Job 15-16

“I too could speak like you, if I were in your place” (16:4).  Job’s friends, after sitting silently with him for 7 days in mourning, began to suggest that it was only the wicked who suffered.  “The wicked writhes in pain all his days” (15:20), said Eliphaz, implying that Job must have done something to deserve his misery.  But Job rejected the accusation of sin.  He didn’t know why he was suffering, but he was sure it wasn’t his own fault (16:18-22).

We want to assign blame.  However, we don’t have to have answers in order to obey God’s call to “weep with those who weep” (Rom 12).