Job 5:18

For He causes pain,

   But He binds up,

He strikes,

   But His hands heal.

When we were younger parents, we would not let the kids watch shows about witches and magic no matter how innocent or popular the show. Or at least we tried to. I do not remember thinking the issue through, but we were trying to do our best. Now our lives are dominated by Harry Potter and magic within that whole arena. The younger kid is smart enough to know magic is not real. Did we really think the older one was unable to differentiate reality from falsehood?

The cultural translation of this verse is “no pain, no gain” with no reference to God at all. I doubt the marketing expert who made the phrase an icon was worried about God at the time, but it does sound like something the devil would tempt people to do.

My sources carried “wounds”, “bruises”, “maketh sore”, and “injures”. I prefer the non-physical aspect that “pain” brings to the verse to represent the spiritual aspects of pain and recovery. For the second stitch my sources included “injures”, “wounds”, and “deals blows”. I found the duplication a little odd, but again chose the word that had the potential to be non-physical again. “Make whole” was the only deviation from “hands heal” and the rest of the verse was pretty unanimous.

The obvious use by the poet to use the physical images of “pain” and “strikes” to represent the same loving correction God brings in the previous verse may not be as obvious as it was to me. I know God can heal me if I fall down, but I latch onto the idea that He will heal me of the mental anguish that comes from living in a cruel and sinful world. Even Christians trying to do the right thing get it wrong, often. Even our leaders. God showed patience with the Jews throughout the Old Testament and shows patience with us as we miss the mark. We could be eaten up by guilt for sinning, but His goal is not for us to wallow in pity, but to learn and grow and get better at His work. When we mess up and ask others for forgiveness, that is when He can step in and heal relationships as He healed our relationship to Him.