The reason why a good Creator allows suffering has been answered... thousands of years before Christ.
There is a detail in the book of Job that’s easy to miss, it only shows up if you're paying close attention to who God is talking to.
For two entire chapters—Job 38 and 39—God interrogates Job directly. Every question is aimed straight at him, second person, no wiggle room:
"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" "Have you entered the springs of the sea?" "Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?"
Eighty-some verses of this. God, Job, face to face, so to speak, God speaking in a terrifying whirlwind.
Then, in Job 40:2, right at the end of God’s monologue, something changes. God says:
"Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who argues with God answer it."
Not "shall you contend." Not "let you answer." It's suddenly a third person address—impersonal, general, aimed at "the one who contends," not at Job by name. Job’s speeches have been protest and complaint, not accusation in the legal sense (in chapter 31 Job comes closest to accusing God—and God doesn't answer his formal charge because to do so would collapse the test Job is undergoing on God's behalf.)
After eighty verses of unbroken second-person, personal address—God addressing Job—He switches to third person; that's not an accident. A shift in grammatical person is a signal, and signals are meant to be read and understood. This shift does not erase the primary address to Job—in context God is still speaking directly to him. But, the third-person language opens the door to a broader audience, as if God raised his voice to include those in earshot. It functions as both a pointed warning to Job and a verdict aimed at another party in the cosmic drama.
"Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who argues with God answer it." — Job 40:2
Why This Matters
Most readings of Job 40:2 just smooth the shift over. They assume God is still talking only to Job, just using slightly more formal language—a stern teacher scolding a student who got a little mouthy, but in the third person, "one should behave better." And Job does respond right afterward by covering his mouth and falling silent (40:3–5), so on the surface that reading seems to fit.
But look at what the sentence is actually about. The Hebrew word behind "contend" is riv—it’s a legal term. It doesn't just mean "argue." It means to bring a formal case, a lawsuit, an accusation, in a courtroom sense. That word is carrying a lot more weight than is warranted if it's addressed only to Job because it happens to be the exact job description of a character who's been offstage since chapter 2: the satan.
Most English translations have helped to manufacture a false familiarity by turning ha-satan into ‘Satan’ in Job 1–2. The Hebrew does not give us a proper name there; it gives us a title, a role, an office in the heavenly court.
In Job’s Hebrew, "satan" isn't a personal name—it's a title, with the definite article: ha-satan, "the accuser.” It appears in Zechariah 3 in the same form. Not until much later did the term become synonymous with the proper name of the accuser or the adversary.
He shows up in the heavenly court in chapters 1 and 2 of Job, and his entire role there is to bring a riv, not against Job—nowhere does he contradict God’s assertion that Job is a blameless man. His accusation is leveled at God, that Job’s righteous behavior has been purchased by God's blessings and have never been tested by God. He suggests a test, and God allows the test—as He does with all of us to some extent—and so Job suffers. Job never curses God, and so the accuser's case fails.
And then the satan disappears from the text. He's never mentioned again. Job never learns why he suffered. The friends never learn either. It's one of the most famous "loose threads" in the whole Bible.
But it isn't loose at all, it gets picked back up right here, in the third person address of Job 40:2.
Not until much later did the term become synonymous with the proper name of the accuser or the adversary.
Who's Actually Being Addressed
If Job 40:2 is generic—"the one who contends," not "you, Job, who contended"—then it isn't necessarily Job to whom it is being directed, at least not alone. It fits someone else in the story far better: the one whose entire role was to file a riv against God over an untested righteousness in Job. Job has been afflicted, confused, even presumptuous in his complaints—but he has never once been the accuser in God's court of law. That title belongs to only one figure in the whole book.
But while the accuser remains offstage, he is represented on earth by three proxies. Three of Job’s four friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—spend the body of the book insisting that Job must have sinned, because suffering is God's punishment for sinners. On the surface this looks like a defense of God. It isn't.
Their retributive theology reduces God to a trading partner. Do ut des—Latin for, "I give so that you may give." It was the foundational principle of Roman and much ancient Near Eastern religion: sacrifice, worship, and obedience offered to the deity in explicit expectation of return blessing. A cosmic commercial transaction.
Put in righteousness, get out blessing; put in sin, get out suffering. In doing so they don't vindicate God's character, they mock it. They agree with the satan's premise: that Job's relationship with God is purely transactional, that loyalty is purchased rather than real. When God says to them in 42:7, "you have not spoken of me what is right," he is not correcting a minor theological error. He is ruling against their picture of him—the same picture the accuser painted in chapters 1 and 2. It is a condemnation.
Picture the scene of 40:2 this way: God is standing in front of Job, but for one sentence his voice lifts to address the whole room—the assembly, the watchers who are looking on. Among them is the satan who started this. God is still looking at Job, and the words land on him with humbling force ("you're awfully close, Job"), but they are not only for him. To the accuser, and to every voice in the drama that took his side, they are devastating.
There is a mirror image in Genesis 3. The serpent strikes at God indirectly by subverting His image-bearers; in Job 40:2, God vindicates His governance through an image-bearer, delivering a backhanded blow to the accuser while Job stands as the living proof. Both are transmitted through a human conduit.
There are other examples of a shift to third person in ancient courtroom and treaty settings. Hittite instruction texts (e.g., CTH 264 for temple officials and CTH 265 for palace personnel) move from direct commands to third-person statements of penalties. Assyrian vassal treaties, such as those of Esarhaddon (VTE §57), use similar shifts so the gods and witnesses hear the public sentence.
Hittite instruction texts move from “you shall not…” to “the one who does this shall die”—turning a private rebuke into a public verdict recorded by the whole assembly (Instructions for Temple Officials, CTH 264, §24–25, 56, 64–106; Instructions for Palace Personnel, CTH 265.)
Assyrian vassal treaties do the same: the king addresses the vassal as “you,” then lifts his voice—“he who breaks this treaty, may Ashur…”—so the gods and witnesses hear the sentence (Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon (VTE) §57, lines 494–512.)
The Code of Hammurabi's epilogue is another example. Hammurabi spends the prologue and laws speaking as "I"—decreeing, judging, establishing. But when he pronounces the penalty for any future ruler who defaces his monument, the address widens: "as for that man, be he king or lord, or priest-king or commoner, whoever he may be, may the great god... take from him the glory of his sovereignty" (Code of Hammurabi, epilogue; Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor). No one is named. The verdict is built to reach whoever eventually fits the description, present at the reading or not.
Deuteronomy does the same thing with its own covenant. Moses addresses Israel in direct second person—"you"—for the overwhelming bulk of the book. Then at Gerizim and Ebal, the address shifts: "Cursed is anyone who makes a carved image..." "Cursed is anyone who dishonors his father or mother..."—twelve times, third person, with the whole assembly answering "Amen" (Deuteronomy 27:15–26). The lawgiver who has been speaking to "you" for twenty-six chapters suddenly speaks of "the one who," precisely at the moment the verdict needs to bind anyone who qualifies, not only the people standing there.
We see the same logic in Daniel. Darius’ decree is drafted in the third person—“anyone who petitions any god or man… shall be cast into the den of lions” (Daniel 6:7–8)—and that irrevocable law ultimately falls on the satraps who engineered it (Daniel 6:24). Nebuchadnezzar, too, pronounces a universal sentence: “all the wise men of Babylon shall be destroyed” if the dream isn’t produced (Daniel 2:5, 12) broadening his sentence to include those beyond the courtroom conflict.
In each case the authority—king, ruler, or judge—uses third person to universalize the ruling, to make it a verdict for the assembly or beyond, not just the defendant. Job 40:2 follows that pattern precisely. God isn’t merely chiding Job, He’s entering a verdict for the whole council to hear: “the one who contends with the Almighty.” The grammar stops being private and becomes public record. Job gets singed by it, but the fire was built for the accuser.
For one sentence God's voice lifts to address the whole room—the assembly, the watchers who are looking on. Among them is the satan who started this.
The Resolution Hidden in Plain Sight
There is a second suit running alongside the satan's, and it's Job's own. In chapter 31, Job does something none of his previous complaints have: he swears a formal oath of innocence, catalogues the sins he has not committed, and ends with a challenge—"let the Almighty answer me, let my accuser write out his indictment" (31:35). It's the closest thing in the book to Job filing a case. His target isn't to prove his innocence; Scripture has already stipulated his innocence twice over (1:1, 1:8). His target is God's governance. Why would a just God do this to a man he already knows is blameless?
And God never answers that question. Not in chapter 38, not in chapter 40, not anywhere. And it's worth asking why, because on the surface it looks like evasion from a God I've just spent this article insisting is ethically unimpeachable.
The whole evidentiary weight of Job's suffering depends on him holding to God without having the reason in hand. If God told him prematurely about the wager in chapter 1, then everything after would have become worthless as evidence—he'd be holding on with the answer already in his pocket and not out of simple devotion and trust. The test would have been no test at all. So God's silence toward Job 31's charge isn't a failure to respond to a legitimate suit. It's required by the same ethic that permitted the suffering in the first place. He doesn't dodge Job's case. He can't answer it without dissolving it.
And yet Job's case does get answered—just not the way he wanted. Not by explanation, but by outcome. When God tells the three friends their only access to him runs through Job's prayer, that isn't a consolation prize. It's the verdict. Job wanted a rationale; what he receives is a role no rationale could have given him—intercessor for the men who condemned him, priestly proxy for God's own defense in 42:7. That is the answer to "why would you do this to an innocent man," rendered the only way it safely could be: not told to him, but made of him. God answers all injustice by calling someone to participate in Kingdom suffering and so "partake in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4.)
Which means both suits against God's governance in this book—the satan's in the council and Job's on the ash heap—get resolved by the same ethical mechanism. Neither is settled by disclosure, both are settled by what actually happens, by a living sacrifice. The satan's case fails because Job holds, Job's case is answered because Job becomes something disclosure could never have made him. God doesn't run two different courtrooms here. He runs one, and demonstration is the only currency it accepts. But it offers an astonishing exchange rate: righteousness for faith!
I've heard it said that Job never learned why he suffered—that the divine speeches skip over the council scene entirely, that they never tell Job about the wager, and leave the whole thing as one of the Bible's most famous loose threads. But two things seem to me to abolish that reading.
The first is the ending of the book. After the speeches, God tells the three friends to go to Job and have him pray for them, because it is only Job's prayer that will be accepted. The men who spent the book condemning Job—and God, by extension— from a position of supposed theological superiority are now told to throw themselves on the mercy of the man they accused. Their only access to God runs through him. Job has become a fulcrum in the story—a conduit between God and the friends, just as he is a conduit between God and the accuser..
They cannot pray an acceptable prayer themselves—not because God is petty, but because Job is the one who suffered further torment at their words, and only his intercession carries the weight of that particular wound. It is the logic of "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)—a mediator whose qualification is the suffering he endured at the hands of the ones he intercedes for. Job receives a role as the explanation of his suffering. And that role—the righteous sufferer becomes the intercessor for his human accusers—is a most satisfying answer. It places him closer to Isaiah 53 than most of us realise.
The second thing is rather simple: Job 1 and 2 exist. Someone knew about the council in chapters 1 and 2. Someone knew what the accuser said, what God permitted, what was at stake. That knowledge ended up in the text. The most economical answer is that Job himself was told—either in the extended restoration conversation we only have a summary of, or through later revelation (whatever he learns afterward is a separate question from why he wasn't told during.) The alternative, that God restored Job completely without ever explaining what had happened, is possible but pastorally strange. There are examples of humans witnessing God's Council, Zechariah, 3, Isaiah 6, Paul caught up to the third heaven, to name a few.
So the more precise statement isn't that Job never learned why he suffered. It's that he didn't know during the suffering. And that hiddenness is not a flaw in the story—it is the story. Faith that requires the answer before it takes hold is not faith. Job held without the answer, that is the evidence the court needed.
So the more precise statement isn't that Job never learned why he suffered. It's that he didn't know during the suffering.
The Takeaway
Job gets singed by the heat of God's rebuke in 40:2, like a firebrand pulled from the fire (Zechariah 3). He is humbled, silenced, put in his place for daring to demand an explanation of God. But the fire itself isn't really aimed at him. It's aimed past him, at the accuser who set the whole story in motion and then vanished from the page, proved wrong when God was judged.
The grammar tells you where to look. And in the larger story, it quietly answers the critiques of suffering we hear today—from voices like Fry, Attenborough, Dawkins, and others. The question of why a good God allows suffering was answered in Job, thousands of years before Epicurus was first supposed to ask it. God has many accusers. The court is still in session, and we are the evidence being presented. Don't give in to the temptation to blame God, even when His voice comes in a whirlwind that surrounds you. In other words—have faith. The one who contends with the Almighty will be answered, but not in the way the accuser hopes.
The question of why a good God allows suffering was answered in Job, thousands of years before Epicurus was first supposed to ask it.
And in the end, God will be justified in His words, and prevail when He is judged!
Further reading
1. The Divine Restriction of the Sons of God
2. Fairness is Blind, Justice is Not
3. The Five Rebellions Jesus Quelled
© Alan R. Jones
It’s not for me, He is the primary beneficiary of His mercy. For freedom Christ has set us free… so that we can choose to witness for His goodness.