I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent.
Job was afraid that because his sorrows continued, God would not hold him innocent. He could not understand why he suffered when he knew his own integrity. His words belong to the book's wider debate over the cause and purpose of human suffering. That debate takes up the age-old perplexing problems of an overruling providence, and of sin and suffering.
In that setting God was disciplining Job and bringing him through the fire of affliction. His three friends spoke general truths about evil and reward, but they wrongly applied them to him. They were determined to charge him with sin and to declare that his sufferings came because of that sin, insisting his afflictions proved he had sinned and stood under God's displeasure. Suffering is no such proof, and Job's afflictions were not proof that he had sinned.
Humanity in the present day is still prone to misjudge its fellows in the same way. Job himself did not accuse God foolishly. His trial becomes a lesson and a comfort to other sufferers.
Job was afraid that because his sorrows continued, God would not hold him innocent. He could not understand why he suffered when he knew his own integrity. His words belong to the book's wider debate over the cause and purpose of human suffering. That debate takes up the age-old perplexing problems of an overruling providence, and of sin and suffering.
In that setting God was disciplining Job and bringing him through the fire of affliction. His three friends spoke general truths about evil and reward, but they wrongly applied them to him. They were determined to charge him with sin and to declare that his sufferings came because of that sin, insisting his afflictions proved he had sinned and stood under God's displeasure. Suffering is no such proof, and Job's afflictions were not proof that he had sinned.
Humanity in the present day is still prone to misjudge its fellows in the same way. Job himself did not accuse God foolishly. His trial becomes a lesson and a comfort to other sufferers.