40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Job 26:5-27:23 (Episode 409)

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Job argues that nothing is hidden from God. The Lord has stilled the sea and destroyed chaos and yet Job's suffering remains. And despite everything Job is going through, he refuses to discard his integrity. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: Remembering Rod Rosenbladt New 1517 Academy Course: The Early Church: Christ, Controversies and Characters with Bruce Hillman Preorder: Encouragement for Motherhood Edited by Katie Koplin Preorder: Be Thou My Song by Kerri Tom Here We Still Stand 2023 Videos are Available on YouTube Last Chance: NWA Conference May 3rd-4th 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 or check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there, check out everything else that 1517 is doing. And by the time this comes out, I think there's a chance that that Church Fathers Academy course will be available for you to take. I mean, you should go check out the trailer for that, and if that doesn't make you want to take that course, well, I just don't know. You got to learn what the Church Fathers, about the controversies, the characters, what was going on at that time. It's a course that I'm

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Chad, we ended last episode in Job chapter 26. this is the beginning of a long stretch of things from Job himself his friends are done the last chapter they got five verses in and they're done they've punched

themselves out they're like when you have a little baby and the baby's just beyond tired but they're fighting to sleep and they're just they won't go to bed and so you say okay I'm going to stick you in this crib and just let you fight it out

and eventually they just give up. And this is what happened, it seems, in chapter 25. As we heard, like, I don't even know what kind of argument. He just says some things, and Job says, that's all nice, thanks for that wisdom. Man, I don't know what I would do without it. And now is going to get into, as we alluded to last episode, some things about creation and nature.

Yeah, he's got some interesting images that are coming up here to describe the various ways in which God has made creation and all creation is exposed before him. And as I alluded at the end of the last episode, there are some connections in some of the language to Genesis chapter 1. There's also some stuff here which is referenced elsewhere in Scripture. It's kind of a mythological kind of images that are pulled in here, as well as just some pretty cool ways of describing creation

the earth itself. So this will take us from verse 5 through the end of the chapter. And it's kind of a nice contrast, actually, to the way that Bildad wrapped up his very short whimper of a response, where he talks about God in the high heavens, and now Job is going to respond by talking about how the lowest depths are exposed before God. So it starts out in verse 5 by referencing the uh the dead that's the way it's translated typically this is the the refaim which in some cases are referencing the kind of the spirits or the shades of the deceased so the dead or these spirits of the dead what do they do they tremble under the waters and their inhabitants sheol is naked before god and abaddon has no covering so stop there just a

couple of verses in so the dead tremble under the waters and their inhabitants this is reflecting the what's often referred to as the tripartite uh or stacked universe it's the idea of the the hebrews their conception of the world is that you have the heavens on top and of course that's the habitation of god and then in the middle you have the land the earth and that is the inhabitants the habitation of humanity living humanity and then you have underneath that uh kind of everything else you got the waters you got the deeps you have shoal and that's the place of sometimes of darkness or of death itself and so the dead trembling under the waters fits with this kind a tripartite view of the universe the dead are under these waters and so they're trembling and

trembling here in the sense of under the the view of god himself and building on that he says that sheol which of course in the hebrew conception of the universe is the place kind of the equivalent of what we refer to as the grave in place of the dead so sheol is is unclothed naked before god he It's not like there's a wall between God and Sheol where you can't see exactly what's going on there or who is there. It's naked before him, wall-less before him, so he can see what is there. And then we have a reference to Abaddon, which is, I don't remember if we have encountered this so far in any of our texts. Maybe we have. So Abaddon is just a transliteration of the Hebrew, just like Sheol is.

So Sheol isn't a translation, it's just a transliteration, a writing in English of the Hebrew name. Abaddon is the same thing. It's from a root in Hebrew that means to destroy, so it's the place of destruction, is what Abaddon refers to. And of course, it's parallel here with Sheol, so it's another name also for the place of death. Now, it's kind of interesting here, too, because you and Eric probably encountered this, because

you covered revelation not very long ago but abaddon comes up in revelation chapter nine i think it's verse 11 and this is uh it's in the section that talks about uh uh the the pit being opened up and you have all these the darkness coming out and all these these locusts coming out as well and it says they have a king over them uh the the king over them who's the angel the bottomless pit and it says in hebrew his name is abaddon and in greek he is called apollyon so this is this is revelation reflecting this old testament old testament background abaddon sometimes is used uh as just kind of the place as is more or less synonymous with the place of death but there are a handful of places where it's personified as death itself

is also personified sometimes in the Old Testament. And later on, you have Abaddon emerging as not just a place of death, but kind of this personified being or angel of death. And that seems to be echoed in that Revelation 9-11 passage where you have Abaddon being the king of this place. And then his Greek equivalent would be Apollyon,

which also means destruction. but anyway I've always kind of like thought like Sheol is like always a place it's like it's the grave

the place of the dead Abaddon or or death itself it it can take take form as a

as like a as an enemy almost right so an adversary so this is like so you have something like in Revelation where it says like

death is thrown into hell and you're like well how does that work So death is like a person, right? And so Abaddon, it's not just that there's a place of the dead, but here you have this sort of figure that is like the destroyer, right? The one who would inhabit Sheol, the place of the dead,

but actually is a destructive force or entity. it's kind of like what we'll do sometimes with uh with sin right so we'll capitalize sin it's kind of like a power that's destroyed or we'll capitalize death in in the way that you're describing it as something which is personified as a power that the old testament will describe as insatiable you know she old has opened its mouth and it just kind of gobbles down everything or death itself is always wanting to take more into it. And so Abaddon here and in other places in the Old Testament and Revelation 2 is personified as this being that has this power.

And that's why sometimes Abaddon appears as an evil power, kind of an angel of death. But in verse 6, it's used in the sense of it's the place of death and there's no covering. It's not hidden. God sees into the world what's happening in Sheol. He sees what's happening in Abaddon, or where Abaddon is. Yeah, you almost could take it as, like, God is—nothing's hidden from God. There is no covering, there's no shielding from His eyes.

The place of death is not hidden from Him, and death itself is not hidden from Him. Yeah. And I think that this is—it could be that Hebrews 4.13 is actually playing off of this. uh this is where the author says nothing in all creation is hidden from god's sight everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account so this is the new testament equivalent of that or if you want another parallel proverbs uh does the same thing so proverbs 15 11 says sheol and abaddon so the two same two places or personifications that are used here. Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord. And now listen to this. This is the second part of Proverbs 15 and 11. So Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord. How much more the hearts

of the children of man. I read that yesterday, and I think I shuddered a little bit. Yeah. So if God sees what's happening in the lowest places of death, do you really think that your heart is somehow closed like you can hide something from from the almighty so uh anyway that's verse six then in verse seven he says he stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing i love it that second part hangs the earth on nothing it just suspended there now that the stretching out the north here this too uh there might be a little bit something else going on here, because in Hebrew, the word for north is Zaphon, usually written S-A-P-O-N or T-Z-A-P-O-N. And Zaphon is pretty well known in the ancient

Near East as kind of the mythological mountain in the north where the gods lived, kind of the the Olympus, we might say, of the ancient Near East. So in a lot of the Baal kind of literature that we have in the Ugaritic literature talks about the north. And so there could be a, and this occurs also in the Old Testament as well. So this could be the idea of God making this famous mountain, but he hangs it, he stretches out the north, or he stretches out this mountain over the the tohu so that's translated here as as void so you probably heard the phrase at one point tohu vavohu well that's taken from genesis 1 verse 2 where you have formlessness and void that's tohu and vohu so that's the word that's used here and this is one of these

connections with genesis 1 where in the beginning god creates the heavens and the earth the earth is tohu vavohu it's formless and void and darkness is over the face of the deep so this use of tohu void in job 26 8 is a link with the creation account he stretches out the north over the void and he hangs the earth on nothing then verse 8 he's going to shift to the sky he says he binds up the waters in his thick clouds and the cloud is not split open under them it's kind of a cool image it's like uh the clouds are a uh like bags like they've been stuffed with uh with the rains and god you know he stuffs them with rain and he binds them up puts them in the sky and job is amazed that the cloud doesn't split open under them so they're like packed with all of this water

and they don't break open until, of course, God is ready to let them rain or let them flood the earth. In verse 9, he continues with talking about the full moon now. He covers the face of the full moon and spreads over it his cloud. 10, he has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. I suppose what Job is going at here is this idea if you look at the boundaries so if say you're looking at if you're on the beach and you're looking over the ocean and you see that boundary where water meets sky or any i guess anything on the horizon you've got kind of this this circular line as it were i mean looking at it and that's the boundary above it you see light but below it is darkness so that's a circle on the face of

the waters god has made all these things job is is saying and then verse 11 he picks it up he says the pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. By his power, he stilled the sea. In Hebrew, that's yom, which also is often personified in creation accounts. So by his power, he stilled yom, he stilled the sea, he made it peaceful. And by his understanding, he shattered Rahab. And we have encountered Rahab once before, at least once before in the book of Job. Rahab occurs with some frequency in the Old Testament. This is, by the way, a different spelling than our prostitute Rahab from the city of Jericho. That's Rahab, the rough H. This is just Rahab. And this is one of the names of the chaos monster. It's often referred

to in ancient Near Eastern literature about the creation of the world and the conquest of the powers of chaos. So here Job is echoing some of that, but of course he's attributing creation to the powerful act of God. By his power he stilled the sea, or yom, and by his understanding he also shattered, that is, he destroyed, he conquered Rahab, this chaos. Well, one thing that's true is, in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, but just in general, the sea is always associated with chaos. You see this in Revelation. This is why beasts come out of the sea

and this kind of stuff. So when you have, by his power, he stilled the sea, you might be like, oh, that's nice. That's cool. There's a lot more. There's a lot more to it than that. The sea is synonymous with not being still.

It's synonymous with chaos. And that's why you have he stilled the sea, and by his understanding he shattered Rahab so Rahab is this chaos demon monster thing and they the reason this is one sentence is because these two things are similar right the sea is stilled which is the same as saying he's stilled chaos uh and shattered uh the the maker of chaos yeah I mean you when you when you get that I know just from personal experience once you get that and you start uh once you kind of get that background and you start reading a lot of the stories in scripture that involve

water yeah from that perspective man a lot of stuff uh kind of comes into clarity yeah i mean the old testament for sure where you have uh the creation account but then the red sea and the same kind of stuff's going on at the red sea and then it's all over the psalms and the psalms will often use the uh like the roaring of the seas and the roaring of the waves and all this stuff as an image for not just chaos in general but the chaos of the gentile nations so they're often they're often described under the attribute of of waves and and the sea because they're seen as this place of of chaos where god has not brought order to to the lives of the gentiles and then you you take all of that and you translate it over into when jesus walks on the sea of galilee or when he's

asleep in the boat and the storm comes up and he stands up and he rebukes the wind and the waves like oh i see but this isn't just like him flexing his divine muscles this is him showing that he is in fact, Yahweh, who stills the sea and shatters, shatters Rahab. He is God in the flesh who is doing at the Sea of Galilee what the Old Testament multiple times described him doing at creation or in rescuing his people from the enemy nations around them. Yeah, I mean, back in the day, I mean, this is still true, but I mean, it's different now because of technology and stuff, but going out on the sea is like a really great way to die because it is unpredictable, right?

It's not like you're like, let me tune into the weather, see what we got coming in, make sure I don't get caught up in something bad. No, it wasn't like that at all. You rolled out there, and if a storm rolled in, this is a real good way to die, you know? And so like the unpredictability of a storm at sea, this is why this language is used all the time.

stuff i actually watched um yeah obviously this is the ocean but i hadn't seen it in years it was just on and i ended up started watching and i watched the whole thing but the movie the perfect storm oh yeah which does a real good job of like if you're what if you want to be like just rightly terrified of being out on a boat in the ocean like watch that thing like there's i mean now imagine you know it was thousands of years earlier before like i mean you're in you're in deep trouble you get caught in a storm on the sea back then yeah i i cannot i cannot fathom it i mean this is this might seem like a such a uh uh an example that isn't quite worthy of of the chaos we're talking about but i was on a cruise ship one time i mean those things are massive yeah i mean it until you

walk up to one of them and you're looking at it you don't realize how huge those things are i mean it's like a ship i mean it's like a city at sea so i'm older those and it's early in the morning and nobody else is up i go and i pour a cup of coffee i'm on the deck i'm sitting at a table and i got my cup of coffee and whatever on my table i'm reading something and all of a sudden i hear this crash and i know it's a wave i can tell by the sound and all of a sudden my coffee cup just goes racing across the table i gotta grab it or it's gonna hit the floor and i mean in that moment i know it's something small but in that moment i realized man a wave a single wave can do that to this massive ship now just imagine you're on a a ship that's infant just infinitely

smaller than that and you're caught in a storm how that must feel talk about being out of control in the midst of chaos, that would be it. Yeah, this is why the story of Jonah takes place this way. Like, I mean, you try to escape God, I'll go to the sea. That's not a good idea. The sea is unpredictable. There's all kinds of chaos out there. Yeah, so anyway, when you read sea in the Bible,

just know that don't just think like, you know, you going to the beach and sitting there and watching the waves gently caress the shore. That's not what they mean. No. And that's why toward the end of Revelation, in the new creation, it said there's no more sea. Yep. In other words, no more chaos. It doesn't mean there's no more water.

No, it doesn't mean there's no more water. It just means that there's no more chaos. So, two more verses in this chapter. By his wind, and in Hebrew that is ruach, which can mean wind, it can mean breath, it can mean smaller s spirit or capital s spirit so by his ruach and probably that is meant to be kind of a double entendre there his wind or his spirit by his ruach the heavens were made fair and his hand pierced the fleeing serpent so that fleeing serpent is again a reflection of the same thing we saw with the sea and with Rahab. These chaos monsters were often depicted in serpentine form. And, you know, that actually is a nice connection with the one who produces chaos and

disorder and evil. Of course, the serpent himself, the Satan himself. So his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. So all of this has been described by Job. Everything from the earth hanging on nothing to him covering the face of the full moon, to Abaddon and Sheol lying uncovered and naked before him. So Job has gone to great lengths to describe all of these aspects of creation, that nothing is hidden from him. And then I love the way he finishes this. This is one of the greatest lines in Job. He says, look, behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways. Oh, you think this is impressive well this is this is really nothing i mean these are as one translation puts it these are but the outer fringe of his works in other words uh in the chad bird paraphrase paraphrase

you ain't seen nothing yet yeah yeah this is you find these things impressive okay good but these are just the outskirts of god's ways yeah you're like you're like barely past the opening credits into this movie right like we like we got a long way to go yeah long long way to go and how and he goes on how small a whisper do we hear of him but the thunder of his power who can understand i think i think what joe was getting at when he says what how small a whisper do we hear of him he's he basically this is his way of giving a rebuttal, I suppose, to Bildad, who seems to have everything about God figured out. It's like, oh yeah, let me explain God to you in five verses, Job. This is the way it is. He's

way up high, and he's all-powerful, and you're a maggot, and you're way down low, and that's really all you need to know, Job. And Job responds, oh yeah, well, let me just introduce you to the outer fringe of his works, because the God that you think you have figured out is much more powerful and mysterious than you, uh, than you have let on. And that takes us through the end of, into 26. So, uh, Job is kind of picking up steam here. He's got, uh, a few more things to say in chapter, chapter 27. And then, uh, I don't know if we'll get to 28 today. That's going to be, uh, a famous chapter in Job. It's all about wisdom. And we have a lot of mining imagery that's woven into that, but we'll get there when we get there. First of all, we have to see how

Job takes up his discourse again and continues to speak. So here's what he says. Job 27.2. As God lives, who has taken away my right, and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter. This is our familiar Job coming back here. He's gone on a little creation tangent there, and now he's coming back to talk about the God who has embittered his soul and taken away his right. So this is kind of a formal language. As God lives, he goes on,

As long as my breath is in me, and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils, As long as all this is happening, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit. Far be it from me to say that you are right. Till I die, I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go. My heart does not reproach me for any of my days. That's quite a former loathing on the part of Job. And it's reaffirming what he's stated multiple times, just, I think, in kind of a stronger

oath kind of way. So as God lives, as the Almighty lives, who has, he's embittered me, he's taken away my right, but as long as I live, as long as there's breath in my nostrils, I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to utter deceit. I'm not going to agree with you, my friends, that you're right, because I'm going to hold fast to my righteousness, and I'm hold fast to my integrity. And not only will I do that, but I'm telling you that my heart, my innermost being, does not reproach me for any of my days. What I am experiencing, in other words, is not proportionate to any of the sins that I may

have committed when I was a younger man. Yeah, this is a wild way for Job to say, all right, let me make a promise here. As long as God's alive and I'm alive, I'm not going to tell the lie that you want me to tell. That's a wild thing to say, right? This is like the ultimate response to all their arguments, is that what you guys maybe don't realized, is that you're asking me to lie about myself, to make false confession, whatever this is, and I'm going to make this vow not to do it. So to agree with you actually would be a sin. Yeah, you know, in so many movies, you'll see a guy who's, you know, he's arrested, but he didn't really commit the crime but the authorities think that he has right so what do

they do well they just wear him down they interrogate him and interrogate him and and a lot of these shows eventually they produce a false confession why because he just he's tired and so they you know eventually just wear him down to where he'll admit to anything and he'll sign the paper saying that he's he's guilty and that's almost kind of what uh you would expect of job after a while. I mean, I would have, like, given up at chapter 10, I'm pretty sure. You're like, okay, yeah, I don't even know what it was. I don't know when I did it, but I, yeah, I'm guilty. You're right, I must have done something. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Yeah, anything to shut you guys up. But Job won't. As you put it, well, as long as God's alive and

as long as I'm alive, I'm not going to agree with you. I'm not going to say yes where you want me to to say yes so he goes on verse 7 let my enemy be as the wicked and let him who rises up against me be as the unrighteous for what is the hope of the godless when god cuts him off when god takes away his life will god hear his cry when distress comes upon him will they take delight in the almighty will they call upon God at all times? I will teach you concerning the hand of God. What is with the Almighty I will not conceal. Behold, all of you have seen it yourselves. Why then have you become altogether vain? So the general tenor of that seems to me that But Job is saying, I'm not going to become as the godless or as the unrighteous,

because if I do, then there's no hope that God is ever going to hear my cry. When I call upon him, as I have been doing and as I will continue to do as long as I live, then if I were to abandon my way and go the way of the godless, then there's not going to be any hope for me. God will not hear my cry, and I will continue to cry, so I will maintain my integrity and my righteousness so that God, in fact, will hear me. Because there's still hope for me, but there's no hope for the godless

when God cuts him off and takes away his life. And that's the way that I read that. Does that jive with the way that you're hearing this? Well, yeah, and he kind of ends that section with, after saying that, saying so uh i guess my lot now is uh i'm gonna teach you concerning the hand of god right so i've listened to all your arguments and what's become abundantly clear to me is that you guys need to go to school uh about things concerning god and so uh so this is what i'm gonna take up i'm gonna i'm gonna teach you concerning the hand of god and don't worry what is with the almighty i will not

conceal. I'm going to tell you how it is, right? And you should have seen it yourselves, but you've become too vain. I think that that's an accusation of saying that you've become haughty and arrogant, and you're thinking that you have everything figured out with this simplistic view of God, and you have this vanity, and coming in and thinking you're saying wise words, and you think that you're telling me the truth and all these things, but in fact, I'm going to have to teach you, because you have—it almost sounds like, because when he says, like, behold, you have seen it yourselves, then why are you—so in other words, some of these things are obvious, but you've closed your eyes to it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that fits with a pretty common accusation in the Old

new testament that people have ears but do not hear and eyes but do not but do not see uh which is you have that in isaiah chapter six you have that of course when jesus tells his his parables and that fits with this old testament notion of if you you become like that which you worship so the idols infamously have eyes but do not see ears but do not hear hands but do not feel feet but do not walk and those who make them will become like them so if you are worshiping that which is false you become false become that which if you worship that which has ears but do not hear then you also have ears but but do not hear and that's kind of where the friends are even though they claim to be these uh very religious people what they're worshiping is a at least a very

incomplete if not a false notion of who god is and this has blinded their eyes so that they're no longer able to see exactly who god is and the way that he works in mysterious ways in in this world so that's the first 12 verses now something uh this this might be another one of these situations verses 13 and following where uh job is alluding to the arguments of his friends we'll kind of work through this but that's one of the one of the explanations that's given uh because some of this seems to echo the language of Job's friends more than Job himself. So we'll kind of unpack this as we go through it, but 13 starts out this way. This is the portion of a wicked man with God and the heritage that oppressors receive from the Almighty. Okay, so that's just the

introduction. So he's going to describe what basically the inheritance of the wicked is going to be. So this is their portion or this is their heritage that they're receiving from God. He's written the will and here's what's in the will for these evildoers. Verse 14, if his children are multiplied, so if he has a big family, well, it is for the sword and his descendants have not enough bread. So this is going to be their inheritance. A lot of kids, well, they're going to be nothing more than destined for the sword or those who survive they're going to starve those who survive him the pestilence berries and his widows do not weep i've i can't help but wondering if what it said his widows do not weep as if they're kind of like

glad he's gone yeah i mean that's that's that's quite a uh uh quite an insult uh i mean widows by definition are supposed to weep at the death of their husband of course they're not supposed to be relieved yeah not supposed to be relieved and also I mean this isn't his widow this is in the plural so this guy was a polygamist he had a lot of wives a lot of widows

and none of them that's the impression that's given anyway none of his widows are even shedding a tear they're like good riddance glad to be done with him though he heap up silver like dust and pile up clothing like clay.

He can pile it up, but you know who's going to wear it? The righteous. The righteous will wear it. And the innocent will divide the silver. So he can amass all the riches that he wants. I mean, he can pile it up. He can pile up silver like dust. Kind of reminds me of the days we're told

that silver was worth nothing, like in the days of Solomon. You know, yeah, look, there's some silver on the street. You don't even pause to pick it up. It's like people don't pick up pennies today. You're just going to walk right past it. So he's going to have all this silver, all this clothing, and he's not going to wear it. Somebody else is going to.

He builds his house. This is verse 18. He builds his house like a moth's, like a booth that a watchman makes. Both of those are just emblems of the brevity as well as the, what's the word I'm looking for? If you build a house like a moth, it's like it's going to collapse. It's going to have holes in it, right? It's temporary. It's not going to last.

Verse 19, he goes to bed rich, but will do so no more. He opens his eyes, and his wealth is gone. Goes to bed rich, wakes up poor. Terrors overtake him like a flood. In the night, a whirlwind carries him off. The east wind lifts him up, and he's gone. It sweeps him out of his place. It hurls at him without pity.

he flees from its power and headlong light and this is the closing verse it claps its hands at him and hisses at him from its place so total total destruction so that's the way uh what was that verses 13 through through 23 uh are kind of the overall tenor of those verses so i don't know Well, I mean, this sounds a lot like kind of the argument of the friends. They've talked a lot about how the prosperity of the wicked is short-lived. This is going to be what's happening to them. And that seems to be the overall theme of these verses. So maybe this is one more of these examples where Job is kind of echoing the sentiments of his friends.

It's kind of the direction I'm leaning on this. What do you think, Dan? Well, I mean, I think that what the friends say, of course, is not untrue if you're talking about ultimately. So like, will the deeds of the wicked ultimately prosper? Well, no. Will the unrighteous ultimately live forever and get away with it or whatever? No.

and so i don't i don't think uh i i think that you could have here a job say that look i agree like with the end of all things but like we're trying to deal with like here and now uh if we're talking about like eternal punishment or something sure but like we're talking about like temporal punishment right now and so i don't know if this is him just reciting their words back to them, or finding a space after saying, okay, I'm going to teach you a bunch of things about God, because your view of God is, like, so small, and let me, like, concede these things to you, right? But, like, that's... although that's not really what we're dealing with right now, but sure. Yeah, yeah, and that would fit. I mean, there have been other points

in in the book where you can pick up some agreement between job and some of his friends i mean do keep in mind that this is these guys aren't coming from such radically different positions that there's no overlap between them right certainly they all agree that god is all powerful that he's omniscient uh that shoal and abaddon lie naked before him and that you know mankind all the friends have low anthropology i mean they all agree that man is sinful and and weak and not god i mean they all agree on a lot of different things where they go the different directions of course is their view of of suffering and its cause and where god is involved in all of this this suffering and they all i i don't think that they would if these are if this is job uh saying what he holds to be true

the friends would agree with this. And there's, of course, things that the friends said about the wicked being punished that Job would agree with. I mean, we all understand that in the end, justice will be done. The wicked will indeed receive their judgment. The righteous will indeed receive what God has in store for them. And so this could be Job, yeah, saying, okay, we agree largely upon these sorts of inheritance, the inheritance of the wicked. Incomplete though it is, I will cede that point to you. Either way, he does seem to be kind of echoing

many of the sentiments of his friends in this closing section. Well, he does say it on the heels of saying, by the way, I'm going to hold fast my righteousness and my integrity, and you are wrong. So you can be right about this, but wrong about me. Yeah. And this is Job's whole argument,

is that, well, you can be right about the wicked, ultimately, not temporarily, because I can look around and know that that's not true, but you're not right about me. You're putting me in the wrong category. And one of the things that's weird is that, and I know you alluded to this, and we'll get to it next week,

but if you didn't have Job 28, which seems like a different thing. It seems like it's put in there and you're like, okay, it seems like you took a hard right and are going to talk about this thing. And if you went from this statement right into Job 29, which is more of him continuing, I feel like, his argument. He says all this stuff and then starts sort of longing for the days

when he felt like God was on his side and was watching over him and this kind of stuff. and that would seem a little more seamless, right? But you're going to have this sort of break with 28, but going from 27 to 29 seems like more of the flow of his argument. Yeah, I think in some ways Job 28, which is this famous poem about wisdom and has the refrain, where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding? and then it kind of gives us in summary form the answer at the end of that chapter. It kind of serves as a little break, kind of preparing us for what is to come and giving just kind of a step aside and to reflect upon what wisdom is before Job then picks up his argument in chapter 29. So we'll get to that next week. All right, sounds good. I'll see you then. See you then.

We'll see you next time.