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 34-37.

As I wrote yesterday, I am not quite sure what to make of Elihu’s monologue which continues in today’s passage.   He seems at times to condemn Job as Job’s other friends did, but he also says some very insightful things.  I will focus on the things he says which strike me as insightful and leave the rest for another time.  Before I get started I want to point out something I just realized.  Previously when I have read Job I have struggled mightily with the bulk of it.  It seemed like it went on and on about a subject which could have been wrapped up in just a few chapters.  This time as I am going through it I find much more than ever before.  Which gives me hope that in another year or two God’s Spirit will reveal meaning for me in the parts which are opaque to me now.

In chapter 34 Elihu tells us that God does not, cannot, sin.  Further God loves justice and watches the actions of everyone everywhere.  There is no obstacle which can hide us from God’s eyes and He will determine when we come before Him for judgement.  When God deems the time is ripe, He brings the wicked to judgement without asking anyone’s opinion, no matter how mighty they might be. All of which brings us to Elihu’s key insight in this section. <blockquote>“Why don’t people say to God, ‘I have sinned,
    but I will sin no more’?
Or ‘I don’t know what evil I have done—tell me.
    If I have done wrong, I will stop at once’?</blockquote>

We know that God sees and knows our sins.  So, why don’t we confess them and ask Him to help us stop committing them?  And why don’t we ask Him to show us the ways in which we sin that we are unaware, so that we can stop doing those things?

Elihu continues to teach us that our sins do not harm God and a righteousness grants Him nothing He does not already have.  God’s commands to us are not for His benefit but for ours.  The godless suffer because they are too proud to seek God and His guidance.  They condemn Him for the suffering which results from their own actions and refuse to call out to Him for relief.  

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 16-21.

Job’s friends had come to him to comfort him, but they got caught up in trying to help him and forgot.  They got so caught up in convincing him that he had sinned that they did not stopped doing anything to comfort him.  Job further points out that strangers who know nothing about him mock him and make his life worse.  An important lesson for us, we should never judge those we do not know who are suffering.  We should not assume that those who are suffering deserve their suffering.  And we should seek to comfort those who are suffering even if we know they deserve the suffering, because we too have sinned and deserve to suffer.

Previously Job had cried out wishing that he had a mediator between himself and God.  In today’s passage he declares that he does have an advocate and mediator in heaven.  Also previously Job had asked the rhetorically  if someone who had died could live again, with the answer he would give being “No”.  However, today he declares that he knows the his Redeemer lives and will one day stand upon this earth.  Moreover, Job declares  that after he dies and his body decays he will, in his body, see God.  There is a great old hymn hymn which expresses what this means to those of us who believe in Christ:

Verse 1:
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
And on the earth again shall stand;
I know eternal life He giveth,
That grace and power are in His hand.
Chorus:
I know, I know that Jesus liveth,
And on the earth again shall stand;
I know, I know that life He giveth,
That grace and power are in His hand.
Verse 2:
I know His promise never faileth,
The word He speaks, it cannot die;
Tho’ cruel death my flesh assaileth,
Yet I shall see Him by and by.
[Chorus]
Verse 3:
I know my mansion He prepareth,
That where He is there I may be;
Oh, wondrous thought, for me He careth,
And He at last will come for me.
[Chorus]

And that is the comfort those who believe in Christ can take whenever they suffer: They can indeed know that their Redeemer lives and will again stand upon the earth.  I know that some day I will stand before God and any suffering or misery I experienced in life will disappear.

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 11-15.

Zophar’s response shows us the perils of being involved in a debate with more than one person.  He takes what Job has said to counter the other two and answers it from a different direction.  Zophar says one thing which is true for all of us, God punishes us far less than we deserve.  The problem is that Zophar’s statement is aimed solely at Job and does not include himself.  Zophar’s whole statement is that Job is suffering because he is a sinner and all Job needs to do to stop suffering is stop sinning, confess his sins, and beg God for forgiveness.  Then all will be lilies and roses.  Zophar does not actually know what sins Job has committed.  He just “knows” that he must have committed some heinous sin to be suffering as he is.  The main point of this book is that suffering is not always evidence that someone committed a great sin. 

Job’s next monologue contains many truths.  First, several times he says something his friends should have said themselves and that each of us should keep in mind: Job’s friends were no better than he.  And, what they were saying was not something known only to them.  I strive to remember both of these things.  I believe that I am pretty good at making people aware that I do not think I am better than they, but I struggle to remember that others often know the same insights which have come to me. 

In this monologue Job asks a rhetorical question, “Can the dead live again?”  He is sure that the answer is no, but he says something from which those who believe in the death and resurrection of Christ take great comfort.  If the dead can live again, then we have a basis for hope when we suffer.  And since Christ rose from the dead we know that the dead can indeed live again.  We know that death is not the end, so we can endure suffering knowing that even if it leads to death, God will raise us again to live with Him.

When Eliphaz first spoke, he made minor errors.  This time he gets too caught up in convincing Job that he is wrong.  Previously, Eliphaz had merely suggested that Job had sinned.  This time he makes it a full-blown accusation.  Yet, he cannot site what terrible sin Job has committed.  He has judged Job guilty of some terrible, unknown sin just because Job is suffering.  Eliphaz makes one true statement in this monologue: no man is truly pure, all have sinned.  However, he fails to see that this means that he also has sinned and is just as deserving of suffering as Job. 

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 6-10.

Job responds to Eliphaz by asking rhetorically if he does not have the right to cry out in pain when he suffers, a right to complain about the pain he experiences.  He then answers his own question by giving examples from nature.  He goes on to tell Eliphaz that his attempt at comfort was no comfort at all.  But he takes Eliphaz’s advice and lays his case before God.  However, Job goes beyond crying out to God for relief.  He accuses God of tormenting him.  Which brings us to Bildad’s response to Job.  Bildad accuses Job of claiming that God is unjust and tells him that if his children died because they were guilty of some grave sin.  Even if it is true, telling that to a grieving parent serves no useful purpose.  Worse still, Bildad uses that as a jumping off point to tell Job that all he has to do to be restored to fortune and happiness is turn from his sins and seek God.  By doing so, Bildad implies that the only reason Job is suffering is because he sinned.

Job replies to Bildad by pointing out that even if he put on a happy face as Eliphaz had suggested his pain would still be there; he would still be suffering.  He points out that while God does things too marvelous to understand, that is the problem; those things are too marvelous to understand.  We know that he does these things, we even see them being done, but we cannot see God, nor understand why He does what He does.  As a result we cannot reason with God, because we do not understand Him. Job points out that there is a disconnect between our understanding and God’s.  Then Job makes a most insightful statement: if only there was a mediator between man and God who could translate God’s thoughts so that we could understand each other.   And we have such a mediator in Jesus Christ.  

A little further on in his cry to God Job says something else very insightful, something which reflects a worldview basic to the Bible.  The New International Version translates Job 10:10-11 as:<blockquote>Did you not pour me out like milk
    and curdle me like cheese,
 clothe me with skin and flesh
    and knit me together with bones and sinews?</blockquote>

God did indeed form each and everyone of us.  So, only God has the right to decide when our lives will come to their end.  This understanding forms the basis for the prohibition against child sacrifice, or human sacrifice of any kind.  Here it is the basis for Job’s complaint: did God form him merely to make him suffer?  And yet Job wonders why God would have allowed him to be born if his only purpose was to suffer.  

I have never truly suffered from depression, but every time I read the Book of Job I feel even more strongly that reading it offers relief from that malady.    The Book of Job does not offer an easy answer to suffering.  In fact it tells us that there is no easy answer.  Which should offer some relief to those who are suffering and do not understand why.

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 1-5.

There are a lot of things that can be learned from studying the opening chapters of the Book of Job.  I want to focus on Job’s response to suffering misfortune.  When Job received news that he had lost all of his worldly possessions and that his children had been killed in a disaster, all on the same day, he threw himself on the ground in grief and worshiped God.  Then later when he was struck with a terrible illness and his wife advised him to curse God and die, he declined to do so.  Job was willing to accept both the good and the bad which came from God.  Job continued to worship and praise God even as he suffered.  Doing so is not easy and human nature spurs us to do as Job’s wife advised, but following Job’s example will bring us joy in due time.

Eventually, Job expressed the wish that he had never been born.  Such a response to suffering such as Job’s is perfectly understandable.  Job’s friend Eliphaz felt a need to respond to his friend’s deep depression, which is only natural.  We need to read what Eliphaz says here in light of the fact that at the end of this book God takes him to task for what he said to Job.  And here I find it quite clear what Eliphaz did wrong.  He begins by telling Job that he is wrong to be depressed by what he is experiencing.  Even the good advice which Eliphaz gives in the middle of this monologue becomes a sort of condemnation because of the rest of what he says.  Certainly it is good advice to suggest that those who suffer depression, whether they do so in isolation or as a result of other suffering, take it to God, because God has indeed done wonderful things which are too marvelous to understand, but Eliphaz worded his suggestion so as to imply that Job had not already done so.  In a way. Eliphaz’s response to Job suggests that Job’s suffering is not real.  When we encounter those who are suffering, we should strive to remember that their suffering is real, even if the cause may not be.  Perhaps Eliphaz meant to suggest to Job that pretending to be happy would help his situation.  That would not have been bad advice, sometimes pretending to feel a particular emotion will cause us to feel that emotion.  It probably would not have helped in this case.  I will repeat that Eliphaz was wrong to suggest that Job was in the wrong for feeling badly about the suffering he was enduring.