Chapter 14
1 "Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. [Job 14:1 ESV]
Oft-quoted verse. Some versions include "a" before woman, some do not. Some I looked at - NLT for example - are just completely out there. Why did they think they had to improve a verse like this? Much of it is scrambling to make it gender inclusive. The scrambling is obvious in some of the translations, but I will not include them here.
5 Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass, 6 look away from him and leave him alone, that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day. [Job 14:5-6 ESV]
This seems kind a common attitude. People don't want to deal with things, just to enjoy their days like a hired hand. If it is the same attitude Job had, can it be all bad? Is Job wrong to wish this?
Seems that Job has decided he would rather live without God's intervention than to continue being punished. His assumption is that God's attention to him brings only trouble, so feel free to look after other people. Sure doesn't seem like the right attitude...but this is Job. God was pretty proud of him, and God tells Satan that Job is doing well. As long as he does not lose his faith in God, this suggests that it is ok to...what....prefer no intervention from God at all? Maybe...Job isn't saying God has no right to treat him this way, just that he doesn't understand it, and would prefer a different, and also inexplicable state to this one. A life without any notice from God is no more natural that what Job is going through here.
2023 - Oh my...here it is again. Still the Bill Burr argument. Job is saying that God has already determined everything that is going to happen to him, from beginning to end. So instead of punishing him for some random, indiscernible sin, why not just leave him alone to do what it has been determined that he will do? Why put this whole load of stress on him to "do what God wants", if God has already determined what he will do? It is the same. "You made me this way, how can you now blame me for being this way?" I have never seen all these things in here before. And look at the answer...because God somehow still gives us a choice, we are still moral agents with moral decisions to make, and he still expects his creation to make the right moral choices. We train dogs to do as we want them to do. We constrain them in various ways. Yet we expect them to CHOOSE the right way, we expect them to comply with our standards! They cannot, because they are dogs. We cannot do according to God's pleasure because we are "fallen man", not perfect man. Adam has brought it al down on us, not God. But what is life without ambition? What is life without trying? What is life without meaning and to what end would it lead?
This would be a telling post, with the video clip of Burr's position as the "picture" below. Start the post with "watch the video first" and then show that this is the oldest argument there is, and that it is silly now as it has always been.
Man's existence contrasted with a tree. A tree can be cut down and the stump rot in the ground, but when water comes, it will put out new branches just like a young tree. Not so with man. When we die, we are gone for good until the resurrection.
2023 - This verse: 12 so a man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused out of his sleep. [Job 14:12 ESV]. Look how this verse from the Bible's oldest book is consistent with what we know of the GWT judgment. The old heaven and the old earth will be no more. Verse 13 is about wrath poured out, and vs 14 is about either the rapture for the saved or the GWT for the lost...or for all the OT saints as I see it.
He would be hidden away in Sheol alive, only to come forth when his days are up, and it is time for him to die. He'd rather know nothing of the world for the rest of his days, and then be "awakened" to die.
Interesting verses for the geologists:
18 "But the mountain falls and crumbles away, and the rock is removed from its place; 19 the waters wear away the stones; the torrents wash away the soil of the earth; so you destroy the hope of man. [Job 14:18-19 ESV]
These constant changes had already been noted in Job's time. He sees these changes - this inevitability that the works of man will not be permanent - as a proof of God's continuity and man's brevity.
Possible short FB post