All this Job has deduced from his present circumstances, and yet he is wrong, and before long he will know he is wrong. Our imaginations are not the measure of truth; they can lead us into unreal places of gloom. Imagination should at times be restrained and ready to stopped from exploring dark corners. Satan must not be given free reign over our thought processes.
‘We see clearly how miserable is the state of poor sinners, when they have this mistaken notion: that God persecutes them and is against them. For what does our welfare and all our joy consist in but to know that God is near to us, and to feel how his gracious favour is never separated from us. When, on the contrary, a poor sinner is so afraid of God’s judgement that he desires nothing other than to hide himself, and to find some secret hiding place, where God can no longer see him, so that he does not feel his hand on him anymore. So the greatest benefit that poor sinners can have when they feel themselves to be tormented with God’s judgement, is to draw nearer to him, to crave help and relief at his hand; and their utter undoing is to shrink away from him … So then we must not think it strange that Job in speaking of death should say that men go into a dark realm, where there is nothing but darkness and disorder. Why so? Because he links sin and God’s curse together with death. As long as God holds him locked up in distress, there is, as it were, a certain heartburning, so that he does not seek the means of grace, which is the true remedy which shews us there is light even in death, and some order also in darkness however dark it be, because after we have been brought to the dust, we shall be raised up again. Job does not perceive this. Why not? Because God intends first to make him feel his sharp and severe rigour, and then afterwards to comfort him again. That is what we need to learn well. For if we desire to receive the grace that God gives us, and offers us continually in our Lord Jesus Christ, we must first feel what we ourselves are, and in what plight we are. Do we want to taste what the heavenly life is? First we must know to what end we are born: that we are sinners in Adam’ (Calvin – English updated).