Verse Text: 20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
I recently wrote a little book on worship, “The Unquenchable Worshipper”. The title chapter looks at a kind of worship that endures through every situation. A praise that overcomes the storms of life, and cries out with the prophet Habakkuk, “Though life is tough right now, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:17,18) For me, “Blessed be Your name” is the song to accompany the book – it’s a song inspired by those in scripture who overcame ‘trials’ with ‘trust’, and confronted ‘pain’ with ‘praise’.There’s no greater example of this in scripture, than in the book of Job. Here’s a man who faced life’s harshest afflictions, yet attempted to preserve a heart of worship. In Job 1:20-22, after the first wave of suffering, we read: “Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground and worshipped. And said, ‘Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this Job sinned not, not charged God foolishly.” Wow! What an incredible statement! Here we have an incredibly prospered man – known as ‘the greatest man among all the people of the east’. One moment he has 7 sons, 3 daughters, 7 thousand sheep, 3 thousand camels, 500 oxen, 500 donkeys, and a large number of servants. Then, in the space of a couple of minutes, he finds out he has lost all of them. His offspring are dead, and all his livestock and servants gone too. What would I do in that situation? I think of days when my heart of worship has been tainted by something as insignificant as a scratch on my car, or a broken fixture in the house. When many, like Job’s wife would follow the path of bitterness, saying, “Curse God and die!” Job heads out in the opposite direction, down the pathway of praise.
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First of all he tears his robes and shaves His head. Note the significance of this. He is not living in unreality, hoping to escape the pain of this situation by simply ignoring it. As Elmer B. Smick tells us in the NIV Bible Commentary (Hodder & Stoughton):“Tearing one’s outer garments and cropping one’s hair were common gestures of violent grief in the biblical world. So Job is very much in touch with reality here – he is experiencing the most intense sense of weeping and mourning. In the light of this, his next action is even more powerful: Job falls to the ground and worships. Confronting head on the disaster which has disorientated his every emotion, he returns to true north – the worship of His God: In this moment we witness an incredible sacrifice of praise: “the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” I hope the song Beth and I wrote, “Blessed be Your name”, carries with it something of the same essence of worship we see here. In the last section of the song we mirror Job’s cries, saying “You give and take away, You give and take away; my heart will choose to say, ‘Lord, blessed be Your name.” If I’m honest I found it a pretty daunting lyric to write – Job’s words are an incredibly intense statement – in other words, you have to mean them to sing them. Whether you’re looking back over troubles in your past, or looking to trust the future to God, this isn’t the sort of phrase you can sing lightly. It is a costly offering; yet worship always often involves a cost.
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