Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day three)
“My intimate friends have forgotten me.”
Bereft of his children, separated physically and emotionally from his wife, deserted by friends, no longer possessing social standing, and unable to find God, Job, from all he can see, has achieved non-person status. It’s worse than death because intimacy with others is out of reach. He can’t contact anyone and seemingly no one can contact him. He’s like the astronomers sending messages into the void of space not knowing whether any form of sentient life will ever receive – or answer – those messages. He is, in his experience, alone in the universe. Isolation is deadly to a human being. His cry to others and particularly to God – “Why have you forsaken me?” – is the very cry that will one day cross the lips of the Savior Job longs to find.
