25 “If this is not so, who can prove me false and reduce my words to nothing?”
Job now picks up the direct challenges of his friends. He confronts them with the injustice that he sees around him, the poor facing challenges seemingly alone. His struggle with what is happening in his life is the apparent lack of timetable. Job feels as if the suffering is never going to end. He recounts how people get away with so many evil things, and yet, it seems as if judgment does not come. Now he, a righteous man, is suffering what he sees as judgment for no reason, and without an end in sight. I have a feeling that he is pointing out the sins of his friends, the specific things that his friends have done. He does this in hopes that they will see that judgment does not come immediately to sin. If it did, they would indeed be under judgment. Job calls on his challengers to do a better job of challenging him. If he is going to be accused, then they are fair game as well. His friends have been throwing accusations his direction, and now he throws them back at them. But this is the kind of argument you can never win. Unless you have videotape of every moment, you can’t prove anything. As a therapist I can’t help a couple solve a past argument. I can never know what was said and how. I don’t see the body language. I can only deal with the present moment. We often can’t go into our past and reargue a fight. We will almost always end up continuing to disagree about the content of what was said and how. We can instead reach out to each other and be present for our spouse. Job feels alone and his friends are in attack mode. He feels like no one is on his side. That is the essence of Job’s struggle. He feels alone.
The Arnold Journey 