Job 2:3b

Job 2:3b And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason."

Job is a difficult book to study. It deals with topics that most Christians I’ve met don’t want to deal with, and things said in ways we don’t want them said. This particular passage is one of those verses. God is replying to Satan in the heavenly court. Its not disturbing that God is replying to Satan, its Gods own admission of destructive acts on Job’s life that he just performed, notice “you incited me against him” (emphasis mine). I don’t have an explanation about God’s responsibility in the actions against Job. But I did start to think about how we handle problems as they surface in our lives. The inclination in this part of the story is to blame Satan, or blame Job himself (as we shall see his friends do later). We push the blame, yet here is a text where God seems to be clearly stating “I did this”. Maybe the task here is not push blame somewhere else. Maybe we need to learn that sometimes God is responsible and even though we don’t know the reason things happen we can, as odd as it sounds, allow God some grace in his decisions and his direction.