Job and Jerusalem Matched Wound for Wound

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Every Bruise on Job Had Its Twin

Chaldean raiders came at Job's camels in three companies and left him nothing. Chaldean armies came through the wall of Jerusalem. Fire of God fell out of the sky onto Job's flocks. From on high He sent fire into the bones of the city.

Lay the man and the city down next to each other and the pairs will not stop coming. Job sat in the ashes and scraped himself with a piece of broken pot. The children of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, were counted as clay jugs. Job's friends sat down with him on the ground and for seven days nobody said anything. The elders of the daughter of Zion sat on the ground and kept silent. Sackcloth on the skin. Dust on the head. Job begging his friends, have pity on me, have pity on me, and getting nothing back. The hand of God laid on him.

The city got the same hand. She received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Nehemiah did the arithmetic out loud. Job was struck twice over and was paid back twice over, everything restored and doubled. So the same must hold for Jerusalem. The blow came doubled, and the comfort therefore has to come doubled, which is why the prophet says it twice: comfort, comfort my people.

Saying it was easy. Delivering it turned out to be the hard part.

No Other City Was Ruined Enough

Comforters work by comparison. A man buries his wife and will not be consoled, and his friends say, was your wife more beautiful than the wife of so and so, who died, and he accepted comfort? A man buries his son and cannot stop, and they say, was your son finer than that man's son? The whole trade depends on finding somebody whose loss will stand next to yours.

So when God ruins a province, He sets another ruined province beside it. Nineveh fell, and Alexandria in Egypt was set down alongside her.

Every prophet went looking for the city that could stand next to Zion, and no prophet found one. What shall I take to witness for you? What shall I compare to you? Nothing on the map matched.

God tried a different offer. Name whichever of your fathers you want, He said, and I will bring him up out of his grave and he will walk at the head of you. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Moses and Aaron. David and Solomon. Choose.

Israel said they did not want any of them. You are our father, they said, and Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not recognize us, and Your name from of old is our redeemer.

Abraham Came First and She Sent Him Away

God sent Abraham anyway. Go and comfort Jerusalem, He said. Perhaps she will take comfort from you.

Abraham stood in the smoke and said, accept comfort from me.

"How am I supposed to take comfort from you," she said, "when you are the one who turned me into a mountain? On the mountain of the LORD it shall be seen. That is your line. You did that."

God sent Isaac. Isaac, who had been on the wood.

"From you? Esau came out of you. Esau made me a field. Esau went out to the field, and it is his sons who burned me."

God sent Jacob, who had slept on a stone at that exact place and woken up shouting about a gate of heaven.

"You made me into something that was only ever a doorway," she said. "This is none other than the house of God. As though I had never been anything on my own account."

God sent Moses. The mouth that split the sea. The man who had argued heaven out of a decree before.

She did not let him start. "You wrote the curses. You put them in writing against me. Wasting of hunger, and devoured by burning heat, and bitter destruction. Comfort me with what, exactly?"

The four of them went back together and stood in front of God and said the same sentence. She would not accept comfort from us. The prophet already had the phrase for what they left behind them: afflicted one, storm tossed, not comforted.

The Queen Named Her Price

There was a king once who lost his temper at his queen and put her out of the palace. Days went by. He wanted her back.

She sent word. Double my marriage contract first, and then he may bring me home.

God said to Israel, my children, at Sinai I said it to you once. I am the LORD your God. One I. In Jerusalem, in the time that is coming, I will say it to you twice. I, I am the one who comforts you.

Two of everything. Two blows, two payments, two names, two words at the head of the prophecy. A city wrecked on a doubled account was not going to come home for a single soft syllable, and God did not pretend otherwise. He agreed to the terms.

Whoever Kindles the Fire Shall Pay

Then He said the rest of it, and He said it the way a man says it who has read the ruling and knows exactly how it applies to him.

It falls to Me to comfort Jerusalem. I am the one who wrote, he who kindles the fire shall surely make restitution. I set her on fire. From on high I sent fire into her bones. So I pay.

What He offered in payment was more fire. I will be to her, says the LORD, a wall of fire all around.

The element that came down through her roof would stand up around her walls. Nobody had been able to reach her with a word of comfort. Now nobody would be able to reach her at all.