Spit On

Job 30:1 "But now they mock at me, men younger than I, Whose fathers I disdained to put with the dogs of my flock. 2 Indeed, what profit is the strength of their hands to me? Their vigor has perished. 3 They are gaunt from want and famine, Fleeing late to the wilderness, desolate and waste, 4 Who pluck mallow by the bushes, And broom tree roots for their food. 5 They were driven out from among men, They shouted at them as at a thief. 6 They had to live in the clefts of the valleys, In caves of the earth and the rocks. 7 Among the bushes they brayed, Under the nettles they nestled. 8 They were sons of fools, Yes, sons of vile men; They were scourged from the land. 9 "And now I am their taunting song; Yes, I am their byword. 10 They abhor me, they keep far from me; They do not hesitate to spit in my face. 11 Because He has loosed my bowstring and afflicted me, They have cast off restraint before me. 12 At my right hand the rabble arises; They push away my feet, And they raise against me their ways of destruction.

“That’s life…that’s what they say…ridin’ high in April, shot down in May…”

Job here reveals the worst of the worst of human experiences, and that is the loss of any respect by anyone he knows. Of all he has suffered, this sense of loss must surely be the greatest of all, in the worldly sense. Left alone in his suffering, left alone in his pain, counseled as if he were a sinner, (even though he is not,) and now disrespected to the point of ridicule and the greatest demonstrations of shame imaginable.

Spit on. Tripped and laughed at as he falls. An object of derision. A hissing. One who had been beloved by all, now treated as if he were disgusting and detestable to all.

This description found in Job 30 comes the closest in the Bible, (I think,) to the suffering and shame Jesus endured in the hours before He was nailed to the cross.

Like Job, Jesus had been the greatest ‘man’ of His time, speaking before massive crowds, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and finally riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey’s colt being proclaimed by a mass crowd as the “King of the Jews!” That was Sunday. By Thursday Jesus had been arrested, stripped, whipped, beaten, and stood with a bag over His head in the center of a circle of soldiers who were bashing His head with as if with a baseball bat - all the while mocking Him and challenging Him to prophesy about where the next blow would come from. They robed Him in purple, put a crown of thorns upon His head, and they spit in His face. Once surrounded by large crowds, (and His disciples,) Jesus was now completely alone. Not even His friends or His family could or would be with Him now.

Job’s story now has a very familiar ring to it, doesn’t it?

- Pastor Bill