36. Pharaoh and Job: Two Souls Beneath the Rod

"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord." — Job 1:21

There are times when God permits suffering to overtake a man who has wandered, so that pain may awaken him to repentance. There are other times when He permits suffering to overtake a just man, so that fidelity may be purified, proved, and made visible.

To human sight the two conditions can look almost identical. A house is emptied. Health fails. Plans collapse. Those who were trusted depart. One affliction follows another until the soul seems surrounded on every side.

Yet the outward blow does not disclose the whole purpose of Providence. Scripture places before us two men beneath terrible affliction: Pharaoh and Job. Both are stripped. Both are confronted with the sovereignty of God. But one resists a command already known, while the other is tried precisely in the justice Scripture has already praised.

The Book of Tobias gives the pilgrim a necessary key: "Because thou wast acceptable to God, it was necessary that temptation should prove thee."[1] Suffering alone does not prove that God has rejected a soul. Neither does suffering alone make a soul holy. The deeper question is what the will does beneath it.

Pharaoh stands in rebellion before the plagues begin. God first gives him a clear command through Moses and Aaron: "Let my people go, that they may sacrifice to me in the desert." Pharaoh answers, "Who is the Lord, that I should hear his voice?"[2]

The plagues therefore do not fall upon a man innocently seeking the divine will. They answer tyranny, false worship, and open refusal. Water becomes blood. Frogs, sciniphs, and flies cover Egypt. Pestilence strikes the Egyptian cattle; boils afflict man and beast; hail and locusts destroy the land; darkness covers it; and at last the firstborn are struck.[3]

Again and again Pharaoh bends while the chastisement is present. He summons Moses, asks for prayer, admits sin, and promises release. But when relief comes, he returns to refusal. He wants the plague removed without the rebellion removed. He desires respite, not conversion; an end to consequences, not an end to self-will.

Scripture therefore speaks in two ways. It says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and it says that God hardened it.[4] These statements do not make God the author of Pharaoh's sin. Pharaoh freely resists truth and abuses repeated mercy; God judges that resistance and permits the hardness chosen by the sinner to become his punishment. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that divine hardening does not consist in pouring malice into the will, but in the just withdrawal of grace after sin.[5] St. Augustine calls hardness of heart a sleep beneath the very rebuke that ought to awaken a man.[6]

This is the fearful lesson of Pharaoh: suffering does not compel repentance. A man may be chastened and still protect the ruling attachment that must die. He may make promises under terror and revoke them in comfort. The rod that might have recalled him can become, through his resistance, the occasion of deeper blindness.

Job enters the sacred history under a different judgment. Before he loses anything, Scripture calls him "simple and upright, and fearing God, and avoiding evil." God Himself repeats this testimony before Satan.[7]

Satan's accusation is not that Job is secretly wicked, but that his religion is purchased by prosperity: "Doth Job fear God in vain?"[8] In effect, the accuser says: remove the gifts and the supposed love of the Giver will disappear. God permits the trial, strictly bounds the enemy's power, and remains sovereign over everything Satan is allowed to touch.[9]

Job's herds are taken or destroyed. His servants are slain. His children die together. At last his body is afflicted. Yet after the first dreadful messages, Job rises, rends his garments, falls upon the ground, and adores. He does not call evil good or pretend that bereavement does not wound him. He blesses God in the wound: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." Scripture immediately adds that in all these things Job did not sin by his lips nor speak foolishly against God.[10]

St. John Chrysostom draws the distinction with exactness: Job "was justified, not because he suffered, but because in suffering he endured it thankfully."[11] The affliction did not create his justice or mechanically earn a crown. It manifested, exercised, and purified a fidelity sustained by grace. What prosperity had concealed became visible when every earthly support was stripped away.

Job is just, but he is not presented as a stone without anguish or a man incapable of further purification. He laments. He asks terrible questions. He wishes that he had not been born. His face is swollen with weeping. And when God answers, Job humbles himself and does penance in dust and ashes.[12] Catholic patience is therefore not numbness. The just man may weep, question, and stagger beneath the weight while refusing to abandon God.

Pharaoh and Job are both brought beneath affliction, but the blow meets two different wills.

• Pharaoh asks how the suffering may end while his rebellion remains.
• Job asks how he may remain before God when every consolation has ended.
• Pharaoh bargains.
• Job adores.
• Pharaoh's obedience lasts only while the terror is immediate.
• Job's fidelity remains when no earthly remedy can be seen.

The same fire hardens clay and purifies gold. The difference is not that Job possesses a naturally finer temperament of which he may boast. Grace has already made him a servant of God, and under trial he cooperates with that grace. Pharaoh repeatedly receives warning and freely uses each respite to return to himself.

This is why tribulation so often reveals what comfort concealed. One soul loses gifts and discovers that God Himself was its treasure. Another loses gifts and discovers that it wanted God's benefits without God's rule.

Job's words disclose the first soul: "Although he should kill me, I will trust in him."[13] Pharaoh's conduct discloses the second: remove the plague, and I will obey—until the plague is gone.

Job's friends make a grave spiritual error. They reason from the magnitude of his affliction to the magnitude of a supposed hidden guilt. God is just; Job suffers terribly; therefore, they conclude, Job must secretly deserve precisely what has overtaken him.

The reader already knows that this explanation is false. At the end God rebukes the friends because they have not spoken rightly before Him as Job has.[14] The lesson is deliberate: no man may read another soul's standing before God merely from present prosperity or calamity.

Suffering may be punishment. It may be paternal correction. It may expose consequences freely chosen. It may purify a faithful soul, protect it from pride, detach it from creatures, increase its merit, or make hidden virtue visible. Often several of these divine purposes are joined. Unless God has revealed the reason, the sufferer and the observer must not pretend to know His secret judgment.

This guards against two opposite lies. The sinner must not use Job to excuse a known rebellion: if God has commanded and conscience has refused, repentance must not be delayed. But the afflicted just man must not use Pharaoh to accuse himself of abandonment merely because consolation has disappeared.

The contrast belongs in the Gate of Authority because affliction reveals how a ruler understands his office. Pharaoh uses the suffering of his kingdom to bargain for the preservation of his own will. He delays obedience, offers partial concessions, increases burdens, and brings judgment upon those beneath him. Job, who also possessed household authority and great goods, is stripped without making God answerable to him. He bows before the Authority from whom every created stewardship comes.

Every father, priest, and ruler must therefore ask what affliction is uncovering in his government.

• Does correction make him more truthful or more controlling?
• Does the suffering of those beneath him move him to repentance, or only to self-defense?
• Does he ask God what must be surrendered, or merely demand that peace return?
• When outward support is withdrawn, does he preserve his office as service under God, or expose that he desired authority as possession?

The father in the home becomes Pharaoh-like when he protects one ruling attachment at the cost of his household's worship, faith, or peace. The priest becomes Pharaoh-like when he preserves position by bargaining with doctrine or Sacrifice. The civil ruler becomes Pharaoh-like when he increases burdens rather than submit his rule to divine and natural law. Yet the answer is not leaderless revolt. It is the conversion of authority: the ruler himself must come beneath God before he can govern others rightly.

Pharaoh also reveals how lesser refusals prepare greater ones. He does not arrive at the Red Sea by one isolated act. Warning follows warning; concession follows concession; respite follows respite. Each truth resisted makes the next surrender harder.

This belongs beside St. Paul's warning concerning the operation of error. God is never the author of falsehood. But He may justly permit those who refuse the love of truth to be deceived by the lie they preferred.[15] Pharaoh's history shows this judgment in motion: the sinner first refuses, then defends the refusal, then becomes less able to recognize the mercy contained in another warning.

The warning must be turned inward. It is possible to condemn hardened rulers while bargaining with God in one's own prayer, home, entertainment, ambition, or secret sin. A Catholic may profess the true Faith and still imitate Pharaoh whenever he says, in effect: everything may leave Egypt except this one attachment.

The pilgrim may not be able to answer immediately, "Why has this happened to me?" But he can begin a more necessary examination.

Have I resisted a known command of God? Have I delayed repentance? Have repeated warnings been ignored? Do I want only the consequence removed while the sin remains? If so, the soul must not speculate about hidden purposes while a revealed duty lies neglected. It must return without delay.

But if conscience, honestly examined, discovers no protected mortal sin and the soul is striving to obey, it must not conclude that every affliction proves divine anger. It should receive correction wherever correction is needed, continue in prayer, seek the sacraments, fulfill the duties of its state, and trust the Providence it cannot yet understand.

The response required under either condition is Catholic and concrete:

• repent of every known sin;
• submit to every known command;
• refuse murmuring and blasphemy;
• use lawful means to remedy evil without rebelling against Providence;
• continue praying when sensible consolation disappears;
• remain beneath God whether He gives or takes away.

It is better to sit with Job upon the dunghill and possess God than to sit with Pharaoh upon a throne and resist Him.

O Lord, if Thou chastisest me because I have wandered, give me grace to return without delay. Let me never ask only that the plague be removed while I preserve the sin that brought it.

If Thou triest me while I seek to remain faithful, give me the patience of Job. Do not permit sorrow to become murmuring, questions to become accusation, or darkness to become unbelief.

Make every authority within me and entrusted to me bow beneath Thine. Let reason govern passion, let duty govern comfort, and let Thy revealed will govern every judgment of my home and soul.

Whether Thou consolest or afflictest, givest or takest away, keep my will beneath Thine. And when I cannot yet understand Thy Providence, teach me still to adore and say:

Blessed be the name of the Lord.