40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Job 1:1-12 (Episode 383)

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Chad and Daniel begin the book of Job in this episode. Job is an upright and blessed family man who is about to lose everything. Satan comes before God after roaming the earth. God praises Job and the Devil challenges God and agrees. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: 2023 HWSS Conference Livestream Signup Free 2023 Advent Resources 2024(May 3-4) NWA Tickets are Now Available! Join the 1517 Academy All Charges Dropped, Vol. 2 More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there And while you're over there, make sure you go to the events page. You can check out where all 1517 speakers are speaking. So it's not just, you know, we do a couple conferences, but we also have a speakers network that sends people like Chad and sometimes myself and guys like Eric Sorensen and Scott Keith

and Dan Van Voorhis. You know, we go around, do some speaking. And if you want to figure out if we're near you, you can go and go to the events page. But while you're at the events page, make sure you scroll until you hit that regional event in Northwest Arkansas. That's our event. That's Northwest Arkansas' regional Here We Still Stand conference. It's the fourth year we're doing it.

It's sold out every year. You can get tickets right now. I recommend that you do. It is the first weekend in May. Chad will be there. I'll be there. A whole bunch of other people will be there. It's going to be a good time.

It's a good place. Come to the Ozarks in the spring. There's a link in the show notes as well if you just want to fast track over to the registration page and get those tickets, come hang out with us. It's going to be a good time. Chad, we are starting a new book today. This is kind of an interesting section of the Bible where you get this Esther-Jobe back-to-back,

where you get these two books that are just different. Jonah kind of falls in that category as well. But this is one of those books where it starts, and you definitely don't know when we're talking about. I mean, maybe you have some ideas. Every time I read Job, I'm like, when is this happening? Oh, I've got the definitive answer. Yeah.

All the commentaries, all the scholars will be coming to this episode, in fact, to find out the answer. Yeah. No. No. I mean, it is one of the weird things about Job. It's sort of a, I mean, so it's definitely set, the narrative is set in a patriarchal period. I mean, we'll talk about how we know that. But so in that way, it's kind of a cool bookend to Esther, because Esther is like way late.

You know, we're in the Persian period. It's even after the Babylonians. I mean, this is like the very end. So Esther's on the one end of the spectrum. And then you got Job, though. I mean, he's like, you could see like Abraham walking up, checking on Job. I mean, it's just, it's kind of that, that whole flavor to the narrative. He's out offering sacrifices for his kids.

And, you know, there's no mention in the entire book of anything related to like the Exodus. Right. Nothing like that. So all the things that we would expect from an Old Testament book aren't there. Or just like, or even just like, even just like people that we know, right? Like there's, this would help you sort of situate it, but you're like, there's no characters in this book that you're like, ah, there he is. Like, oh, so this prophet shows up or something.

Right, right. Yeah. So, you know, when, and you can find all kinds of ideas out there. I mean, even among conservative scholars as to when it was written, but whenever it was actually like put pen to scroll, the story itself is set way before any of the, you know, Israel existed or anything like that. because just the whole the tone of it the uh the characters in it what what job does all of that stuff is uh very patriarchal very kind of you know pre-jacob i guess you would say or uh or at least pre-joseph kind of stuff going on so it's it's a genesis kind of book in other words yeah so so anyway yeah uh so we'll get to the we'll get to the uh the meat of the story itself in a minute

just kind of a reminder i'm sure everyone is you know somewhat familiar with the book at least the story itself but it is different because you know you start out with uh you think it's going to be another prose narrative because that's what arts you know there was a man in the land of us whose name was job okay this is gonna be a story so you get the story and you get a couple of chapters of that and just prose you know maybe a couple little uh little verse little poetry verses thrown in there like you know the lord gave the lord's taken away blessed be the name of the lord but you you go from that in chapter three to uh to poetry and for a long time you had this whole series of poetic speeches back and forth back and forth and then you get to the very

end and in the last chapter not at the beginning of the chapter i think at the seventh verse job 42 verse 7 you slip back into into prose again slip back into narrative so you're starting out with a story basically about this guy named job we'll hear what he's like his qualities and his family and his possessions and then then there's a change of scene of course to this heavenly throne room where you're going to have this dialogue back and forth between god and satan but anyway that's that's the structure of the book a couple of chapters of narrative prose bunch of chapters of this dialogue poetry between joe his three friends some dude who jumps in that whatever he may introduce to named elihu who then disappears totally from the scene

and then god speeches and then the narrative again so that's kind of the the structure yeah Yeah, it's a strange book in that way, right? Like where you're like, it's a story, but it's also, there's a lot of poetry in this book. A lot of poetry, yeah, yeah. And very, I mean, I know that we're not looking at all intricacies of the Hebrew, but it's like very, Job is, for those people who read Hebrew, Job is infamous for the difficulty of the Hebrew. so it's even you know it's it's unique it's not just poetry but it's very very high level

difficult hebrew poetry it's not like you're reading you know one of jeremiah's laments or even isaiah with this elevated elevated poetry this is on a whole different level yeah or the song that sets it apart too yeah or the psalms right yeah i mean i can i can open up the psalms in hebrew and i can read them pretty easily uh without looking up a lot of words but open up jobe and it's a whole different whole different picture i felt like i'm elementary again just look at looking at looking at the hebrew they're there so and another real striking feature about the book is the character of jobe because it's like you start out jobe has all these tremendous losses and he comes across as like this you know this stalwart champion of acceptance of

suffering well you know the lord gave the lord lord takes away bless me in the name of the lord or as he says to his wife you know are we supposed to just accept good from the lord and not and not evil or not however you want to translate that bad stuff and then you're like wow man this guy's he's unique nobody just accepts suffering like that and then you turn the page to chapter three and whoa we got a different job here he's cursing the day of his birth yeah and then he's lambasting god and he's you know wanting his day in court with god so you i i and i i love that about job because you can you you see that there's there's different ways of dealing with suffering there may be times in in our lives where we're like man you know that what happened was horrific

uh but blessed be the name of the lord the lord gave and the lord has taken away and and that's fine but there's plenty of other times where we're crying out a lament why how long where are you god all the all those things that job does on steroids i mean he's really going hard against what he considers to be this injustice that's been done to him. So you've got different sides of Job. Yeah, it's one of those things where every person's sort of breaking point is different. And Job's breaking point is further down the road than most, I would say. He can endure a lot, it would seem. But what you discover, and you're going to see this sort of Satan-God arrangement here is that this is kind of what the devil's out to do is like figure out which straw how many

straws can this camel's back take and uh we're gonna figure out where exactly the the last one is joe's back can take a lot of straw uh but yeah the encouraging the kind of encouraging thing about job is that i mean if you just wanted a hero story and uh and he can shoulder an infinite amount of straw, then that's a nice story, but also nothing like us. However, Job's back can't take an infinite amount of straw. It could take a lot. It could probably take, it would seem more than me, probably more than you, Chad, but there is a point where that's now become too much. Yeah, you know, one thing I've noticed, too, in my own life and the lives of other people is that, especially believers there is i have seen plenty of instances where there's like this initial

i don't know how to how to describe it there's an initial kind of joe black moment where your trust in god is strong despite the tremendous loss you've just suffered but then there's tomorrow and then there's the next week and then there's the next month and so that initial job like the lord's taken the lord is lord is given the lord's taken away that can begin to fade as more and more of what maybe initially seemed surreal begins to just kind of seep into your bones as a horrific reality now you have to live with yeah i think that that you see that reflected not in job only job's life but in our lives as well because the longer we bear up under sufferings the more the questions arise and we're like the hell is going on here you know so there is a

you morph into i think more of a questioning lamenting stance the longer the reality of the suffering is imposed upon you well it's sort of uh if you're trying you might be able to shoulder something pretty heavy so you're like all right here's your uh here's your big bundle of straw and you're like i can lift that and and uh the question though becomes like can you keep lifting it tomorrow and the next day and the next day how long can you carry it right so so maybe maybe it doesn't even uh maybe not even after all the suffering is uh totaled up and placed on you maybe you can walk a day or two days or three days but like can you how how long how long without it being removed can you endure yeah that's what part of it is part of it's just a uh the devil goes on

the war of attrition with job like how long though without relief are you going to be able to endure this suffering yeah well that's why one of those common questions in the psalms and i don't know about job i haven't checked but in psalms how long yeah you know this isn't just a day or a week i mean this has been going on a while so how long oh lord is this is this going to be happening so that's part of i think what what's what's happening in job's life yeah so i don't know if there's much more to be said just to come out by way of of introduction we'll have you know we'll flesh out more of these details as we get into uh into the story itself but uh that's kind of basically you started with the prose the end of prose in between well toward

the toward the the end of chapter two you're introduced to these three friends of of job and then most of the time in their conversations job introduces it and they respond and job introduces it and they respond and then toward the very end it's like they just give up and job has like these three speeches where they don't say anything then he lie who appears in the scene he speaks nobody even responds to him even god and uh then god responds and then we have the the wrap up so that's kind of the big picture and uh we'll uh we'll get to the details as we work our way work while we're through it so verse one verse one tells us almost everything that we need to know about uh the character of job so and this tells us his character where he lives but also uh the

the fact that this is going to be wisdom literature so the the very adjectives the phrases that are used to describe job introduces us to the genre of wisdom literature i'll talk about more of that more of that in just a second so verse one there was a man in the land of us uz whose name was job and that man was blameless and upright one who feared god and turned away from evil so i one of the commentators i was reading this morning who what's this guy's name david clines uh had a great point about this you know people debate where's this land of us at you know where is this located uh and his comment was it's more important that we know where it's not than we know where it is and his uh his point was that it's not israel right so this so we're

outside of israel that's the main point here so wherever the land of us is it's not israel so we're looking at something which is we're looking at literature looking at a story that is not uh israelite in nature now it's got plenty of israelite theology baked into it but this guy so if we're looking at a patriarchal kind of era stage of history this is pre-israel has nothing to do specifically with it with the the elect people of god the israelite so in that way it becomes universalizing so it's not just just not just the israelite piece of literature now us is Lamentations, I believe it's Lamentations Chapter 4

421, puts it in parallel With Edom Edom, of course, is the country named after Esau So south of Israel So there's a possibility that Uz Was located there, and there's some other Some of the names of the characters seem to be Edomite related

So maybe That's where it was located But its location is not what's important Where it's not is what Is important So Job, he's described with language that could be plucked right from the text of Proverbs. And that's important. So he's blameless.

He's upright. He fears God and he turns away from evil. Now you can find all of the, of course, all of those scattered throughout the scriptures, but they are concentrated in wisdom literature. Now that's important because number one, it tells you that he is characterized, he's a characteristic wise man with all that implies means he you know he cares about justice he cares about righteousness he cares about fearing god he cares about doing all the things that are typical of a wise person but it also means that when we put job the book into the

genre of wisdom literature we're we're we're we immediately have kind of a jarring contrast is set up not contradiction but contrast because what you what you have a lot in the book of proverbs is basically this idea that if you lead this kind of life righteous wise fearing god then the result will be something positive in your life a lot of the proverbs are like that now that can that kind of if then formula if you are righteous then this good thing will result even though it's true it's a generalization and generalizations of course have to leave room for exceptions and so job enters the picture as a huge literary exception saying yeah well it doesn't always work out that way does it well well with job with job

with job initially you're like okay so he's doing the things man so he's blameless and he's upright he's fearing God, he's turning away from evil, and look at all this stuff he has. This is the way you want to do it. I mean, you live this way. Formula right there. Yeah, living right, and you're living your best life right now. But then you discover that also, if you live this way, there also might be like a bet made between the devil and God regarding your piety, and uh this is not something anyone wants no no yeah that formula kind of piety leads to prosperity that's it that's the impression that you get when you're first look at this guy why maybe if i'm blameless upright fear god and torn from evil i too can have all these kids and sheep and camels

and oxen and and everything else you know so yeah i mean that that's the initial impression that you good and then you you switch after a few verses to listening to what god and satan are talking about but i think that's it it's important right away to get to understand that job is being held up even god will say in a little bit nobody else is like him yeah and no no none other are like him so the the impression we're given of job uh is it's kind of in the superlatives right i mean this guy is it blameless upright fearing god torn from evil this is he's not doing this hypocritically this is who he is all right so and then he he has uh this after his characters described we hear more about uh his family as well as his possessions so he had uh seven sons

and and three daughters uh now with with all the with apologies to all the ladies out there in in the near east having more sons and daughters was considered to be good so whether that's true or not that's just what they thought hey a lot of so we had a lot of land to work that's right that's right it's all these boys out there with uh plows you know there's this great line in ruth 415 it says that ruth was better than seven sons which you know what a great compliment for ruth but the the comparison there is like well seven sons must be pretty good then if ruth is better than seven sons of course it's a it's also an ideal number seven obviously and then you so you have seven sons and then you have three daughters well you put those two together

of course and you have 10 which is another this great biblical number of completeness so notice also what happens here so we have seven sons but he also possessed 7 000 sheep and then he has three daughters and he also has 3 000 camels so the kind of numerical symbolism continues into outside his family and into his possessions he's got uh not just the sheep and camels he's got 500 yoke of oxen he's got 500 female donkeys which if the commentators are right i mean i'm not a donkey guy i've never had male donkeys or female donkeys but according to the commentators female donkeys are better uh they produce milk they're supposedly easier to ride i don't know i i was less stubborn not donkeys so yeah maybe less stubborn yeah i was a horse guy growing up not

a donkey guy so uh any donkey experts out there can correct me but that's what i read anyway so this guy man this guy's rich he's got a big family 10 kids total he's got a thousands of of livestock all the sheep all the camels all the oxen all the female donkeys well if you got if you have that many animals what else i don't care if you have 20 or 30 sons you're gonna have to have a lot of people working for you so he also has we're told very many servants in fact job had so much that he we read that he was the greatest of all the well esv translates this as sons of the east it is uh literally the sons of the i mean turns the people of the east is literally sons of the sons of the east so famous uh and wealthy and pious and uh seems to have you know everything

that anybody would want so that's this opening three verses when we hear more now about one aspect of the way in which his character showed through so verse four says his sons used to go and they would have a feast in the house of each one on his day i don't we're not we're not told what this exactly refers to i'm guessing a birthday maybe yeah anyway his day whatever it is it kind of makes sense logically makes sense so they have this having a party you know on it was it was his birthday so son won they everybody guys at his place and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them have an ideal situation described here all the families together they're having a feast and the feast would go on for this isn't like sunday dinner this is

a several day feast so when the day the days not day but days of the feast had run their course then job would send and consecrate them and then he would get up early in the morning and he would offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all because job said it may be that my children have sinned and cursed god in their hearts and this is what job did continually now that tells us this is uh this is a huge indicator of the fact that we're looking at uh kind of a patriarchal period because this is exactly the kind of thing that abraham would have done or isaac or jacob or whoever and they were they served the the pater familias the head of family he served as the priest he's the one who's offering sacrifices he's engaged not just being a

dad uh not just being a husband but he's also the priest of the priest of the family so one little tidbit here uh that's it's kind of you may notice this in your bibles if you look but it says that job thought it may be that my children have sinned and cursed god in their hearts now hebrew does something kind of strange sometimes so if if there's a statement that's considered to be uh oh how to put it uh like uh maybe blasphemous or uh it just not looking good toward god then in the actual hebrew text they'll switch the word to a euphemism so if you're reading along in hebrew they'll switch it to like almost the opposite right yeah yeah so it may be that my children have sinned and blessed god in their hearts that's what the hebrew text reads yeah

but it's a euphemism and we have this this isn't just isolated joe there's other places where this happens too so in the actual hebrew text they've written blessed with the understanding that when you read that you're gonna be oh i see that's a euphemism for the opposite so that's why it's translated as cursed in most english english translations so job is i don't know my impression him he's like hyper vigilant i mean this guy he's even worried about his kids thinking blasphemous thoughts in their hearts while they have this birthday feast and so he's going to get them all together he's going to have this little ritual of consecration whatever it might be and uh then he's going to offer burnt suffer burnt offerings sacrifices so that uh just in case they did

something wrong they're covered yeah this is kind of funny to have this uh this guy i mean it says something about, like, sort of the father that Job is, but just in case, these precautionary sacrifices, you know, like, well, there's a big party going on, and they were all there, and you know, chances are somebody sinned somewhere. Better take care of this. I don't have a specific sin in mind. I don't have any—I didn't hear anything, but I'm just going to go ahead and do this. uh yeah we know a bunch of kids get together eating and drinking no telling what's going on their heart so we're gonna we're gonna cover them now of course the the impact of this is just to to paint a fuller portrait of job to make sure that we right away as we as we enter this story

job is elevated to almost kind of a superhuman status i mean i've never met i've never met a guy like this who has all this stuff he's so incredibly pious taking care of his family uh you know interestingly i had not noticed this until this morning you know the one thing that's not mentioned in the first five verses that job has that you might assume would be there i think it's his wife and uh yeah that would be that would be it yeah uh interesting omission not part of the blessing not part of the blessing now for those of you who uh who know the story you'll probably understand why because uh her her portrayal there is not quite ambiguous as to what uh as to her relation to joe because as we'll see at one point she's going to say you know why are you holding

fast to your integrity joe curse god and die yeah i mean so maybe that's the reason that she's not held up as a blessing yeah what you're gonna find is that uh i think the reason she's omitted here is because all of these things are things that when the devil wants to torment job he takes away uh when the devil wants also wants to torment job he does he he leaves his wife so uh that tells you something about uh you know maybe i don't know if there's a little demon conference, and they said, all right, and now for the final stroke, we take his wife, and the devil's like, no, no, no, no, no. We're trying to torment this guy. We leave her. That's not good. Probably Chad and I are going to develop a Bible study curriculum. Maybe we'll do... The goal in life

is to be the kind of spouse that if the devil's trying to torment the other spouse, that you end up dead. It's the goal. We'll get to work on that right away. Yeah. If the devil would leave you around when he's trying to torment your spouse, I don't know if you're doing it right. Probably not. Probably not a good indication. All right, so

everybody by now, just five verses in, should have in their minds a pretty good picture of the kind of guy that Job is. All right. Now we're going to switch. We've spent some time kind of checking out his life, his family,

his character, his possessions. his priesthood all that kind of stuff now we're going to totally change directions verse 6 and this is the first of I think 3 or 4 times when we're going to hear

the same phrase now there was a day when so verse 6 introduces us to that verse 13 is also going to say now there was a day when and that's when he's going to lose all his stuff and then verse chapter 2 verse 1 starts out

again there was a day when so that that that phrase helpfully kind of delineates these different parts of the of the narrative as we work our way through it so we're going to switch now from earth to heaven and we're going to see what happens in this heavenly council type room where you got all these uh b'nai ha'lohim which is translated usually the sons of god are going to show up and then satan or more specifically the satan is among them So let me just read verses 6 through 12, and we'll get the full thing at once. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.

The Lord said to Satan, From where have you come? Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth a blameless and upright man who fears god and turns away from evil then the lord answered then satan answered the lord and said does joe fear god for no reason have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side he blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land

but stretch out your hand and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face and the lord said to satan behold all that he has is in your hand only against him do not stretch out your hand so satan went out from the presence of the lord so we'll stop there so again switch from earthly scene to the heavenly scene this is the uh the heavenly courtroom heavenly council that we hear about and a lot of other places in the scriptures where you have god and then you have around him these uh angelic courtiers or have whatever you want to refer to them as here they're called the baneha elohim same phrase that's used uh other places in scripture like genesis chapter 6 and in other places where these uh what we ordinarily refer

to as angels uh created beings are called the sons of god and they're called sons of god for the same reason for instance that these prophetic bands like in the elijah and elisha's day were called the sons of the prophets because they are connected to this figure that they are kind of serving or learning from whatever it might be so don't in other words don't interpret these sons of god as if they are the same as jesus the son of god these are creative beings who are celestial and they're servants of the lord they're just called different things in scriptures i mean sometimes they're called uh servants sometimes they're called angels sometimes they're called the heavenly host kind of heavenly army here they're called the sons of god so they come to

present themselves before the lord and satan also came among him among among them uh i don't want to go to too too much in the weeds on this literally it is uh hasatan so the satan and uh this is the typical actually typical way in the old testament that he's introduced where it's not a name per se but a title right but what you see i think that is kind of important uh the the satan so you could just think of this like as ah the devil there you go this you know satan shows up but this is like literally and correct me if i'm wrong chad you forgot but like this is literally the accuser shows up right so like or the adversary shows up right right uh so it's which i like because it's it's a title but it's also a description of what who is this person

Well, he's the one that accuses people. Is he going to be an adversary to Job? I would think so. This is exactly right. And so it's informative for how we think about the devil, as opposed to just sort of this dark force that is just the opposite of God, just the sort of yin and yang kind of thing. no like this is the person who accuses us this is the one who is an adversary to us that's that's who he is yeah that helps to kind of correct what may be considered by some kind of a dualism yeah you know these dualistic uh like zoroastrianism these dualistic religions where yeah you got god on one hand you got satan on the other hand and like equal in power and they're you know light and dark all that no that's not that's not the case at all in fact as we see from the narrative of job he can't do anything without god's without god's approval so yeah and i do like the fact that it's a title i mean it becomes a name later on but the name is based upon the title itself and

the title is based upon what it means to satan someone so when you satan someone and that early in the biblical narrative it can just mean to stand to get somebody so there are occasions when the the messenger of the lord satans someone it just means that he stands in the way he's an adversary to in this case like to bail him as he's going to um to address the israelites but most of the time it's used in a negative sort of way where the verb satan is an adversary it's an accuser so this is the guy who's the adversary this is the accuser himself he ends up there too and uh the lord begins to address him it says you know where have you come from and then satan says i've been going all over the place i'm going to and from the earth walking up and walking up and

down and i i never can hear that verse without thinking of uh peter he says the devil's a prowling lion you know it was a line it was lions like going to and fro on the earth he's walking up and down he's looking for someone to to devour he's been he's been checking things out so the lord says have you considered my servant job and then we have god basically affirming you know in case there was any doubts affirming the very things we've heard about from the opening verses that there's none like him on the earth he's blameless he's upright he fears god he turns from turns from evil and uh you have to have this ongoing dialogue and basically what the satan what the the accuser says is well obviously he's like this because you have built a fence around

him the the hebrew there is kind of the idea of like a a fence made of thorns or something like a boma you know you get this you get this fence made of all this uh this thorny material so that nothing can get to him and as a result of this well yeah job is all has all the stuff we've already heard about in those opening verses and therefore satan says take all that away you know burn down the hedge take take down the fence and uh he's going to curse you to your face so the only reason so in other words job is the way he is because you've made life so easy for him but take away all these all these sorts of things and then you'll realize exactly what kind of person he is and instead of blessing you he's going to curse you to your to your face this is

why i include in my daily prayer for god not to point me out to the devil you know i don't think we had to worry about this i don't know that i doubt that god talks about us like this exactly uh chad but uh have you considered my servant daniel no i don't need that yeah i don't you don't want my piety to catch god's attention have you considered my servant i don't think anyone who knows us let me like yeah i think you're pretty safe yeah you're gonna be you're gonna be good yeah one of the things that's interesting about this is that that this is what it might feel like what joe was about to happen to joe because obviously god basically says i'll take you up on this challenge like okay so let's see let's see if

this is true there are certainly times in your life where you feel that i think maybe right now god and the devil are against me like i feel i feel like i am like i have been like what like, what's going on right now? I have no friend with power, right? And God is just, at the very least, indifferent to what's going on here, if not complicit in it, you know? And you might feel that way. I mean, Job's got to have to feel that way. Oh, yeah, absolutely. See, we know what's going on. He doesn't. yeah i mean that's that's another a very stark difference between our perception of this book and job's obsession what's going on so we're privy to all these details he's not now i i used to

think well if job knew it would make it maybe it would make it better i don't know that it would make it better in fact it maybe would make it worse maybe if job were privy to all these terrible things are happening to him i mean privy to the reason he'd be like well i wish i didn't even know and ignorance might not be bliss but it's less painful than than knowing under these circumstances i'm sure i'm sure joe would be would be rolling out if he knew if god was like all right listen you're so good and so pious that i'm gonna let the devil mess with you for a little while i'm sure joe would be like so the the saying no good deed goes unpunished is exactly right like what's that you would say what's the point in being blameless if this is what you get like

so i got i'm i'm over here trying to walk upright and i'm i'm doing apparently a pretty good job of this and nobody's doing it better than me and this is what you get yeah not a very good incentive of the book no yeah i think we still would have a lot of speeches from job except that the content would have been would have been different uh his laments would have taken on a on a different tone but i mean that's that's the kind of situation that we're at now uh we're gonna we'll see of course in verses 13 to following what what happens but it's pretty good setup for for what's what's coming next we uh we know who he is we know what he's like and we know what's happening on earth and now we also know at least initially in this opening heavenly scene what's happening what's

happening up there and as the story unfolds we'll see more and more about of course what he what he what he loses, and how Job responds to it. And as I read through the book, the transition that seems to take place for me is we move from a story about Job, the man, to a story about every man, so that Job takes on this kind of universal character, and we'll begin to see how we see ourselves in his struggles, and how he responds, and then ultimately, the instruction that we have as the as the book book gets toward the end and god begins to speak

to him so i'm looking forward to it i mean i know it's a it's a dark book in many ways it's a hard book but i think it's extremely practical in the sense of it it it touches the core of what we all go through maybe we don't lose anything close to what joe lost but we're all going to experience losses and sorrows in life. So it's going to be a great book to work our way through. Awesome. All right, that is it. We will be back next week to see where the devil starts.

It'll be a bummer, but you should come and join us to see where the devil starts and how Job responds. We'll check it out next week. Chad, I'll see you then. All right, see you then. We'll see you next time.