Chapter 42
Job answers:
3 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. [Job 42:3 ESV]
Job only speaks for 6 verses, and repents that he offered to debate with God about these things that have happened to him.
2022 - So there was some pride in Job. He spoke rashly to the living God and was wrong to question anything that God did or that God allowed. Maybe the trial was in fact, as I guessed earlier, to reveal the pride deeply rooted in Job's heart. That's my post for tomorrow, and this is the verse that goes with it.
2025 - Clearly Job repents of his prideful questioning in these first six verses of 42. He says he never had any business questioning, accusing, challenging even these horrible things in his life. He tells us why he should not have done so in vs 2: "...no purpose of yours can be thwarted." Anything that happens is according to God's own purpose. I just hate to admit that...yet it must be so. Yes, God allows Satan to actually carry out the bad things that happen. I will never believe that God causes cancer so much as He sometimes does not prevent it, because in a sinful world bad things happen to EVERYONE! Justice is not promised so much as injustice is guaranteed in a sinful world. Because injustice MUST prevail in such a world, God allows bad things to be perpetrated by Satan and his angels and to just occur as a natural consequence of corruption.
2025 - So the response to "Why would a loving God allow...", according to the book of Job, is NOT that He doesn't, but that something as small and pusillanimous and ignorant as man ought to be ashamed of himself for thinking to question ANY purpose of God. We don't like it. We don't want that to be the answer. But that IS the answer to the Bill Burr question. It is really a very simple answer.
God speaks again, this time to Job's friends. He rebukes them for speaking wrongly about Him and requires that they sacrifice 7 bulls. He tells them that if Job will pray for them, He won't do to them what they deserve for their error. God says they did not speak what was right, as Job did, making it very clear to them all that Job was right in all that he said about God, and they were wrong to accuse him.
2022 - Was Job right, and the three of them wrong? Or is the problem their misunderstanding of how God operates? Weren't they wrong to put God in a box and think they could judge His actions as fair or unfair? Job said he'd done nothing to bring this on. Job was correct...but Job was not sinless, and perhaps in vs 3 we see the purpose for Job in all this that seemed completely unjust. Hardship, especially unearned, can be about refinement, about purification. It roots out sin no matter how deeply it was buried. This was not about sin per se, but about attitude.
2025 - Job intervenes for them. Both a sacrifice of blood and the intervention of a priest were required in order for the three friends to appease God.
Elihu is not mentioned here. What is the contrast between how Job has answered God, how he has approached God, and the approach of the three friends? Job seems to have completely humbled himself - which is where Elihu indicated the purpose of all this could be found - and the friends continued to claim they knew God's ways, rather than admit that God's ways were beyond them.
2025 - I really don't like Elihu, but the fact that he is not required to be a part of the sacrifices and to ask that Job would pray for him tells us that while he may not have been exactly right, he was most certainly not as wrong as the other three. I need to study the contrasts between the three friends and Elihu.
After Job has prayed for his friends - which he did not have to do - God restores to him twice what he previously had, including 7 sons and 3 daughters, and he lives 140 MORE years after all this happens, and sees four generations born after him. It is like God gave him another lifetime entirely. The daughters names were Jemimah, meaning day light, Keziah means sweet smelling, and Keren-happuch describes a beautiful color women used to paint their eyelids.
2022 - Isn't it interesting that we are given so much information about these daughters, and none about the sons, as if Job took more pride in the girls, and this in the day when girls didn't seem to have much value. It is a strange thing.
Such a lifespan would go back to Abraham's time or before...or it was a supernatural thing that God gave Job as restoration. I note that Job's wife is not mentioned in this. Was she also the mother of the 10 later children? And Elihu is nowhere mentioned.
This is a long book, and I think that means it is important to understand the lessons it has. One lesson is that we are not to question God, no matter how certain we are that we are being punished without cause. No matter how faithful we are. Because even if we were sinless, which we can never be, it is still an act of arrogant pride to "debate" with God.
LATER...2021....Found this while reading the Psalms:
22 For all his rules were before me, and his statutes I did not put away from me. 23 I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from my guilt. 24 So the LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. 25 With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; 26 with the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous. 27 For you save a humble people, but the haughty eyes you bring down. [Psa 18:22-27 ESV]
David considers himself blameless before God. Hmm...He sees his deliverance as a reward for his blamelessness...
Then he gives some "principals" that I do not believe are universal. How much doctrine is there here? There is certainly a lot that is not easily understood in one quick reading.
I believe I used these verses for a post about how we can know what kind of person we are by the way God deals with us.
Also, here we see from David the very same philosophy of how God works on earth that Job and his friends had. Yet this would seem to be wrong. Just the opposite of these principles also occurs. Both happen. But here is a good example of how prevalent the belief that life is fair can be.