PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2023-2024

I think there is only one song that would be appropriate for this chapter.

Job speaks about the years gone by when he was respected, and really revered, by all those in the city and beyond.  But notice the reason why he was so respected  and why they were defined as his glory days.  Look at vs.12 and you can read: “because I delivered the poor who cried, and the orphan who had no helper.”  There then follows a whole litany of ways in which Job had helped the most destitute around him.  It was this highlight of his life which he missed the most.  Because of his current condition he is no longer able to “champion the cause of the stranger.”

The days that Job describes in chapter 29 when he “chose their way and sat as a chief”, were long since gone.  You will notice that in the next chapter things are very different.

At first this seems like random meanderings about the substance and the depths of the earth, but then Job comes out with the reason for this entire chapter.  It takes us all the way to vs.12 when he asks the question: “Where shall wisdom be found?”  It is interesting to speak about this word wisdom.  

Job describes it as a thing which is absolutely impossible to capture by humans, or animals, or anything on the face of this earth.  The value of wisdom is extolled in this entire chapter and its elusiveness is described in detail.  The question which will soon be answered in vs.20 states: where does wisdom come from?  That is the question that will be answered from verses 23-28.

Just like every good children’s sermon we read that God understands all things and has placed wisdom upon the face of this earth.  God knows from where wisdom originates and where it finds its home.  God established it and tells us, according to vs.28: the fear of the Lord is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.  When we live according to that which God directs us to live, then we are also discovering wisdom.  

Once again it seems like Job is speaking the words that his friends might be more comfortable speaking.  There is one friend, Zophar, who only has one speech while all the others have two, so this could be his third, but it is attributed to Job.  

Again, just like before, the reason we are saying this is because while Job begins this chapter by stating his innocence (vs.6, “I hold fast my righteousness), vs. 13 begins a series of statements describing how the wicked get their due.  If you look at vs. 21 you see how the author describes a wind that takes the children of the wicked and carries them away.  This should make you think of Job 1:19 where the children of Job were in a tent that succumbed to: “a great wind that came across the desert.”  Yeah, pretty much Job is being equated with all the rest of the wicked who have these types of calamities fall upon them.  The righteous never suffer like this.

I hope by now you know that this simply is not the way God works.  Yeah, this is probably Zophar.

The power and providence of God remain unchallenged.  The first four verses we find Job asking rhetorical questions, because the answer to all of them would only be God.  The descriptions that he then lays out refer to the power and providence of God which remain unchallenged.  

He concludes by stating that all which he had just mentioned is but a small token of all that God is able to do and all that God has under His control.  I love the thought that we just hear a very small whisper of the power and the providence of God.  We just catch an imperfect and small glimpse of all that He is able to do.  Job describes it as a whisper.  

He continues on and asks the question: who is  able to understand the thunder of His power.  Did you notice the juxtaposition?  He uses whisper to describe all that we know about God, which is very little, and uses thunder to describe the power  and providence of God, which, by the way, remain unchallenged.

So, what I’m thinking is that maybe, just maybe chapter 24 should have been spoken by Bildad and his ending is found in chapter 25.  It is a very short chapter this 25th one and so it gives you more time to go out in the very, very hot yard and work on your garden.  But, if you are not doing that, then look at how he continues the theme of 24 by speaking about light and dark and the birth of a person, all of these  themes were brought up also in chapter 24.  

So, if chapter 24 is not by Job but by Bildad then we once again have another instance of Job being ganged up on by his friends.  We once again have another instance where in chapter 26 he needs to defend himself.  We once again find ourselves able to commiserate with someone who feels attacked from all sides, including by God, and he has no solution as to why this is happening.  But he perseveres.  He does not lose hope.  He continues to love and serve God even in the midst of this mess.

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.