Job 23King James Version
Job's famous lament about not being able to find God. 'Oh that I knew where I might find him.' I go forward, he is not there; backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left, where he doth work; on the right hand, where he doth hide himself. 'But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.'
Job responds to Eliphaz. He is not interested in the accusations. He wants to find God: if he could locate the divine court, he would lay out his case and would be acquitted. But he cannot find God anywhere. He looks east and west, north and south. God has disappeared. Yet Job holds to his integrity: his foot has held to God's steps, he has esteemed God's words above food. He is terrified, but not broken.
Job is not losing his faith; he is searching for God's presence in the middle of God's silence, and the searching is itself the faith.
10: "But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Job's confidence in his own integrity is unshaken. He cannot find God, but he believes God can see him and that the trial has a purpose.
The ancient world east and west of Palestine included territories Job names: Kedem (east), north, south, and west. Job is searching the known world for the divine court. This is not metaphor to him; the divine council was a real concept in ancient Near Eastern cosmology. God had a place, a court, a throne. Job wants to go there.
Job speaks. Eliphaz's accusations are not engaged directly; Job moves past them to his real preoccupation: the absence of God. God is present as the one who is hidden, who is being searched for.
The gold refining metaphor is one of the most remembered images from Job. It appears after Eliphaz's worst accusations and before the book's darkest social chapter. Job holds this image against the darkness: the trial is the refiner's fire, not the verdict.
For when God has gone quiet in the worst season of your life and you are searching every direction for a signal. Job does not conclude God is absent. He concludes God is hidden. Those are not the same.
1Then Job answered and said,
2Even to day is my complaint bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.
3Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!
4I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.
5I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me.
6Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me.
7There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge.
8Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him:
9On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him:
10But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
11My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.
12Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.
13But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth.
14For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him.
15Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider, I am afraid of him.
16For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me:
17Because I was not cut off before the darkness, neither hath he covered the darkness from my face.