Job 3

Sacred and Powerful are Our Lamentations 

“Cry, baby, cry. Cry out to God for [They] will hear you.” These are the words that were offered to me by a co-worker the morning after I came out. Distraught and confused, wishing that I could cease to be, my then high school self felt worn down by all that had befallen me in the previous twelve hours. How could this be? Why does it have to be this way? What could I do to make this all better? These were the questions that played on repeat in my mind as I sought to make sense of how my parents responded to what I had mistakenly assumed was an obvious truth: my queerness.  

Leading up to the third chapter, we find Job having just been witnessed to by his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Shocked and dismayed by his plight, they took on the traditional practices of their time in displaying public grief by rendering their clothes and covering themselves in ash. Like a vigil for an already dead Beloved laid bare by the cruel, unjust plight of the world. The assembled community sat with Job for seven days and nights, holding a wake of sorts to the life that was and could have been. All in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, some semblance of meaning could be squeezed from the treacherous circumstances that their friend had found himself in. We are left to wonder: where is God and what is Job to do next?  

He brazenly laments. He laments to such an extent that he curses the very day that he first took breath. “Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, a man-child is born (NRSV, Job 3:3).” This begins the first of three poetic cycles that display Job and his friends’ spiritual attempts at making sense of all that has occurred up to this point – the boils, the destruction of house and home, the loss of identity, the damage to self, the dashing of dreams and expectations. Job proceeds for the next six verses to curse not only the day he was born but the very moment of his conception and the earthly and heavenly things that compose existence (3-9).  

In this way, Job’s speech begins with a cry for the destruction of creation which he is a part of. His damnation of the day and his plea that God “not seek it,” calls to mind the inverse of the first creation story in Genesis. And is in a way, most surprisingly for the man known for having great patience, a curse of undoing. The identification of the light represents not only life but also speaks to joy and happiness. But with those things now gone, his circumstances are quite the opposite. Undoubtedly to some, this is a blasphemous example of creation’s attempt to undo what the Creator has done. This is made all the clearer in Job’s declaration, “Let those curse it who curse the Sea, those who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan (8).” This reference to the sea and the primordial monster of the ancient Near East symbolizes destruction, and how Job wishes he could call forth the chaos to consume him in hopes that it might alleviate his plight.  

Having cursed the day of his birth and wishing that creation might undo itself, Job turns his attention to the question of his, and our, mortal coil. Alluding to God’s motions of creation once more, Job speaks of the earth and its partnership with death (11-19). “Now I would be laying down and quiet; I would be asleep; then I would be at rest… (13).” He names contrasting societal placements such as politicians and infants, the wicked and weary, prisoners and taskmasters, and the small and great alike. In conjunction with death, the earth serves as a neutral, quiet place of refuge from the struggles of life and living. It is here that the powerful and powerless, the just and unjust all find their final place. Death, in truth, is the great equalizer and will come for us all. Yet in Job’s circumstance, death and the sweet ease that it brings is neither in reach nor in sight.  

Herein lies the rub for Job. “Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,” he asks his companion, “but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasure (20-21) …” His question brings into sharp focus what we all have wondered in our own lives: why must we suffer and continue to bear it? It is neither an easy nor comfortable question. And feeble cultural and spiritual attempts have been made to answer these questions. More often than not the answers are unsatisfying. Ken Stone offers that given Job’s actions and pronouncements up to this point; the text may be trying to work against easy and convenient responses to grief and suffering at the time. Stone writes, “Thus, in a reversal of the common ancient Near Eastern view of creation as an establishing of order against forces of chaos, Job’s language allows us to glimpse the chaotic disorientation which radical suffering introduces into the presumed orderliness of human existence” (290). In short, there are no answers that easily place neat bows on the complex parcels of our individual and collective pains. In truth, our lamentations are an expression of our grief, while acknowledging the sharp throngs of life which cause destruction. Proclaiming our pain can serve as a pathway to becoming. Like righteous anger and holy rage, our cries for succor and liberation remind the death-dealing forces of the world that our existence is not defined by pain and their limited views of our beingness. Instead, it calls to mind that it is our birthright to know joy, ease, and pleasure – all of which are indicators of our fleshiness. 

And it is in this knowing; it is in our re-membering, that we might find our power following the decentering presence of sorrow. Stone, citing the work of Ellen van Wolde, points to the language of Job’s wife (2:9) as a possible motivator for Job reorienting his approach to grief. Given that they have both just lost their children and livelihoods, her words can be seen as propelling him to take ownership of his pain and its implication on his spiritual life as he laments to his friends (289). Job’s fullest, boldest, and most direct pronouncement thus far comes at the very end of the third chapter. “I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes (26).” Appearing no longer interested in showing face or keeping up with the neat confines of respectability, he lets it all go. Like waves crashing upon a shore or the stuttering breath before a breakdown, Job says before creation and Creator alike: This is me. This is my pain. This is my brokenness. This is my story. 

As grief and sorrow, shame and objectification by various powers look to make us silent. Job’s lamentation throughout chapter three reminds us that our lamentations are sacred and powerful. There are no easy answers as to why we must suffer. There are no easy answers as to why suffering exists at all. Yet still, as a community, we must look to offer one another healing balms and salves. The entire text of Job puts this simple fact on full display. “The Bible as a whole,” says John Buehrens, “seems interested not in God as absolute, but as relational; not static, but as dynamic; not as impassive, but as affected by what we humans do well or ill or leave undone” (105). It is in the relationship of things, human to human, Creator to created, that some semblance of life might be possible following despair. Especially in times of chaos and turmoil. The balm of caring for one another, and ourselves, must be engaged over the long haul. Otherwise, it is just haughty piety which is both unjust and unfaithful. 

Check Out Queering Job Writer Interview with Rev. Byron Tyler Coles here.

Buehrens, John A. Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals. Beacon Press, 2003. 

Clines, David. “Job.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, New Revised Standard Version. Edited by Michael D. Coogan et al., 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 726 – 770. 

Stone, Ken. “Job.” The Queer Bible Commentary, edited by Deryn Guest et al., SCM Press, London, 2006, pp. 286–303. 

Rev. Byron Tyler Coles (they/he) is native of Roanoke, VA, and the only child of Monica and Terry. Inspired by the good news of Unitarian Universalism, Tyler believes the best of our collective ministry strives towards conjuring the Beloved Kin-dom on earth as it is in heaven. They engage this mandate through multi-racial organizing and movement chaplaincy. Rev. Coles currently serves as member of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Congregational Life Staff Team in the Southern Region where they support faithful leadership across the American South, Caribbean, and northern Mexico.