Hope's Rock Bottom Text: Job 17:13-16
Introduction: The Logic of the Ash Heap
We come now to a passage in Job that is as bleak as any in Scripture. It is the logic of the ash heap, the reasoning of a man scraped raw by suffering, a man whose friends have proven to be miserable comforters. They have come with their tidy theological systems, their syllogisms of sin, trying to fit Job's immense and jagged grief into their smooth, pocket-sized boxes. But Job's pain will not be contained. It spills over, flooding every corner of his existence, until all he can see is the grave.
This is not a polite, academic discussion about the afterlife. This is a man staring into the abyss. He is not just contemplating death; he is making reservations. He is furnishing his tomb, sending out change-of-address cards to the darkness. He is claiming the worm as his kinsman. This is what happens when suffering is relentless and comfort is absent. Hope, as men understand it, dies. The flicker of earthly expectation is snuffed out, and the darkness that remains is absolute.
But we must be careful here. It is a great temptation for modern Christians to read a passage like this and immediately try to "fix" it. We want to rush in where Job's friends failed, armed with our New Testament cross-references, and tell Job to cheer up because of the resurrection. But that is to miss the point of the passage, and to misunderstand the nature of the canon. The Holy Spirit did not include this raw cry of despair in Holy Scripture by accident. This is not an embarrassing outburst that we need to quickly paper over with a more hopeful verse. No, this despair is part of the inspired story. This rock bottom is part of the foundation.
Why? Because you cannot understand the height of resurrection hope until you have honestly measured the depth of the grave's despair. You cannot appreciate the light of Christ until you have unflinchingly looked into the darkness that Job describes. Job is here articulating the honest conclusion of a man reasoning from his circumstances alone. If all you have is what you can see, feel, and deduce from the ash heap, then the grave is your only logical home. This passage is a divine lesson in the necessity of revelation. It shows us the absolute dead end of all human hope, in order to prepare us for a hope that is not human at all, but is a gift from God Himself, a hope that will later erupt from Job himself in chapter 19, and will ultimately be embodied in a man who went into the grave and came out the other side.
The Text
If I hope for Sheol as my home,
I make my bed in the darkness;
If I call to the pit, ‘You are my father’;
To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’;
Where now is my hope?
And who beholds my hope?
Will it go down with me to Sheol?
Shall we together go down into the dust?
(Job 17:13-16 LSB)
A New Address in Darkness (v. 13)
Job begins by stating the only expectation that makes any sense to him.
"If I hope for Sheol as my home, I make my bed in the darkness;" (Job 17:13)
The word "hope" here is almost sarcastic. It is an inverted hope. His friends have been peddling a cheap, earthly hope: "If you just repent, God will restore your fortunes." Job is having none of it. He says, in effect, "You want to talk about my expectations? Fine. My only realistic expectation is Sheol." Sheol, in the Old Testament, is the realm of the dead. It is not Hell in the sense of the final lake of fire, but rather the grave, the pit, the place of shadows where all the dead go. For Job, at this moment, it is not a place of torment, but simply a place of finality. It is his "home."
Think about what a home is. It is a place of permanence, of belonging, of rest. Job is saying that the only place he can imagine belonging anymore is the grave. The land of the living has cast him out. His friends, his family, his health, his reputation, all are gone. So he turns to the only alternative. He is done with this world; he is moving to the next address.
And what is the furniture in this new home? "I make my bed in the darkness." This is not the peaceful darkness of a quiet night's rest. This is the absolute, unyielding darkness of the tomb. He is actively preparing for it. He is making his bed, smoothing the dirt pillow, pulling up the shroud. This is an act of grim resignation. He is accepting the logic of his suffering. All the lights have gone out in his life, and so he is embracing the darkness as his final reality. This is the endpoint of a worldview without a promised resurrection. If death is the end, then all our striving is just a brief prelude to an eternity of nothingness.
A New Family in Corruption (v. 14)
Job's grim embrace of the grave extends to redefining his family relationships.
"If I call to the pit, ‘You are my father’; To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’;" (Job 17:14 LSB)
This is potent, visceral imagery. In the ancient world, family was everything. Your father was your source, your authority, your identity. Your mother and sister were your closest, most intimate relations. Job is performing a radical act of relational transference. He is disowning the world of the living and claiming kinship with the instruments of decay.
He calls the pit, the grave itself, "my father." The pit is now his origin, his source. He is a child of corruption. He is redefining himself from the ground down. Then he turns to the inhabitants of that pit. "To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’." The worms that will consume his flesh are no longer horrifying invaders; they are family. He is welcoming them, embracing them. This is a man who has become so alienated from human comfort that he finds more fellowship in the maggots of the tomb than in the mouths of his friends.
There is a profound theological truth buried in this horror. Apart from Christ, this is the true genealogy of every man. We are born of dust, and to dust we shall return (Gen. 3:19). Our bodies are allied with corruption. Sin has made us kin to the worm. Job is simply taking this reality, stripping it of all sentimentality, and staring it right in the face. This is where the curse leads. This is the family reunion that awaits every son of Adam who dies in his sin.
The Death of Hope (v. 15)
Having established his new home and his new family, Job asks a devastating rhetorical question.
"Where now is my hope? And who beholds my hope?" (Job 17:15 LSB)
After the speech he has just given, the answer is obvious. His hope is nowhere. It has vanished. It is a ghost. His friends keep talking about hope, but for Job, it is an abstract concept with no address in the real world. "Where is it?" he asks. Can you point to it? Can you show it to me? It is not in my body, which is rotting. It is not in my children, who are dead. It is not in my friends, who are fools. So where is it?
The second question is just as piercing: "And who beholds my hope?" Even if hope did exist somewhere, who could see it? Who recognizes it? God seems to be hiding His face. His friends certainly cannot see it. Job himself cannot see it. A hope that is invisible to everyone, including the one who is supposed to have it, is no hope at all. It is a phantom, a rumor. Job is challenging the very existence of hope in a world governed by suffering and death. From a purely empirical standpoint, his argument is airtight. If what you see is all you get, then hope is a cruel joke.
The Burial of Hope (v. 16)
Job concludes this section by officiating the funeral of his own hope.
"Will it go down with me to Sheol? Shall we together go down into the dust?" (Job 17:16 LSB)
His hope, that abstract thing his friends keep talking about, is personified. And its destiny is the same as his. It is going to die and be buried with him. It will descend to the "bars of Sheol," the gates of the grave from which there is no escape. Hope is not something that will deliver him from the dust; it is something that will lie down in the dust right alongside him.
"Shall we together go down into the dust?" This is the final, desolate statement. Job and his hope are companions in death. They are fellow corpses. The story is over. The book is closed. There is no happy ending. There is only the silence of the grave.
The Resurrection in the Pit
Now, if we stop there, we are left with nothing but black despair. But this is not the end of Job's story, and it is certainly not the end of God's story. This utter demolition of earthly hope is a necessary ground-clearing. God is allowing Job to take his despair to its absolute logical conclusion so that a different kind of hope can be born.
This is the key. True Christian hope is not optimism. It is not a sunnier outlook on our circumstances. Christian hope is resurrection hope, which means it is a hope that is born on the other side of death. It is a hope that requires a death. Job's earthly hopes had to die. He had to make his bed in the darkness and call the worm his sister. He had to see his hope buried in the dust right next to him.
And it is from that very place, just two chapters later, that the most glorious confession of faith in the Old Testament erupts. "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:25-26). Where did that come from? It did not come from a change in his circumstances. He was still on the ash heap. It came by revelation. It was a hope that did not bubble up from below but was shot down from above.
Job had to go to the grave in his heart and mind before he could see the hope that conquers the grave. This is the pattern for every believer. We must come to the end of our own resources. Our own righteousness must be seen as filthy rags. Our own strength must fail. Our own hopes must be exposed as fleeting vapors. We must, in a manner of speaking, consent to our own death. As Paul says, we are crucified with Christ. We are buried with Him in baptism (Romans 6:4).
And it is only there, in that grave, that we meet the one who knows the way out. Jesus Christ made His bed in the darkness. He called the pit His home for three days. He went down into Sheol. But the bars of Sheol could not hold Him. He did not go down into the dust to stay there. He went to conquer it. And because He rose, Job's hope was not a phantom. Because He rose, our hope is not buried with our bodies. Our hope is a living hope, because our Redeemer lives. Job's despair was real, but it was not final. It was the dark soil out of which the oak tree of resurrection faith would grow. And so it is with us. When we find ourselves making our bed in the darkness, we must remember that the dawn is coming, for our Redeemer lives, and He has the keys to death and Sheol.