How Are You, Job?

Job and His Friends by Ilya Repin (1869)

How Are You?

It seems like an innocuous greeting.

However, you never asked Job.

Job 16:16-22,17:1,13-16

My face is red with weeping, and deep darkness is on my eyelids, though there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure. "O earth, do not cover my blood; let my outcry find no resting place.

Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbor. For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me. If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness,
if I say to the Pit, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'My mother,' or 'My sister,' where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?

Shall we descend together into the dust?"