The Strange Comfort of Explaining Suffering

On Tisha B’Av, the Book of Job reminds us that God rebukes those who rush to explain suffering more than those who dare to question it.

There is something curious about the way we respond to suffering. Our own suffering rarely makes sense to us. It arrives as interruption, bewilderment, even betrayal. We don’t immediately ask what lesson we’re supposed to learn. We ask why the world suddenly feels so unfamiliar.

Other people’s suffering is different. We instinctively begin searching for explanations. Perhaps they ignored the warning signs. Perhaps they made a poor decision. Perhaps this is how God teaches people. We don’t always say these things aloud, but they often shape the stories we tell ourselves.

Part of this instinct comes from compassion. We genuinely want to understand what happened. But another part comes from fear. If suffering follows understandable rules, then perhaps we can avoid it ourselves. If every tragedy has a clear cause, then the universe remains predictable.

The Book of Job quietly dismantles that illusion.

Most people think Job is a book about why innocent people suffer. In one sense, it is. But if that were the book’s central concern, it ends in a strange way. Job never learns why he suffered. God never explains the heavenly wager that set the story in motion. The question that dominates the opening chapters is never answered.

Instead, something more surprising happens. God judges the conversation surrounding Job’s suffering. After listening to Job’s three friends defend divine justice for chapter after chapter, God says to Eliphaz,

“My anger burns against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken rightly of Me as My servant Job has.” (Job 42:7)

That verdict is astonishing.

Job questioned God. He protested. He lamented. At one point he cries,

“I cry to You, and You do not answer me.” (Job 30:20)

His friends, by contrast, defended God. They insisted the universe was morally coherent. If Job was suffering, then somewhere there must be an explanation. The world, they believed, is ultimately a courtroom. Every action receives its proper verdict. Every tragedy has a moral cause.

We often read Job’s friends as insensitive or self-righteous. But I suspect the text is asking us to see something more uncomfortable. They are not simply wrong; they are recognizable.

They are us.

Whenever another person’s life falls apart, we feel an almost irresistible urge to explain it. Sometimes we blame poor choices. Sometimes we invoke psychology. Sometimes politics. Sometimes theology. The explanations differ, but the impulse is remarkably consistent. We want suffering to fit into a pattern because patterns make us feel safe.

That is why God’s response is so unexpected.

When God finally speaks, He does not offer a philosophy of suffering. He offers a tour of creation.

He asks Job,

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (38:4)

Then He speaks of rain that falls “on a land where no one lives” (38:26), of mountain goats giving birth, of wild donkeys that refuse domestication, of hawks riding the wind, and finally of Behemoth and Leviathan, creatures that embody the untamable power of creation.

For years, many readers, including me, have wondered why God changes the subject.

Perhaps He doesn’t.

Genesis introduces us to a world of remarkable order. Light is separated from darkness. Sea from land. Each day unfolds with rhythm and purpose. It is a creation that invites confidence.

The Book of Job reveals another dimension of that same world. Creation is not only ordered; it is also wild. It overflows with creatures that have no obvious usefulness to human beings. Rain nourishes places where no one farms. Animals flourish beyond the boundaries of civilization. The world is larger than our needs and more intricate than our explanations.

Job’s friends imagine creation as a courtroom.

God describes it more like a wilderness, or what we might call today an ecosystem.

An ecosystem has order, but not simplicity. It has patterns, but not predictability. It can be trusted without being fully controlled.

Much of our anxiety comes from confusing order with control. We imagine that if we understand enough, we can insulate ourselves from tragedy. The Book of Job gently reminds us otherwise. Creation has always been richer, freer, and more mysterious than our moral equations.

Perhaps that is why Job has long been associated with Tisha B’Av.

On the day when Jews mourn the destruction of the Temples and generations of collective loss, our tradition certainly does not avoid moral reflection. But mourning comes before explanation. Lament precedes analysis. Before we search for reasons, we sit on the floor, dim the lights, and acknowledge that some wounds should first be honored rather than interpreted.

That wisdom feels especially urgent today. We live in an age that rewards immediate certainty. Within hours of every tragedy, explanations multiply. Political narratives compete with psychological ones. Religious certainty competes with ideological certainty. Everyone seems eager to tell us why something happened.

The Book of Job invites a different posture.

God never rebukes Job for asking difficult questions. He rebukes those who speak too confidently about another person’s suffering.

That is not an argument against thinking deeply about evil or history or responsibility. Judaism has never shied away from difficult questions. It is, however, a reminder that explanations can become a substitute for compassion, and certainty can become a way of protecting ourselves from another person’s pain.

Perhaps the deepest lesson of Job is not that suffering has no meaning. It is that meaning cannot be forced upon someone else’s grief.

The friends wanted a God who could be explained.

Job wanted a God who could be encountered.

God responded not with an answer, but with a vision of creation so vast, so beautiful, and so untamed that it dissolved the illusion that the universe could ever be reduced to a simple formula.

The world is ordered enough to inspire trust.

It is wild enough to require humility.

And perhaps faith begins when we learn the difference.