God has given everyone free will, that each may choose to serve Him or to turn away. Yet, this freedom is not without trials. Trials are not accidents but are designed by God as testing grounds of our faith. As Rashi comments on Job 4:2:
“Because He tested you with one thing, should you weary? With one rest that the Holy One, blessed be He, tested you, you have become weary. From now on, who will be able to withhold his words from answering you?”
Suffering, then, is not meaningless—it is a revelation of endurance and trust. True faith does not collapse at the first sign of affliction but learns to endure.
The Midrash (Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 22) observes that trials are not punishments, but opportunities:
“The Holy One, blessed be He, tests the righteous not because He does not know what is in their hearts, but in order to make them an example for the world.”
This is precisely what happens in Job. His trials reveal to all generations that faith grounded in reverence for God does not depend on prosperity or ease.
In seasons of darkness, the teacher becomes the student. Even the righteous, who seem firm and unshakable, are not exempt from hardship. Yet, paradoxically, suffering becomes their teacher. Hardship drives the faithful to prayer, humbles them before God, and refines their character. John Calvin, in his sermon The Fourteenth Sermon which is the first upon the Fourth Chapter of Job, emphasized this very point:
“Here upon we pray unto God and make our moan unto him: and yet never the less, if it please him punish us, we are ready to receive his stripes with meekness: Low how we ought to deal.”
(Arthur Golding, 1574; Lucus Harris ed.)
Calvin reminds us that the faithful do not pray merely to escape suffering. They pray to remain steadfast under it. To receive affliction with meekness is not weakness but a testimony that faith rests upon God’s wisdom, not man’s strength.
The sages also reflected on this tension. The Talmud (Berakhot 5a) teaches:
“If a person sees suffering come upon him, he should examine his deeds… If he examined them and found no sin, he should attribute it to neglect of Torah study. And if he did, and found none of this, he should know that these are sufferings of love.”
This rabbinic teaching shows that suffering is sometimes corrective, sometimes educational, and sometimes an expression of God’s mysterious love—a means to draw one closer.
When God tests us, discouragement often comes quickly. It is always easier to prescribe comfort to others than to practice it ourselves. Haydock’s Catholic Bible Commentary (1859) on Job 4:5 captures this human tendency:
“We may easily prescribe for others, but when we are sick, we know not what to do.”
How true this is! Words flow easily when pain is far from us, but when sorrow grips our own hearts, our tongue falters. And yet, this is where the integrity of faith shines brightest. Integrity means standing firm in the hope of God when every earthly prop has been removed. The “artisans of iniquity,” as the commentary notes, will fall, but those who cling to the Lord will endure.
The Jewish exegete Ibn Ezra saw in Job’s trials a profound lesson: man cannot measure divine justice by human standards. He wrote that Job’s suffering was not meaningless but a divine mystery—“for the ways of God are hidden, and man’s wisdom cannot encompass them.” Similarly, the Ramban (Nachmanides) stressed that trials are for the perfection of the soul, not merely the punishment of the flesh.
God, in His mercy, grants flashes of His Light to reveal our sinfulness and weakness. These glimpses are humbling, for they remind us that man is not greater than God, nor are angels His equals. Human wisdom and strength collapse when compared to His majesty. If we are to teach, preach, or minister, it must be by His Spirit alone. Charles Haddon Spurgeon expressed this with piercing clarity in his sermon “So it is” (November 30, 1890):
“His own utterances concerning Christ crucified had been to him the power of God unto salvation. O beloved, no man has any right to teach in the Sunday-school, or preach, or pretend in any other way to be sent of God, unless he has been so taught of the Holy Spirit that he has an intimate acquaintance with the gospel.”
The rabbis, too, stressed this dependence on divine wisdom. The Malbim, commenting on Job, wrote that human knowledge is always partial, while divine wisdom embraces the whole: “Man sees one link of the chain, but God holds the entire chain of creation in His hand.”
Spurgeon’s words and the rabbis’ insight bring us back to the essence of faith: to fear God is to know Him truly. Fear here is not terror, but reverence—the recognition that He alone is holy, sovereign, and worthy of trust. Faith, therefore, is inseparable from this reverence. One cannot claim to trust God while dismissing His majesty.
Application
The story of Job, and the reflections of both Jewish and Christian teachers through the centuries, remind us that suffering tests the authenticity of our faith. When affliction comes, the shallow heart despairs, but the faithful learn to bow in humility, saying, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15). Our fear of God—the reverent awe that recognizes His sovereignty—anchors our faith.
The rabbis taught that suffering, when received with humility, refines the soul and elevates the righteous as examples to the world. The Church fathers and Reformers preached the same: endurance under trial is not wasted, but the very soil in which faith takes root and grows deep.
So, let us not shrink from trials, but receive them as opportunities to deepen our dependence on God. When comfort seems far, may we remember that the Lord Himself is our comfort. When our wisdom fails, may His Spirit instruct us. And when suffering tempts us to abandon hope, may we look to Christ crucified—and, in Jewish teaching, to the God who disciplines His beloved—as the ultimate proof that divine love is present even in the darkest night.
Faith and fear of God are not separate paths—they are one. For to fear God rightly is to trust Him fully.
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