40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Job 13:1-28 (Episode 398)

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

Job continues his response to Zophar. Job's friends have made a mistake by attempting to be God's press secretaries. Job only hopes in God and because of that demands an audience with Him. And while he longs for death, Job will not bring it about. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: Freedom Lessons Album Your God is too Glorious, 2nd Edition by Chad Bird Schweitzer's Psychoanalysis of Jesus Christ: & Other Essays in Christian Psychotherapy by John Warwick Montgomery Free 2023 Advent Resources 2024 NWA Tickets (May 3-4) 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 to check it out. All the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, you can grab one of the last 40 tickets to the Here We Still Stay in Regional event in Northwest Arkansas. There's 40 tickets hanging around. So now you've got your Christmas shopping out of the way.

You've got your Christmas festivities out of the way. It's time to start thinking about hanging out in spring in the beautiful Ozarks. You can grab that ticket. Those tickets won't be there long. Go ahead and hit that link in the show notes or go over to the website and go to events, find the regional event, and register for that. It's going to be a good time. Chad, this is the first episode after Christmas.

that we've recorded. I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. I know I did. Chad moved, so, I mean, it probably didn't feel as merry and bright as maybe it did. Felt a little more like, you know, back-breaking labor, but Chad,

you guys can't see him, but he's in a new spot. Of course. I am. Did he move out of Texas? Never. Of course not. No, no, no, that's, yeah, that was not up for debate.

We just shifted our Texas location. Yeah, our house was decorated with cardboard boxes this past week. We moved one week before Christmas, so it was a very, very busy week. But, hey, we're pretty much settled in. My study here is put together for the most part, so settled into my new little cave where I hide myself most days. Yeah, awesome. Well, all right.

Well, we're trying to remember where we were at because, you know, we uh chad was moving so we recorded some episodes in advance and then we had a christmas episode so it's actually been a little while since chad and i recorded uh but we are in job chapter 13 and uh job is continuing a response and uh so you're like oh man let me see if i can remember well uh job is answering so far and uh and he's he starts out and in chapter 12 he's a little sarcastic, you know? He has some words to say about wisdom dying with Zophar, of course, like wisdom's going to die with him, and why don't you go talk to that bush? Why don't you go talk to that tree? Try to figure out, you try to really solve the riddle of what's happening to me,

and is if God involved? Well, let me tell you, he's involved. Go ask that tree, go ask that bush, go ask that bird, they'll all tell you, because it's plain to them that God is involved in all of this. And the next chapter here, chapter 13, is appropriately titled Job Continues. But the thing that's interesting about this is the second part of the title is still I will hope in God. And so the reason I'm bringing all this up is that it's important to remember that what Job has just said is that God is without question in his mind involved in what is happening to him. Now this might cause you to say, well, then God is my enemy, obviously. Job has said, God has obviously set his sights on me, God is opposed to me, but then says this thing, that he's going to still

have his hope there, which is a pretty astounding statement of faith, because I've never had this kind of situation, like what Job has going on, Chad, but you've had those situations where you're like, man, where is God? That's one situation. You might be wondering where He is. He seems absent. Then you might have an even more extreme situation where you're like, is God against me? I feel like God is not just ambivalent towards me, but that He is quite the opposite, and in fact is opposed to me right now. And that's the situation Job finds himself in. But this next chapter is really a statement to the faith of Job. oh yeah absolutely in fact we will have uh one of the more famous verses in this chapter about

though he slay me yet will i hope in him and that in many ways sums up job's job stance especially in this chapter he's going to also talk about how he really wishes uh to kind of have a uh a face-to-face discussion uh argument uh in a in sort of a trial form with god so that he could kind of get to the bottom of this i think it's one of the struggles he voices here is i mean it's yeah he wonders why god is doing all this uh he's wondering you know when is it going to end why can he just die all these sorts of questions but at the base of it he really wants to know what's the source of all this i mean it's not it obviously not what my friends think it's not this secret sin that i've covered up and now god has brought it to light and he's punishing me for

this. Job knows that that is not the case. So what is it? So he's going to use a lot of kind of courtroom language in chapter 13 to talk about how he wishes that he could have his day in court or at least in the same room with God to just talk through this. I mean, I think we've all been there. I have been, you know, why is this happening? You know, I wish God would just come down and sit in front of me and so I could ask him some questions and he could not just hear me, but respond to me and give me the reasons behind this. And even though I know on one level, it probably wouldn't satisfy, wouldn't satisfy me. On the other hand, it would sure be nice at least hear some answers, even if I don't understand those answers. And that's kind of where Job is at,

you know, give me some answers, talk to me, don't just remain silent or don't just, you know, make me a laughingstock or don't make me your, uh, your archery target, but give me some answers. That's what he's going to voice in these opening verses. So he starts out with, behold, my eye has seen all this. My ear has heard and understood it. He's talking to his friends. So, you know, what your eye has seen, I've seen it too. What your ear has heard, well, I've heard that too.

So it's not as if you have accumulated more knowledge or experience than I have. I've got the same material. I'm working with the same material that you have. In fact, what you know, I also know. I am not inferior to you. So you're at least talking to an equal here. He's saying this to his three friends. So it's not like you're just really laying some great knowledge on me

or some experience that I don't also have at my disposal. We're coming from the same kinds of backgrounds, same kinds of knowledge. But verse 3, here's what I want to do. i would speak to the almighty and i desire to argue my case with with god that verb that's used here for argue and different forms of that root are going to occur i think three or four times in this chapter sometimes it's translated different sorts of ways but this interestingly is the same verb that's used in uh isaiah chapter 1 verse 18 come let us reason together You could also translate that, argue together.

But that seems to be kind of what's going on here. He wants to argue his case before God, but not in the sense of, like, if you take somebody to court, your goal, of course, is to win. You want to be the winner. You want him to be the loser. You want to get whatever you're pursuing or whatever the case may be. I don't think that's really what Job was looking for. He's not looking to win a case before God, where God's a loser and Job is the winner. He just wants to come to some sort of agreement, some sort of understanding with God.

So let me argue my case, or let me at least let us reason together, talk through this, so we can come to some sort of resolution. That's what he wants. That's what he wants to do. He goes on, verse 4, to then talk about his friends for a minute. He says, as for you, his friends, you whitewash with lies. Worthless physicians are you all. Oh, that you would keep silent, and that would be your wisdom.

Hear now my argument, and listen to the pleadings of my lips. Will you speak falsely for God, and speak deceitfully for him? Will you show partiality toward him? Will you plead the case for God? Will it be well with you when he searches you out? Or can you deceive him as one deceives a man? He will surely rebuke you, if in secret you show partiality. Will not his majesty terrify you, and the dread of him fall upon you?

Your maxims are proverbs of ashes, and your defenses are defenses of lay. so he's laying into his friends uh uh in these well that first 13 verses i suppose so he's first of all saying listen guys uh it's not like you have three phds and i've got a high school education we're all kind of on the same level here we all have the same knowledge we all have some experience in fact we could argue that uh that job is superior to them in this way also and then he in verse 4 this is when he begins to criticize them and he uses a couple of different images for this he says you whitewash with lies and then he says worthless physicians

are you all so i there's a couple different ways you could take this whitewash with lies uh it it is used elsewhere in the sense of of whitewash like you know you there's a crack on the wall or whatever and so you're just going to cover it up It's also used in Psalm 119, I believe, for smearing, like we talk about a smear campaign today. So it could also kind of be used in that sort of sense, like they're telling lies about Job, and so they're smearing him, basically, with these lies.

So that's two different possible uses of that. The worthless physicians metaphor, I think there what's going on is, he's saying, if you guys are doctors, you've misdiagnosed the problem, and therefore you have also prescribed the wrong remedy. What you've diagnosed is that I have the secret sin that I need to confess and repent of, and so you're urging me to repentance. Well, you've misdiagnosed the issue, and so you've also misprescribed the remedy for it, and so because of that, you're worthless physicians. Well, in misdiagnosing what is happening, of course, then the remedy, you're taking—they're prescribing medicine for something you don't have, so that's pretty worthless. But also, what they're doing, he sort of gives this rebuke slash warning because of that.

So they've misdiagnosed the problem, and then he says, you know, what would be great is if you would keep silent. That would be the wise thing to do. So you don't know what's going on, and instead of just admitting that you don't know what's going on, that you don't have a good diagnosis for this, that would be the wise thing to do. But instead, you do this other stuff, and in doing this other stuff, in your diagnosis, your misdiagnosis, you are now speaking for God in ways that he doesn't agree with. So now you've placed yourself in danger, right? Do you think God's going to just overlook that?

You think God's going to be fine with you giving this prescription when in this prescription you are speaking for him, that you decided that this is what he wants and this is what he thinks? In fact, since you're here out of fear anyway and you're afraid that something like this could happen to you, what you really should be afraid of is speaking for God where God has not spoke. by telling me what God thinks and what God wants and how he feels about this situation when all of that is wrong. That's the actual—you're actually not saving yourself from anything. You're actually placing yourself in danger with this false diagnosis.

Yeah, they really become false witnesses. I mean, if we can kind of continue with the whole courtroom scene. So Job is setting this up. He's saying, listen, I want to argue my case before God. I want us to reason together, and you're going to be here. your witnesses. And right now you've set yourself up as witnesses for God. But the problem is, first of all, God doesn't need you to be his witnesses. And secondly, when you're witnessing, you're telling lies about him. You know, you're showing favoritism toward God, which should never

happen in a court of law anyway. Even the Israelite law system was set up that way. You don't show favoritism to the rich or the poor. It doesn't matter where someone is on the social scale. So you've got to speak the truth, the objective truth, no matter what. Well, you're you're injecting yourself into this courtroom situation and you're speaking you claim to be speaking for god well you're telling lies about him you think god is going to just going to sit back and let that happen no he's going to call you to account and when he does you're going to be terrified because he's going to call you to account for what you're what you're doing better for you to be simply silent witnesses to what's going on here so this is not between me and you

guys and God. It's between me and God, between God and me. And so the best you can do is to at least have the appearance of wisdom by remaining silent. It's like the proverb says, even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise. But you open your lips and you show everybody that you're a fool. So sit there, listen, be silent, and God and I are going to reason together while you're just listening in on our conversation. Yeah, it's the old, better to be a fool and remain silent than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Yes, exactly, yeah.

And all three of these guys have now removed all doubt. Each of them have spoken. And they're doing, I think you talked about this before, I mean, they're basically just being the, oh, what's the term? The president's, the one that speaks to the press secretary, They're being God's press secretary, and they're trying to spin things in such a way that, oh, there's no way that God would do what you're claiming he does, Job. And Job's response, as our response should be, oh, yes. Yes, in fact, this is what's going on.

We see this all over the scriptures. So we can't simply pretend as if there aren't times when God allows these things to happen or causes these things to happen. And yes, there's plenty of times when this happens. So you can't cover that up. You can't draw your neat little boxes and say, these are the only ways that God operates. No, there's a lot of different ways he operates outside the box. And Job is a case in point where that's happening.

Yeah. All right. So he wraps that up then by saying that their maxims are proverbs of the ashes and their defenses are defenses of clay. So what they speak is as valuable as just a pile of ashes, and then their defenses are going to crumble the minute that they are attacked. So verse 13, let me have silence, and I will speak, and let come on me what may. So be quiet, I'm going to talk, and whatever happens, happens, but I'm not going to sit

here and remain silent. I am going to speak. why should i take my flesh and my teeth and put my life in my hand this is the verse coming up that i that i mentioned is maybe not the most well known but pretty close to it in verse in in chapter 13 verse 15 though he slay me yet will i hope in him yet will i argue my ways to his face this will be my salvation that the godless shall not come before him pause there for a second so i don't i'm not sure about verse 14 uh maybe you have some thoughts on that dan uh it says why should i take my flesh and my teeth and put my life in my hand uh i don't i'm not sure

exactly how that fits into the the flow of this he starts out let me have silence and i will speak okay get that let come on me what may all right why should i take my flesh and my teeth and put my life in my hand yeah i mean the only thing i can i can think of right here is that uh i mean flushing your teeth is i mean uh that's uh that's a violent graphic image it's a violent way to commit suicide uh put my life in my hand it kind of seems that way so that because you have this though he slaved me um i will hope in him it does seem that perhaps he's saying um i'm i and we've talked about this before that this is not an option for him but it does seem that he is saying that he is not going to take his life into his own hands.

In other words, the only thing that you can do when you take your life into your hands, I mean, you can't save yourself, you can't fix yourself, you can't make anything that's going to go away. The only thing you could do is stop it. That's the only thing you can do. And it does seem that he is saying that he won't do that. Now, though God slay me, I will hope in him,

but I am not going to slay myself. which, you know, when you're in this amount of suffering, that's the only real thing you have control over, right? And he says, it seems that he's saying he's not going to take that road. But yeah, my flesh and my teeth is a pretty wild way to say that. To devour myself, yeah. I mean, that is one of the more remarkable things that I don't think people often think about with the book of Job is, I mean, and partly, it might be partly because we're just so used to kind of a suicide culture. I mean, we hear about suicides all the time, and that Job at least never explicitly says

that that is an option is, I mean, in itself, pretty remarkable. Yes, I mean, he's willing to say over and over again that he wants to die, that he desires death, but he will not bring it about. yeah he will not actively uh take measures to make sure that that happens so he he understands that life has been given to him by god and and yeah god can take his life but joe was not going to take his take his own so yeah verse 15 though he slay me yet will i hope in him and i will argue yet i will argue my ways to to his face um just a remarkable i confess i was preparing for this this morning, just thinking about, uh, the, the hope, the hope that's, that's behind this, you

know, come, come what may, it doesn't matter what God does to me. Nothing is going to destroy my hope in him. He can put me through this. He can, he can slay me. He can send me to Sheol. He can do all these things to me. And, uh, nothing is going to shake the fact that I continue to hope in him, which rings true with, with the entire book. I mean, why does Job go to such extremes to want to argue his case before God, to put out on this great flow of words because he ultimately wants to get to the bottom of this. He wants to be right with God.

He wants to have his day with God. He wants to find out why all this is happening. He wants for things to be right once more so he won't give up, which is amazing and commendable. Yeah, one of the things that's really cool about this is that you have this obvious huge statement of faith, which is, though he slay me, I will hope in him. That's incredible.

But then you have this thing that he doesn't think that arguing with God to his face is somehow opposed to hoping in him. In fact, he thinks these things are connected, right? So you're tempted to think that, okay, no matter what happens, all my hope is going to be in God, and that means I will never question God, because that's where my hope is. Job doesn't think that's the case at all. Job says that though he slayed me, I will hope in him, yet—don't get it confused—I will argue with him, and that these things are actually—because I hope in him, I feel like I can argue with him. Because you don't—why argue with someone you

don't have any hope in? Why argue with someone you don't think has any power? Why argue with someone that you don't believe in, right? Like, none of that makes any sense. And so you do have this thing, which is instructive, I think, for us, is that those two things are not only not opposed to each other, which is the way we typically think, but that they actually go hand in hand, that, well, all my hope is in God, and since all my hope is in God, that's exactly where I'm taking my arguments. Yeah, and we ought to realize this, because this is the way human relationships work right if you and i have a dispute uh we love each other as friends as brothers in christ and so if we have something between us and we're gonna we're gonna talk

through it we're gonna argue through it i mean that's because we want to get past whatever this thing is right and have peace once more and it's the same in marriages the same in families and it's the same with with god too i mean if if we we hope in god and we think that god has made us a laughingstock or turned against us or is attacking us or has forgotten us or whatever it The thing to do is not to simply shrug and say, well, I guess he knows what he's doing, or turn around and walk away. Apathy is not what's called for. It's rather to bang on heaven's door, to cry out to him, to lament, to do all those things that we find people doing all through the Scriptures. I mean, Jesus himself, right?

My Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me. I mean, that's a remarkable prayer. Yeah. yeah i mean we we always talk about how christ uh knew what he was doing he set his face to go to jerusalem who were for the joy set before him endured the cross and all of that is true but don't forget that uh on the night in which he was betrayed he also prayed father if it's possible let this cup pass for me yeah not my will but yours be done and also that on the cross he uttered lament, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So Christ Himself, as the righteous man,

when He was speaking to His Father, did not hesitate, but fully embraced the lament as a way of crying out to His Father in the middle of His pain and His worse-than-Jove-like suffering. Yeah, I mean, I think that's partially why, you know, verse 16 is, this will be my salvation, that the godless shall not come before him. Job is making this statement, of course, in the presence of his friends, that says, okay, all my hope is in God, therefore I'm going to argue with God. And at the end of the day, this is my salvation, that godless people don't come before God and argue their case.

Right. Right? So he's saying, oh, I'm going to argue with God, all right, and I'm going to be able to argue with God, And I know that this is my salvation, that godless people, they don't have their hope in God. God's not listening to them. They're not making their arguments to God. Even Christ, who asked the cup to pass him by, is taking that where?

Well, he's taking that to God. Yeah. So the God, to kind of just turn this around, the godly are the ones who argue with God, not the ungodly. Yeah, I think sometimes we hear godless, and we think like, ooh, godless means wicked people, like people out there doing this, that, or the other thing. That might be what some people mean by godless, but if you look at the word, and you just say, well, what does it mean to be godless? It means to be without a god.

That's what it means, right? So if you're helpless, you're without help, right? So if you're speechless, you're without speech. And if you're godless, you're without a god. And Job says, that's not me. That's not me, yeah. One of Job's favorite words, by the way. It occurs, Job 8, 13, 15, 17, 27.

So yeah, it's one of his favorite words. And that's exactly what it means. So if you're without God, you're not going to come before God and argue with him. But if you are godly, if you're of God, God-full, we might say, then that's exactly what you're going to do yeah all right verse 17 keep listening to my words and let my declaration be in your ears behold i have prepared my case i know that i shall be in the right it's quite a bold statement on the part of job you can even train so a little bit hard to explain with the hebrew but hebrew doesn't have to have like the pronoun i

that's a separate word. It can be attached to the verb itself. But when it is a separate word, it's emphatic. So it's kind of like, I myself know is maybe one way, or we just like put the I in bold or italicize it.

Something just to emphasize that it's emphatic here. I know that I shall be in the right. There's some confidence for you. Yeah, he's been preparing that case, man. And he's been sitting there, and he's been going over the whole thing, and he's like, man, I've got an argument. This thing's ironclad.

If I can just get before the judge, I know. I mean, I know I'm going to be right. I've got my case figured out. He's done all this pretrial work. Yeah. He's looked at all the evidence, done all of the interviews. He's got this done. I've prepared my case.

I've lawyered it up. I know that I shall, I'll be in the right. I'll be vindicated here. Who is there who will contend with me? For then I would be silent and die. So if there was a contender, then I would remain silent. There's no one who can basically undermine my case. So he's kind of set this all up.

Now he says this, this is a bit of a little tricky here. He says, only grant me two things. So he's gonna make two requests here. Literally in Hebrew, it's do not do two things. But to make that positive, it's like, okay, there's two things we're looking at here. And then, well, ESV has this, then I will not hide myself from your face. The Hebrew there can be translated differently. It can be translated, then I will not be hidden from your face.

But it's quite different. So ESV has, then I will not hide myself from your face. But the Hebrew could just be translated also, then I will not be hidden from your face, which is, by the way, the same expression that's used in Genesis 4 when Cain says, when Cain is worried about being hidden from the face of God, so cut off from him. And I think that fits the context here better. Give me these two things so that I won't be cut off from your face. I'm not going to be excluded from you.

Now, the tricky part here is, what are these two things? Because he says a lot after this. So it's a bit of a struggle to like, okay, where does one end and the second begin? Because I could number three or four things here that you're asking for. But anyway, this is what he says after that. So give me two things, and then I will not be hidden from your face. Withdraw your hand far from me, and let not dread of you terrify me. Now, is that one or is that two?

Anyway, that's what he starts out with. Withdraw your hand from me, and let not dread of you terrify me. then call, and I will answer. But let me speak, and you reply to me. So there's four phrases, two verses, four phrases. I'm not sure how we want to divide those, but this is kind of a, this seems to be the request that Job puts forward. So withdraw your hand from me, and by that I mean, I think he means don't, stop attacking me, right? Withdraw your hand from me. Your hand is heavy upon me, you're slapping me around, you're making me suffer, whatever it is, so take your hand off me, and don't let the dread of you terrify me, and then, so don't do that, and then do this,

call, talk to me, and I'll answer, or let me speak, and then you reply to me, either way, let's have, instead of this ongoing lament monologue in which I'm engaged, let's have a two-way conversation let's have let's have a dialogue so don't don't attack me and let's have a conversation that seems to be the two things that joe was asking yeah i think i think i think he's to make it simple that the two things are let's put a let's uh let's hit pause on the suffering and hit play on the conversing okay let's do that so like like we're gonna we're gonna not do any more of this suffering thing and we're gonna start talking like that's these are of two things I would like you to do. So one of them is to stop doing something, and then I want

you to start doing this other thing. This is my request. Yeah, yeah. I think that's perfect. And then when those two things happen, then he's not going to be hidden from his face anymore. He's going to be able to actually be in God's face having a conversation. Yep. All right, then he goes on. Verse 24. Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy? And there's a A lot of these are kind of this why kind of tone to them. So why do you hide your face? I don't want you to hide your face from me. I don't want to be hidden from your face.

And I certainly don't want to be reckoned as your enemy. So why do you do this? Will you frighten a driven leaf or pursue dry chaff? For you write bitter things against me and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth. And it continues to the next, the closing two verses of this chapter. you put you put my feet in the stocks and watch all my paths you set a limit for the souls of my feet man waste away like a rotten thing like a garment that is moth-eaten i've argued i've i've argued within myself by the way whether that last verse actually belongs to the first verse of

chapter 14 but uh anyway it's neither here nor there so we have a lot of these um a lot of these statements that that uh sound similar to what we've heard before where job is basically complaining about uh the attacks from god so we have a few different images that are added here but hiding his face and and treating job like he's his enemy but what's new is this idea of uh brightening a driven leaf pursuing dry chaff so that's that's the way that job feels he's just a leaf in the wind he's just chaff and god is uh blowing him around frightening him then he goes on to say that god is writing bitter things against him um i'm not sure exactly when god is writing here some some commentators have suggested that god is like a uh uh a doctor a pharmacist who's you know

filling a prescription or a doctor who's writing a prescription that has this bitter medicine that Job has to swallow. Either way, he's expressing this bitterness that he's feeling. And I think the last part of verse 26 is significant, because Job here talks about inheriting the iniquities of his youth. And that's important because we can get the impression, just because of the vehemence of Job's argument at times that he's under this false impression that he's sinless. That would not be the correct assumption. Job realizes that he's sinned.

He's not claiming to be some kind of perfect person. So he uses here this phrase we find also in the Psalms. The Psalms talk about the sins of my youth. Here he's talking about the iniquities of my youth. But there's no claim on Job's part that he's been a perfect person, that he doesn't have any sin. No, he realizes he has. What he's been saying is that, listen, I've not done anything that merits all of the horrific things that have befallen me. Yeah, I've got iniquities, but those are not proportionate to what I'm suffering now.

Yeah, I think what's interesting about this is that, first, yeah, he says, like, I'd love to know a reason, right, for you that you're hiding your face and you're counting me as your enemy. I want to know what the reason for that is. And I wonder what you're trying to prove by doing so. So when he says it's like, well, you frighten a driven leaf and pursue dry chaff, like, I don't know what you're trying to prove. It'd be like, so the picture here is like if I said to Chad, I picked up a leaf off the ground in the fall. I said, Chad, I'm going to put the fear of God in this leaf. You just watch. This leaf should be terrified of me.

Do you know what I could do to this leaf? The answer to that question is like, yeah, you could destroy that leaf. Do whatever you want to that leaf. What does that prove exactly? I don't know. That's what Job's doing. What's going on here? Compared to you, I realize I'm nothing, and so I don't know what it is that you're out to prove or out to show. I don't know what's going on. Yes, you can have your way with me. Yes, you're more powerful than me. Yes, you can terrify me and frighten me, but who am I? I'm just a man. And he says, do you write bitter

things against me, who make me inherit the iniquities of my youth. The writing thing is interesting. I don't know if it's—when—a lot of times, like, when God speaks, right, when God is making a judgment, and we'll see this in some of the other prophets, like, He tells them to write it down, right? You have—this kind of thing is, like, really common, like, throughout all of the Bible. I mean, at the end of all things, like, books are opened up, and there's the—these books, Like, you have the book with names in it, which, of course, is the book of life. And that book, all you need is your name written down, and that's it. And the whole reason you need your name written down in there is because having your name written in that book cancels out this other book, which is this book of record, basically.

So when people thought of books in the ancient world, they didn't just, like, write books willy-nilly. Like, I got a good story. I'm going to write this book, and maybe some people will like it, and I'll publish it. Like, that's not how it worked. Most books, especially at this point, were records, right? I mean, like, you didn't waste time doing anything other than, like, recording histories and this kind of stuff. So, like, when God says, hey, I'm going to open up the books, that means he's going to open up the history. And this is a terrifying thing for every sinner, is he's going to open up your history. Like, your history is in these books. I don't know this, but when I read, uh, you're writing bitter things against me, it's, it's almost as

though he's acknowledging that God keeps a record or there is a record being kept. And like what God is writing down in regard to him is hard to swallow. He's like, I mean, are you, what are you doing? You just like writing down all the things I did as a kid and all the, like when I was a young man and impetuous and stupid, it seems that all the things that you have written down and are writing down again about me are all bitter things uh i don't know why why are you doing this yeah that would fit the context that uh god is this author who's uh writing all of these he's dipped his his his ink into uh into some bitterness and that's what he's writing down and and now it's like job is inheriting uh everything that's been written down against him yeah in the

past. Yeah. And thus having to, to bear what, uh, what has been composed. And the verse 27 is just, uh, Job kind of piling up more of these images of Job's, uh, inability to do anything about it. I mean, he's, he's like a guy who's in the stocks. Uh, if, if that's the proper way to translate that Hebrew, that's, that is debated, but most people take it that way. But it's the idea he's, Job is immobilized. He's just like, if you put your, you know, You know, you've seen the pictures of the old timey ways where, you know, your head is in there and your arms are in there and your feet are in the stocks. You're trapped, maybe for public humiliation or whatever it might be. Well, I think the public humiliation part is here, too.

I mean, Job not only feels trapped, but undoubtedly is humiliated. I mean, Job has to feel like a public spectacle. Yeah. Well, he's talked about how he's been made into a laughingstock. And no doubt he was. I mean, you can, this still happens today. You know, people, they have the schadenfreude, they have this delight in the downfall,

especially of the famous or the rich or the powerful. I mean, that still is clickbait all over the world today. People still love to hear about the downfall of the great. There's something in our nature which just kind of relishes that. And it would have been no different in Job's day. I mean, here was Job, you know, a guy with all this wealth, all this this power all of this everything and then he loses it all so yeah people would have

been talking about him gossiping about him slandering him uh probably publicly humiliating him because of everything he is going through god watches all these paths so he can't get away yeah sets a limit for the souls of his feet all of these all of these sorts of things he's trapped in other words and then he wraps everything up by saying uh man literally in the hebrew it's just he but man used here in kind of the generic humanity we we would say humanity waste away like a rotten thing like a garment that is moth-eaten so here he sits trapped by god uh frightened uh these things all these bitter stuff written against him inheriting the iniquities of his youth and there's nothing he can do about it he's trapped and he feels like

basically humanity is a rotten thing that is just wasting away like this you know garment that has holes all in it from where a moth has been been consuming it and that's i mean that's the thing about that too is that he it does seem that he's he's um there's a uh a slowness to all this right so man wastes away like wasting away is like not something that happens rapidly uh like a rotten thing things don't become rotten immediately i mean have you ever had something rotting how you know like uh some dead animal or something out in the backyard this takes a long time uh garment that is moth-eaten, that takes a very long time. And so for Job, this seems like this is going on. Like, I feel like I am slowly, painfully, and shamefully just being reduced

to nothing. And yet, despite all that, and yet, still he continues to open God, and to speak to God. I mean, which is the way that God has always wanted us to be. You know, we don't...when we're going through suffering and we're going through whatever it might be, then we continue to speak these kinds of words to God, to cry out to him, to continue to hope in him. Because in the end, there will be an answer. There will be some sort of healing. There will be something from God, which gets us out of that dark place and lifts us up into light again. Job's going to experience it. I mean, I've experienced it, and I think most of us have. But in that period of waiting until that happens, well, then you continue to hope and to cry out to the God who hears and will ultimately

answer. That's right. All right, we are out of time. There is the end of that chapter. We will be back next week, and Job is going to guess what? He's going to continue. He's not done yet, so Job continues in the next chapter, but we will wait until next week to do that. Chad, I'll see you then. See you then.