Job 3:1-26
Like waves one after the other, seven trials have broken over Job. The Enemy (whose hatred is always stirred up by God’s love for His own) has struck the patriarch on five occasions: through his possessions (in three stages), through his children and then through his health. The sixth blow, particularly treacherous, has been delivered by his own wife, yet the man of God has remained steadfast. Now comes the last of these "seven troubles" (Job 5:19), from an altogether unexpected direction. Three friends have arranged to visit Job to show their sympathy. But what the furious assaults of Satan did not succeed in producing, the visit of these comforters now accomplishes. In this connection we should notice how difficult it is to make a helpful visit to someone who is passing through trials and how important it is to prepare for it with prayer. These men sit there, silent, gazing at the desolation of the one whom they had known and respected in his prosperous days. It is more than Job can bear for them to see him as such a spectacle of misery and so much to be pitied. The bitterness which he has held back for so long finally overflows. In heartrending words Job "cursed his day". He would rather he had not been born. He even wants to die. But in His wisdom and love, God had not permitted Satan to go as far as that.