The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.
Job's first response to losing everything in a single day.
The episode in a glance.
- 01Job lost children, property, and livelihood in one afternoon.
- 02His first words weren't anger — they were worship.
- 03He acknowledged the giving and the taking both come from God.
- 04Honest grief and real worship aren't enemies.
Read along.
Job loses his livestock, his servants, and all ten of his children in a single day. He tears his robe, shaves his head, falls to the ground and says: 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'
It's stunning. Not because he doesn't feel the pain — he tears his clothes. But because in the same breath he names God as both the giver and the one who allowed the loss, and he blesses him anyway.
He'll have plenty of harder things to say in the chapters that follow. He'll question, complain, argue. But this is his first instinct.
Worship doesn't require everything to be okay. Job proves that on page one.