August 9th
Job and his friends’ theological conflict remains unresolved at the end of round one. Today begins round two. No one holds back. Eliphaz, offended by Job’s harsh responses, attempts a more blunt approach. Who does Job think he is? Job talks like he’s the only one with wisdom, but he’s full of hot air. Everyone knows that those who rage against God will be swallowed up by flame and darkness. But is Job raging against God here? Or is he asking good questions? Recall from Genesis 32:22-30 that the name “Israel” means “wrestles with God.” God gives the name to Jacob after Jacob “fought” with him and prevailed. The very identity of God’s people concerns honestly wrestling with life’s most challenging questions rather than assuming simplistic, religious-sounding answers. Bildad snaps at Job: Why do you talk to us like we’re dumb cows? Don’t you know what happens to the wicked? Fire devours their homes. Fear hounds their steps. Disaster peels the skin off their bodies and gnaws on their bones. Obviously. Bildad never identifies Job with the wicked in his grisly speech, but the implicit warning is clear: Watch your mouth, Job. You’re sounding pretty wicked. Job’s response to both men remains the same. God has torn my life to shreds and returned me to dust for no apparent reason. Then you guys, my so-called “friends,” start lecturing and scolding me for causing my own oozing sores and blaming me for the death of my entire family? The friends’ words aren’t only misguided or insensitive, they inflict harm. Even when the friends make legitimate points, their lack of comprehensive wisdom and spectacularly selfish timing make their words worse than useless. Well-meaning words spoken at the wrong time cause more harm than good. Wisdom requires more than simple truths out of context. Wisdom invites careful conversation at some times and patient, humble listening at others. Watch the video to learn from Jesus how to speak wisely and when to stay silent.
August 10th
Zophar wants his turn at attempting to “correct” Job. Scandalized by Job’s speeches, Zophar elbows his way to the mic. He wants to take a shot at Job this time. Like Bildad, Zophar gives another long speech about the terrible fate of wicked people. But where Bildad spoke in general terms about evil and schemes, Zophar has a more specific brand of sin in mind. Do you know what happens to people who oppress the poor, Job? They benefit from injustice to the point that it tastes sweet on their tongue. However, it then sours their stomachs until they vomit back every unjustly gained dollar. That seems to be what’s happening to you, so maybe you're the problem? Eliphaz pushes Zophar’s insinuations even further in his third speech: Look, Job, we all know that your suffering is due to sin. If you weren’t a bad guy, this wouldn’t have happened. Job resists the oversimplification: You’re convinced I deserve my suffering, that it proves I’ve done wrong. What about people who don’t get what they deserve? Or the opposite—what about murderers or tyrants who gain power and profits they do not deserve? Job’s questions invite his three friends, and all of us, to wrestle honestly with the injustice running rampant through the world. What does it look like to live well in relationship with others who assume that all suffering is a form of divine punishment? Even more, if it’s not divine punishment, then why is Job suffering? The story of Job is memorable because it engages the universal human experience of wrestling with the problem of evil. How can a good creator make a world with so much bad in it?
August 11th
After almost 30 chapters of poetic debate, the dialogue between Job and his friends starts to break down. Bildad’s final speech is only five verses— the book’s shortest chapter. Zophar doesn’t even give a third speech. Apparently, he has nothing left to say. Job, however, waxes eloquent. He cuts through Bildad’s feeble philosophizing with sharp sarcasm. Then he launches into a beautiful poem about God’s power that puts Bildad’s puny platitudes to shame. Look, Job says, God is the all-powerful creator and judge, the one who sets the skies in place and shakes out the wicked with a snarling east wind, but that doesn’t solve my suffering. God is sovereign. Check. God is omnipotent. Check. I’ve trusted and followed God, but still my family is dead, my home burned to ash, my body tormented with disease—all check. Please, God, make that make sense, somehow. Chapter 28 functions as an interlude that gives this debate a reality check. Humans may be truly ingenious at exploring and understanding the world through observation and reason, but divine wisdom that understands how things work and why things happen—that wisdom comes from God alone. Humans find wisdom through knowing God. The conclusion offers a rebuke to both sides of the debate. On one hand, Job’s friends have assumed that the world operates on a strict principle of justice, which means Job must require punishment. But that’s misguided; God’s justice co-operates with his infinite wisdom, which is a dynamic, personal activity, nota static, abstract code. On the other hand, Job has assumed that God himself must be unjust, or at least indifferent to injustice, incompetent, or maybe just petty? Either way, the simple answer is God is to blame. That’s equally misguided, as God’s way of rooting out and ultimately destroying all evil may be taking longer and requiring more complexity than Job can see from his observing and reasoning.
August 12th
Haggard and scabbed, Job takes the stand one last time to defend his position. In yesterday’s reading, he swore he would keep making his case until he was dead, and today we read his defense. Job is grief-stricken. His friends beat him down with overly confident, yet misguided, moral judgments. So Job defends his innocence with … poetry? As you’ll learn in the video, poetry works by activating our imaginations with verbal art. Today’s reading envisions layered metaphors and invites slow, patient meditation. Perhaps the author uses it here to invoke an experience of Job’s tension rather than merely providing information about it. How could God inflict such horrific suffering on a man who dressed himself in righteousness and justice? Job hasn’t so much as looked at another man’s wife. He hasn’t worshipped any stars or idols or any of that. Whenever Job saw his enemies stumble into hard times, he refused to take joy or show contempt. Job also insists that he never mistreated or even neglected the poor. When he harvested wheat from his fields, he baked bread for starving orphans. When he sheared wool from his flocks, he wove coats for shivering widows. He’s gone well beyond the requirements, so what gives? Job signs his defense and slams it down on the proverbial courtroom table: “Let the Almighty answer me!” How will God respond?
August 13th
Talk about irreconcilable differences. Job’s three friends insist Job deserves his agony: He must have sinned. Job says that’s not the case, appealing to his innocence. The friends haven’t swayed Job. He hasn’t swayed them. Everyone falls silent. But the debate isn’t over. A young man named Elihu has been watching from the sidelines. Indignant at his elders’ failure to talk sense into Job, he takes his turn in the ring. Unlike the friends, Elihu does not conclude that Job’s suffering is a result of past sin. The way he sees it, suffering is like a tool that God uses to strengthen a person’s character. “God does all these things to a person— twice, even three times—to turn them back from the pit, that the light of life may shine on them.” Notice the goal is to help people back into the light of life. Elihu may disagree with the three friends about why God allows suffering, but he shares their core conviction about how God runs the universe. He believes that when the proud puff themselves up, God knocks them back down. When the poor cry out for help, God steps in to rescue them—an important motif in the biblical story, as today’s video explains. When tyrants scheme to get ahead, God topples them from their thrones. For Elihu, suffering must fit into a simple formula. But did God build the world this way?
August 14th
Job’s first three friends were long-winded, but Elihu has been carrying on his poetic rant for three chapters already. He shows no signs of stopping. He does not accuse Job or say he deserves suffering. Instead, Elihu emphasizes the idea that God ultimately exposes and judges wickedness and brings justice to the afflicted. He’s affirming that God is indeed good, and he wants Job to allow that truth to reframe the way he understands suffering. You, Job, are pleading to God for relief from your suffering. But maybe the suffering itself is helping you avoid wrongdoing. Is avoiding suffering more important to you than avoiding evil? Still, Elihu cares less about the source of Job’s suffering and more about the pride of Job’s self-righteous response. Why does Job think it’s okay to start pound, pound, pounding on Heaven’s door to demand a defense from God? As Elihu sees it, Job's suggestion that God is either neglectful or unjust is misguided and presumptuous. Asking God to clarify confusion, challenging God’s instructions, even asking God to explain himself—these are positive things throughout Scripture. But presuming that one’s perspective is more accurate than God’s? That won’t work. Job, do not forget that God (not you) created everything and has infinite knowledge about the way it all works. What could we teach the God who piles up pillars of cloud in the sky, who nourishes life with gentle rain, and who hurls lightning across tumultuous seas? Critically thinking about creation and its creator is different than criticizing the creator, and Elihu sees no legitimate basis for criticizing God. Whose glory flares brighter than the sun and whose thunderous voice shakes the mountains to their roots? How will God respond to Job’s anguished complaints? We haven’t heard God’s thunderous voice yet, but we will soon.
August 15th
While reading through the last 35 chapters, we’ve heard many human voices talking about God. Now, Yahweh blazes onto the scene in a powerful, whirlwind storm to speak directly with Job, who has been demanding an explanation for the intense misery and catastrophic loss he’s been suffering. Yahweh responds with 77 questions for Job. That’s not how Job was expecting the conversation to go. Yahweh’s opening inquiries take Job on a virtual tour of the universe. The first set of questions (chapter 38) turns Job’s attention to cosmic origins and function. God isn’t condescending or shaming Job here. God is boldly reminding Job that he, not Job, creates and sustains life. In chapter 39, God zooms from cosmic space down to the way living creatures eat and produce offspring. In the same way Job could not understand the intricacies involved with things like hanging stars in the night sky, Job cannot deeply understand how God nourishes and reproduces life through nesting birds and prowling lions. As an experienced livestock farmer, Job is an expert on animals. But as a (limited) human being, Job needs the original creator’s expertise to understand how creation operates. Creation itself reveals a complexity beyond our comprehension. That vast majesty invites Job, and everyone who reads the book of Job, to consider humanity’s limited perspective. Perhaps God’s ways lie beyond Job’s reach … at least for now.