Job 3 begins the lengthy dialogue that will occupy most of the book of Job. It is a dialogue with dark overtones—focusing on such difficult subjects as suffering and retribution—which are protracted by its poetic qualities. Grueling subjects are joined to graceful phrases, and the speakers take time to develop their points.

The end result is about 35 chapters of Job’s debate with his friends. This dialogue is not always easy to follow, and it is not the stretch of Scripture that many people instinctively turn to for their morning devotions. Many commentators seem to struggle through the debate out of a sense of duty while hurrying to the conclusion of the story.

However, it is within this dialogue that we more clearly begin to see the shadow of Christ in the figure of Job. Since all of Scripture—every word—is inspired by God and profitable for us, we can be certain that this debate between Job and his friends is an essential part of Scripture, and an essential key for understanding the role of Job and the purpose of the book. We will look at a few of the main themes that emerge in Job’s speeches that point to his typological role.

After Job’s calamity comes upon him, his three friends gather and mourn with him silently for seven days. Up to this point, Job has not said much; he has responded to his hardship with faith, and he has resolved to receive his adversity from God with patience. Thus far, Job has been nothing less than a sterling example of faith and patience; but when the dialogue begins, and Job has the first word in chapter 3, we see his emotion, his humanity, and the expression of his anguish. The Bible always shows us the human side of the heroes of the faith. Job is not a superhuman example of perfect patience frozen in time. He is flesh and blood, susceptible to passion and confusion. This becomes clear immediately in chapter 3, where Job expresses his grief by lamenting his birth.

As the book unfolds, Job paints a verbal picture of his suffering, describing it in great detail. “I will give free course to my complaint,” Job says (10:1), and he spends a great deal of words doing just that. The narrative introduction in chapters 1 and 2 left us with the image of a man who said very little, accepted his hardship from God, knew it was purposeful, and blessed the Lord despite his suffering. Then, in the dialogue, Job is full of bitter emotion, tearful prayers, confusion, and even indignation. It has long been argued by higher-critical scholars that the Job of the narrative prologue is a different figure than the Job of the dialogue, and that there must be different authors or sources behind these disparate images of Job.

There is a better way to understand this apparent incongruity, which is exemplified in the One who suffered much more than the man from Uz. Christ came to do the Father’s will (John 6:38) and knew that this meant He must suffer and die (Luke 9:22). This He readily and faithfully accepted from the hand of the Father. Yet, in His anguish, He “offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears” (Heb. 5:7), and even asked, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.…” (Matt. 26:39).

There is no conflict between faithful submission and the honest expression of human anguish; indeed, it is the difficulty of anguish that makes the submission genuine. If Job’s complaint before God ever seems to overstep the bounds of faithful submission, we must remember that he is a type, not an equal, of the suffering Savior. Job was struggling to understand the divine purpose behind his suffering; his bewilderment and grief are not hard to understand. Nevertheless, chapters 1 and 2 establish that Job received his suffering with patience and faith, and his poetic complaints and anguished cries of confusion must be understood from this perspective.

Throughout the dialogue, Job maintains his innocence in the face of his friends’ accusations of sin. “Far be it from me that I should say you are right; till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and I will not let it go; my heart shall not reproach me as long as I live” (27:5–6; see also 6:29; 9:17; 12:4). These declarations of innocence are more than just a spirited defense against his friends’ accusations, and more than a relative assessment of whether his sin deserved that much suffering. Job truly was innocent, not in absolute terms as a sinless man, but as a typological figure playing his part in a dramatized prophecy. God himself affirmed that Job’s suffering was not due to sin, saying to Satan, “You incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause” (2:3).

Job also contends that his suffering is without cause: “For He crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause” (9:17). David also suffered “without cause,” as a typological reflection of Christ (Ps. 35:19; John 15:25). Job’s story presents a case of sinless suffering, or punishment that is not rooted in personal sin. This is, of course, where Job’s friends would go wrong in their assessment—but if Job’s suffering is not caused by sin, then what is the purpose? This is what Job struggles to understand, why a blameless and upright man should suffer so grievously. “Yes, concede,” he says to his friends, “my righteousness still stands!” (6:29), and to God he says, “Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men? Why have You set me as your target, so that I am a burden to myself?” (7:20). The underlying question of all of Job’s speeches is “Why?”

Job could see the apparent injustice of a blameless man suffering divine judgment, and even seems at times to misinterpret this as ambivalence on God’s part: “Therefore I say, ‘He destroys the blameless and the wicked’” (9:22). However, the conundrum of the blameless suffering judgment points to Job’s typological role, which Job himself struggled greatly to understand. The answer to Job’s question—why?—lies in the realm of typology. This is what he and his friends could not clearly see as they grappled for an answer.

In another sense, the “why?” of a righteous sufferer does not necessarily seek an answer. Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). At one level, of course, Jesus knew why, but this was no time for theologizing. It was a moment of pure agony and separation from God. The “why?” has an answer, but at the point of deepest anguish, “why?” simply encapsulates all the pain, chaos, and abandonment that the sufferer feels in the moment. Perhaps this is how to understand Job’s “why?”

As the dialogue unfolds, we will see that he must have understood, at some level, that his suffering had a prophetic purpose. But in the moment, he could only voice the despairing interjection—“Why?” No matter how much he knew about the purpose of his suffering, the One greater than Job, and the One who suffered more greatly than Job, also asked the desperate question: “Why?” The question itself points us to the answer of the gospel, whether asked by Job from the ash heap or by Christ from the cross. An innocent man suffering the judgment of God—unfathomable in the moment—points toward God’s chosen way of salvation.