Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 22-28.

Eliphaz begins his reply to Job by saying something true: God does not need us, and nothing we do can benefit Him, even if we were righteous God would gain nothing from it.  Unfortunately, he immediately follows that by accusing Job of great wickedness.  Eliphaz lists a series of sins of which he is sure Job must be guilty.  Eliphaz goes on to espouse what closely resembles “prosperity Gospel” when he tells Job that he is suffering because of his sin and would be prosperous once more if he would just return to living a righteous life.  Job responds by saying that God should establish days when people can come before Him to request His judgement in the manner that many kings hold court.  If God would do that, Job would come before Him and establish his innocence.  Instead of such a system, Job proclaims, we have a world where no one is secure, where the poor suffer and even the powerful can suddenly become subject to misfortune.  Bildad replies to Job’s claim of innocence by making the point that no one is pure in God’s eyes.  A very true point, but not one which offers much comfort to someone suffering as Job was at this point.  Job replies to Bildad by pointing out that his point offers no comfort to one who is suffering.  Job then says one of the things for which God later calls him out: he declares that God has denied him justice.  Job then finishes today’s passage by telling us something of value: all wisdom comes from God.  No matter where we look, or how hard we search, we will never find wisdom until we turn to God.  There is no other source for wisdom than God.  If we wish to be wise, we must turn our face towards God and listen to what He tells us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 22-28.

Job’s friend, Eliphaz, starts off today’s passage with a statement with important meaning.  No human can be of benefit to God, He gains nothing from our righteousness and loses nothing if we sin.  Unfortunately, Eliphaz concludes that Job must have committed some, or multiple, horrible sins.  And while Eliphaz makes a terrible mistake by judging in this manner, he does give us a good list of sins we should not commit.  Eliphaz then ends his monologue by taking a truth and turning it into a falsehood.  He reveals a truth when he says that if we submit to God, lay up His words in our hearts, and treat material wealth as of little value, we will gain the much greater wealth of serving God.  However, Eliphaz takes this truth to an unwarranted conclusion: he concludes that if Job would just turn back to God, he would acquire material wealth and power that dwarfed what he had before the calamity had struck him.  So, while seeking God and following His commands will not, in and of itself, bring us material wealth, what we gain from doing so will be of greater value than anything money can buy.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 22-28.

I am always horrified by the accusations Eliphaz makes against Job at the beginning of this passage.  He specifically accuses Job of horrible sins.  Up until this point Job’s friends have merely said that Job’s suffering must be the result of some horrible sin which Job has committed, but have refrained from speculating as to what that sin was.  Here, Eliphaz says that Job must be guilty of these specific sins since he was suffering as he was.  What horrifies me is that Eliphaz is spelling out what the other two were thinking all along even though they had not witnessed Job committing these sins. Nevertheless, they were convinced that he was guilty of them.  Making this assumption is every bit as great of a sin as the sins they accused Job of committing.  It is one thing to look at the sins we have seen someone commit and draw a connection between those sins and the suffering which they experience (and even that has problems in that it might lead us to not have compassion for their suffering) and quite another to project back from their suffering to sins which we believe them to have committed because they are suffering.  The first might be acceptable under some circumstances, but the latter is always putting ourselves in the place of God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 22-28.

Throughout the entire Book of Job, Job’s friends insist that he is guilty of some great sin and Job denies that to be true.  In fact, despite having no evidence of Job’s sin other than the fact that he is suffering, the more he denies having committed some great sin the more insistent his friends become that he confess it.  Finally Job tells them that he will not commit the sin of lying by confessing to a sin he has not committed.  In many ways this reminds me of stories I have heard about things going on at various institutions around the country today, where they hold seminars and insist that people confess to having oppressed others.  Job reminds us that it is just as much a lie to confess a sin which we have not committed as it is to deny a sine which we have committed.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Job 22-28.

Once again today I struggle to understand parts of Job’s monologues.  At one point he seems to say that God does not punish the wicked.  Yet, as he expands on his point, he goes on to say that the wicked are cursed and live in fear, that God will drag them away because of their wickedness.  Then Job sarcastically commends his friends for the ways in which they have helped the weak and powerless.  It seems to me that Job is making the case that if we do not seek to help the oppressed we are as guilty as those who oppress them.  I will say that helping the oppressed is not some abstract thing where we protest about the hardship visited upon some group.  Helping the oppressed means identifying specific individuals being oppressed and working with them to help them overcome their troubles.

Even though he believes that his troubles came from God Job refuses to speak or do evil.  He vows to strive to do what is right in God’s eyes.  Despite his suffering, Job declares that he still believes that God will bring judgement upon the wicked.  He acknowledges that for all of his own ability, or even the ability of other people, God is the only source of wisdom.  Mankind may be masters at finding resources for their own enjoyment, but no one can find wisdom apart from God.  Job tells us that wisdom is fear of the Lord and understanding leads one to forsake evil in all its forms.