pointless, even though it felt that way to him. It was a key part of God's cosmic argument with Satan, a demonstration of the power of genuine faith, and a lesson for every believer until the end of time. Job could not see this from the ash heap, but his inability to see the purpose did not negate its existence.
The Christian response to this cry is not to deny the pain, but to deny the conclusion. Yes, suffering is real and terrible. But God is sovereign, and He works all things together for good for those who love Him. To wish for non-existence is to wish away the very canvas on which God intends to paint the masterpiece of His grace.
A Plea for a Truce (v. 20-21a)
Having wished he had never been born, Job now pleads for a simple pause in his affliction before he dies.
"Would He not cease for a few of my days? Withdraw from me that I may have a little cheer Before I go, and I shall not return, " (Job 10:20-21a)
Job sees God as his relentless adversary. In his mind, God is actively, intensely, and personally pressing down on him. So he asks for a ceasefire. "Just back off for a bit. Let me catch my breath. Let me have one moment of 'cheer' before the end." He is not asking for restoration or healing; he has given up on that. He is simply begging for a brief stay of execution, a momentary furlough from the divine assault.
This reveals a flawed but understandable view of God's providence. Job sees God's attention as entirely negative. For God to be near is for God to afflict. Therefore, relief can only come if God "withdraws." He wants God to leave him alone. Many Christians fall into a similar trap. When things are going well, we feel that God is distant, and we think that is a good thing. We want a God who is there for emergencies but who otherwise lets us get on with our lives. But when trouble comes, we feel His presence as a heavy, oppressive weight.
But the Scripture teaches the opposite. In His presence is fullness of joy. His nearness is our good. The problem is not God's attention, but our sin and our finite perspective. God's attention is always for the good of His people, even when it comes in the form of what the Puritans called "severe mercies." God was not afflicting Job out of spite; He was refining him. He was proving him. He was preparing him for a deeper knowledge of Himself. The pressure was the point. For God to "withdraw" would have been to abandon the whole project.
Job wants a little cheer apart from God, a moment of peace that comes from God's absence. The gospel tells us that true cheer, true joy, is found only in His presence. David says, "You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11). Job's request is tragic because he is asking for the very thing that would be his ultimate undoing: separation from the only source of life and light.
A Pre-Christian View of Death (v. 21b-22)
Job concludes his speech with one of the bleakest descriptions of the afterlife found anywhere in Scripture.
"To the land of darkness and shadow of death, The land of utter gloom as the thick darkness itself, Of the shadow of death, without order, And which shines as the thick darkness.” (Job 10:21b-22)
Read those words carefully. Darkness. Shadow of death. Utter gloom. Thick darkness. And then the two most terrifying phrases: "without order" and "shines as the thick darkness." This is not just the absence of light; it is the presence of an active, aggressive, and chaotic darkness. It is a description of Hell. It is a place where even the light is darkness. It is the ultimate tohu wa-bohu, the formless void, but this time as a final destination.
This is Job's expectation of what comes next. And from his perspective, without the full light of the gospel, it is a logical conclusion. He sees a world that appears to be without order, governed by a God who seems arbitrary and cruel. It makes sense that the next life would be a continuation and intensification of the same. This is the end of the road for all who live under the sun without a Redeemer. This is the paycheck of sin.
But praise God, this is not the last word. This is precisely the reality that Jesus Christ came to shatter. Job saw a land of darkness; Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). Job saw a land of the shadow of death; Jesus, through His own death and resurrection, abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). Job saw a land "without order"; Jesus is the divine Logos, the principle of all order, who holds all things together by the word of His power (Colossians 1:17). Job saw a land where the very light was darkness; Jesus is the one who will bring His people to a city that has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb (Revelation 21:23).
Conclusion: The Light Shines in the Darkness
Job's lament in this chapter is a cry from the abyss. It is the logical, rational, and honest response of a man who is trying to make sense of his suffering with an incomplete set of data. He has the data of his pain, the data of his friends' bad theology, and the data of his own limited understanding of God. And with that data, he concludes that non-existence is best, that God is an adversary, and that death is a chaotic, dark end.
But we have more data. We have the cross and the empty tomb. We have the revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And this changes everything. We can now look at Job's suffering and see that it was not without order. It was governed by the sovereign hand of God, who had set boundaries for Satan and who was working out a glorious purpose that Job could not yet see.
When you are on your own ash heap, and you are tempted to cry out as Job did, you must remember that you know more than he did. You are not arguing with a God who is hidden behind a whirlwind, but with a Father who has revealed His heart in His Son. You can cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" because Jesus cried it out first, and He did so in order that you would never truly be forsaken.
Job's description of death is a perfect description of the world without Christ. It is a land of utter gloom, without order, where the light itself is darkness. That is the world of the atheist, the world of the despairing, the world of those who have no hope. But God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). Because of Him, we do not go to a land of darkness, but we are transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son. Our end is not chaos, but eternal, ordered, joyful worship in the presence of the King.
Therefore, bring your honest grief to God. Bring your pain. Argue with Him from within the covenant. But do not let your pain write your theology. Do not conclude, as Job was tempted to, that your life is a mistake or that God is your enemy. Look to Christ. He is the point of your suffering. He is the order in your chaos. He is the light that the deepest darkness cannot, and will not, overcome.