They Think Night Is Day
“As for all of you, come back with a better argument, though I still won’t find a wise man among you. My days are over. My hopes have disappeared. My heart’s desires are broken. These men say that night is day; they claim that the darkness is light. What if I go to the grave and make my bed in darkness? What if I call the grave my father, and the maggot my mother or my sister? Where then is my hope? Can anyone find it? No, my hope will go down with me to the grave. We will rest together in the dust!”
Job 17:10-16 NLT
Job’s lament is haunting: “They think night is day.” His friends renamed his reality, insisting that what was clearly darkness was actually light. Their reasoning came from an assumption of that time: suffering must always mean guilt. Job’s agony could only be explained as punishment, and they believed confession would turn the night back into day.
But this pattern of inversion did not end with them. It recurs across history, taking new shapes. Scripture warns us it happens in four ways.
The Inventors. These are the ones who deliberately sow the seeds of inversion. Isaiah warned: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). They twist creation at the root, planting lies in the soil of culture, about truth, about the body, about covenant, about God Himself.
The Carriers. These are the ones who nurture what has been planted. Sometimes knowingly, often in the name of compassion. They water seeds of confusion until falsehood bears fruit. Paul wrote: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Even parents tend the gardens of their children’s minds, watering weeds where truth should have been guarded.
The Exposed. These are the Jobs. They do not invent lies or carry them, yet they endure their weight. They are faithful in suffering that drags them into the clash. They cry out because they know: night is not day, dark is not light. Their witness rises from the bed they never asked to keep in the dark.
The Reverser. Christ enters the night — not unwillingly, but by choice. The Son of Man had nowhere to lay His head, so He made His bed in darkness. He entered the grave, called the dead His family, and broke its power from within. “Let the little children come to me, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). A child sees a house beneath the moon and says without hesitation, “That’s night.” Christ guards their clarity, reality unbent, imagination kept.
The Inventors sow lies. The Carriers nurture them. The Exposed endure their weight. But the Reverser alone has authority to uproot falsehood, to separate wheat from weeds. The call is simple: refuse to invent lies, refuse to carry them, and do not despair when you are exposed. Entrust yourself to the Reverser, the One who stepped into the pit they prepared and turned it back toward truth and life. Only in Him can we refuse the lie, resist the echo, and walk in the light.