These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.
Job's complaint belongs to his reply in the midst of his friends' constant accusations, both stated and implied, within the extended exchange of accusations and responses running from Job 8 through Job 27. He declares that they have reproached him again and again and are not ashamed to make themselves strange to him, with ten times marking the repeated, heaped-up character of their insults. The three friends reproach him in this way by charging him with sin and insisting his sufferings are because of sin, thereby misjudging him.
That exchange turns on the cause and purpose of human suffering, and the friends' statements were generally true in themselves but misapplied to Job's case, since his affliction did not mean he was under God's displeasure. He was passing through the fire of affliction under God's disciplining, overruling providence, so the verse belongs to the great perplexing problems of providence, sin, and suffering, and people still misjudge one another today just as the friends misjudged Job.
Job's complaint belongs to his reply in the midst of his friends' constant accusations, both stated and implied, within the extended exchange of accusations and responses running from Job 8 through Job 27. He declares that they have reproached him again and again and are not ashamed to make themselves strange to him, with ten times marking the repeated, heaped-up character of their insults. The three friends reproach him in this way by charging him with sin and insisting his sufferings are because of sin, thereby misjudging him.
That exchange turns on the cause and purpose of human suffering, and the friends' statements were generally true in themselves but misapplied to Job's case, since his affliction did not mean he was under God's displeasure. He was passing through the fire of affliction under God's disciplining, overruling providence, so the verse belongs to the great perplexing problems of providence, sin, and suffering, and people still misjudge one another today just as the friends misjudged Job.