Job. A season of pain and misery for no apparent reason. As he wrestles with why he is suffering, Job is inspired by God to go deep down into the mines of the earth for more insight. His pondering of the unseen mining realm begins in Job 28:1. Mines are dug into places of intense pressures far below the surface of the earth. Men dig deep into the crust of the earth searching for valuable gems - gold, silver and other minerals. These valuable items are of great value, but they need to be purified. Man searches every recess in the dark and forgotten caverns of the earth for anything valuable (v 3,4). Job's pen began to flow as he identified with the pressures deep down in the mines. Maybe there were areas in his own heart that he had not yet seen and were yet being purified.
The surface of the earth is the place of our routine lives - the visible, the known. I tried on a new pair of pants. We had tacos for dinner. Our daughter is at a friend's house. Here, at the surface, bread is produced. Bread is found in the routine paths of our lives. We may eat bread daily. It is a common food. This is the area of the visible, the known. But deep under the crust of the earth, something is going on that no one sees or even thinks about. The earth is moving deep beneath our feet creating intense heat and pressure. And deep down there, sapphires and gold are created (v 5,6).
It is interesting that the animals mentioned are predators - falcons and lions (v 7,8). They are scouting out the surface of the earth, looking to capture their prey. Maybe we have been around people who have desired to take advantage of us. People looking for our weak spots to accuse us or take us down They can add to the pressures of our lives and maybe Job's friends fit into this category. However, they cannot see the activity going on deep beneath the surface, things that reside in the depths of our heart. Sometimes even we cannot see the things that are going on deep within us.
Job then considers how man will go to extreme lengths to clench the valuable gems deep down. He overturns mountains at their roots, cuts channels out of rocks and dams up streams from trickling. Mining is a massive undertaking with a goal of bringing out the hidden gem into the light (v 9-11). God will arrange the same for us at times. And here we find the end of the mining process. All that pressure and heat in the unseen realm produced something of extreme value that has now been brought into the light. It has come into the realm of the seen on the surface of the earth for people to see. There was an unseen place within Job's vast heart that needed the touch of God. So infinite are His ways (so all-seeing and all-knowing) that He would bewilder us for no apparent reason, touch an unseen place and bring us forth as gold (23:10). He goes deep.
