God is not like mere men. It’s not as if you should expect Him to come around like a circuit riding judge with a seasonal schedule of visitation.
So there are people out there who get away with moving survey markers so they can encroach on someone else’s land. They seize someone else’s domestic animals for their own herds. They deprive orphans of their only means of support and create a pretext for taking some poor widow’s only possession. They won’t let beggars take up a post on any place near town, but drive them out into the wilderness. Whatever these miserable poor can scratch from the barren open lands is all they can get. Maybe they pick the rotting little grapes from a cleaned out vineyard.
Job says he can take them to show people who sleep in the rough without so much as a thin cloak against the cold night. When it rains, they get wet, unless they can hide behind a large stone when the wind blows. Fatherless children are seized from their mothers and children are taken as a pledge against their own starvation. Maybe someone hires the poor, but somehow forgets to pay them their share of the harvest. Think of it: rich crops picked by those not allowed to enjoy any part of it.
Those who suffer great injustice are weeping aloud and yet God does not judge the perpetrators with anything resembling our human sense of justice. There are always plenty of people who reject the light of truth. Day and night the just suffer injustice. Adulterous people sneak around at night. The only time they see the daylight is to stake out the next house they will sneak into when it’s dark.
Job then mocks their pious ranting about how quickly and surely justice falls on the wicked of the earth. They liken evil men to mere sea foam, easily dispatched. Does the trio actually believe poor people would refuse to work a wicked man’s harvest? They aren’t going to wait on God’s judgment to take that man away; they need to eat today. Nor should anyone expect the wicked to melt away like snow on a warm day. Justice does not grow in trees. The evil still prey on the weak and Job’s friends are just so certain God will drag them away any minute now.
Sure, God is watching; He watches all mankind. But the wicked often do not die quicker than anyone else. When death comes, it apparently does not distinguish between those good and evil. Job demands they show actual proof that he is wrong. This world is fallen and God has never promised to fix everything.
