Bible Reading Challenge Blog

I’m wondering if this is really Job who is speaking because there is a sense that he continues some of the arguments of his friends.  He gives a very in depth list of wicked acts and deeds and lays out that those who love the darkness must be wicked because only terrible acts take place in the darkness.  But all of this would lend credence to the fact that Job is suffering as a result of a specific sin which he committed.  

As I’m looking through this I recognize that this chapter very much feels like an argument against Job and not in his favor.  Maybe he was scratching his scabs a bit too long.  His statement in vs.20 that the womb forgets them and the worm finds them sweet and that wickedness is broken like a tree does not reflect what Job thinks or what he has said up to now.

Have you ever been in a situation where words were attributed to you which you absolutely know that you never would have or could have said them?  This just might be a case for that.  Let’s see what happens next chapter if it confirms or is neutral about it.

Job responds to his friend by asking for an audience with God so that he can plead his case.  It is interesting how he basically ignores his friend and goes straight to requesting an audience with God to prove his innocence.  This Scripture does remind me of the widow who refused to be satisfied until the judge would answer her knocking on his door.  Look at Luke 18:1-8 and you will find that the judge is not presented in the most flattering terms (neither feared God nor had respect for people), and yet somehow by the end of the parable it is obvious that this judge was, indeed, God.

Job says that he would love to have an audience with God because he has complete confidence that “God would heed me.” (vs.6)

Once again Job’s friend addresses him and this time it very much is directed at specific actions which his friends says he must have done, or else God would not have punished him this way.  Again, the premise is that God is punishing Job, at least that is the premise of Job’s friends.  Job, on the other hand, merely states that no, it is not in God’s nature to punish those only who disobey, but rather it is the nature of God to allow the rain to fall on the good and the bad and then work in the midst of those situations.  Job contends that he is not being punished, but rather that God is acting according to His nature, which is completely unpredictable.

The detailed accusations of Eliphaz are that Job has: exacted pledges from his family without reason, stripped the naked of their clothing, given no water to the weary, withheld bread from the hungry, sent the widows away empty-handed, crushed the arms of the orphans.  Because of all of this the snares of the Lord are around him.  

Well, these are pretty powerful accusations.  That certainly is not the way that Job is described in chapter 1.  He is called blameless and upright, he feared God and turned away from evil.  This is repeated a few times in describing him.  God calls him these following terms and so I’m guessing someone is not telling the truth.  Either Eliphaz is correct and Job is evil because of what he has done, and if he has done any one of those things then he would be evil, much less all of them.  But I’m going to take God’s side on this one and say that Job is not any of those things.  Bad things are happening to Job who is a good person.

On that note, remember what Jesus says about the term good…Look at Mark 10:18 where we find Jesus saying: “Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”

This response scandalizes the friends, and maybe even the hearers, of Job.  He sets up what he is about to say with a warning to his friends that what comes next may be a scandal and could cause them to cover their mouths in surprise, shock, and dismay.  What he is about to say next is going to probably insult them, even though it is not directed at them.  But let him speak, and then when he is finished, they can continue to mock him as they have so far.

His beef is primarily with God because he states the obvious, the wicked are not punished on earth.  In fact, he states, it seems as if the wicked prosper here on earth and reap the benefits of being wicked.  This thought, he would call it a truth and I think there is more truth to it than fiction, causes him to shudder.  The shuddering is a result of realizing that God does not intervene to ensure that the wicked die, well, a wicked death.  The good don’t live a good life.  The wicked don’t live a wicked life.  The rain falls on the good and the bad.  The rhetorical questions that he asks in vs.17-18 are meant to be answered with one word: never.

I want you all to hear a testimony that you may have missed if you were not in the second service on August 26.  This song, and this testimony, does remind us that God’s eye is on all of us, no matter how distant we may think he is.

Job goes from a strong declaration that he knows that his redeemer lives to once again getting ganged up on by his friends.  This time it is the turn of Zophar who answers Job’s statements in chapter 19.  His answer is more of the same as he states in the final verse that all the calamities which he describes in the previous 28 verses: possession of their house carried away, they will perish forever like their own dung (that is my personal favorite), are a result of Job’s wickedness.

But it does seem that the rhetoric is being ratcheted up higher and higher each time Job speaks and then there is an answer from his  friend.  Zophar is the one who seems to take special insult to the words that Job uses which in his eyes are words which exculpate Job from wrong and lay it at the feet of God.  For him this is wickedness.  

There is a sense that this is a sort of rap-off or a dance-off where one statement after another is supposed to be better than the last.  

Before we get into the meat of this passage I can’t escape this verse: “My breath is repulsive to my wife.” (vs.17)  I think when we get to that stage we have some pretty big problems.  Job is in that boat right about now.

If you look at vs.25 you will see one of the most powerful and enduring Scriptures.  “For I know that my redeemer lives.”  I need to insert this song here.  Amazing!  Powerful!  Can you hear Job saying this now?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj-pZQ_XjyU

I can say with confidence that Job’s words were indeed written down and will last forever.  This song is proof of that.  Not sure I can add much more than this song.  I’m ready to take on the world knowing that God lives and will never leave or abandon us even if we get to a place in our lives where we are like Job.

Okay, things are starting to get a bit personal.  Job this past chapter really lambasted his friends and called them some pretty not nice things.  Now the friend of Job, Bildad, launches out and begins to replay all the calamities that Job experienced but couches it in the terms what happens to the “wicked”.  Vs. 13 is a direct reference to what Job is experiencing with his body.  It almost seems as if Bildad goes backwards over Job’s calamities.  So, vs. 13 refers to the last of the calamities which is that boils and sores afflict his body.  We then read in vs.14 that a tent is torn and scattered as Job’s children’s tent was torn and scattered while they were celebrating.  He goes on to press on that point and states that the wicked has “no survivor where they used to live.”  

He ends all of this by saying that this is what happens to the wicked and to those who do not know God.  The direct and pointed application has to be at Job who must be wicked and must not know the Lord or else this would not have happened to him.  Don’t worry, Job will answer, but we have to know what he is being accused of by his friend and why this is such a personal attack.  Bildad is not speaking in generalities, he is speaking specifically about Job.  

This seems like nothing less than Job speaking out against his friends.  He calls his friends: “mockers” in vs. 2, they have “closed minds” vs. 4, he says if they come back to him he will not find a “sensible person” (vs.10) among them.  

Job realizes that while he is not literally at death’s door as he states in vs. 1, that he is not in the presence of friends or relatives who will vouch for him, so it will be completely up to him to vouch for himself.  Notice, though, that while Job falls into despair, it is not a despair of belief or of faith, it is a sense of despair for his present state that does not in any way overrule the relationship that he has with his God and Creator.  Job’s faithfulness and righteousness has not wavered, in fact it has been strengthened.  

He trusts that God is going to act and that God is going to in due time.  He asks the rhetorical question of “where is my hope”.  I think we can answer him with the verses from Psalm 39:7: “And now, O Lord, what do I wait for?  My hope is in you.”

The key to this response by Job to his friend is vs.17 where he states: “though there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.”  He once again states his innocence even while his friends are telling him to admit his fault and God would remove His wrath.  No, Job says, that is not the case.  He tells his friends that he could say the words that he wants them to say, but they would not produce the result that they would want, except for providing them some instant gratification that they got Job to do what they wanted him to do.

It is interesting in vs.7 that one of his complaints is that God has made his company one of the worst aspects of this whole living thing right now.  He goes on and states that God has given Job up to the ungodly and was cast into the hands of the wicked.  I am pretty sure that Job is speaking about his friends here.  What a group of “friends”.  He continues to complain about them.  Probably time to switch them out at this point.

Job’s friend, Eliphaz, comes back at him again to make sure that he doesn’t forget that it is God who has created him.  He wants to make sure that Job doesn’t think that he was somehow created in a special way and that God may have broken the mold once he was created.  No, Job, he says, you are just like  the rest of us so why do you think you are special in a way that none of us might be?  

The accusation that is laid at Job’s feet is that he is doing away with the fear of God.  The reason that God has punished him, according to Eliphaz, is because of his pride and his thinking that he was the firstborn of creation.  Job is told that his day has come and he is basically getting what he deserves…but is he really?  Yes, in a way he is getting what we all deserve, but he is not getting it because of his pride or because he thinks he is any more special than the rest of us.