Job 19:7

JOB'S ACCOUNT OF WHAT GOD HAS DONE TO HIM

"Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard:

I cry for help, but there is no justice.

He hath walled up my way that I cannot pass,

And hath set darkness in my paths.

He hath stripped me of my glory,

And taken the crown from my head.

He hath broken me down on every side, and I am gone;

And my hope hath he plucked up like a tree.

He hath also kindled his wrath against me,

And he accounteth me unto him as one of his adversaries.

His troops come on together,

And cast up their way against me,

And encamp round about my tent."

Many do not understand the tenor of these words. They do not mean that Job considers God unjust, unmerciful, or unfair in any way. His attitude here is exactly that of the grieving and bereaved parent whose only son was run over and killed by a drunken driver; and, at the funeral, he cried, "The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." He did not mean that God had unjustly killed his son; but that the disaster had come under the umbrella of God's permissive will. It is the ancient view that nothing can occur, or happen, except that which God's permissive will allows. This is profoundly true; and Job was exactly right in ascribing the disasters that came upon him as being indeed what God (in that permissive sense) had willed, or allowed. Satan was the perpetrator of all that injustice to Job, but he could not have lifted a finger against him without God's permission.

To the prior question of whether or not it is morally right for God to allow such evil, the answer is clear enough. When God allowed mankind the freedom of the will, and the inalienable right to choose good or evil, that Divinely conferred endowment made it absolutely certain that wickedness would prevail upon the earth. It could not possibly have been otherwise.