40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Job 28:1-29:13 (Episode 410)

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

The book of Job takes a turn and it's a good one. Where is wisdom to be found? Can you mine it? Can you buy it? Or is it found in the last thing you want to do? And Job longs for the days of old. 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 Available Now: 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

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Chad, we got a little bit of something different, a little something different in Job today. So far, I mean, for weeks now, we've been hearing arguments back and forth and back and forth, and some of it sounded a little redundant. and some of the same arguments being served up a different way. And now you have this weird break. Job kind of ended with this sort of, I mean, it's a little bit hard to discern, but he seems to be making his friend's argument back to them. He has some points of agreement.

He basically is saying that you're right about some things, but you're wrong about me. and uh and then goes in chapter 28 if you pulled 28 out and you just went right to 29 it would feel more fluid uh and but 28 sounds like job is uh he goes a little bit of a bunny trail here right it seems like he he takes a little bit of a side road uh and then in 29 sort of circles back around to what's going on. Yeah, which is why, and I tend to, I mean, we can't say definitively, but this is kind of the direction that I lean. I tend to think that the Job 28 is actually not by Job, but instead this is inserted probably by whoever this anonymous person is who's the real author of Job. So we don't, I mean, maybe we talked about this when

who started this book. I don't remember. I've slept too many times since then, but we don't know who wrote Job. In fact, it's hard to even position it historically. It's couched in what would be called the patriarchal period. But we don't know who wrote it. All that material is not given to us. But it does seem as if it's logical to think that Job 20 kind of serves as an interlude uh kind of a segue between everything that we've been covering so far that you you just described and then what is what is to come so a lot of people a lot of scholars will suggest that this is actually written by whoever wrote job and inserted here as kind of a chance to hey let's put on the brakes we've heard a lot of arguing back and forth and back and forth and we're we're about

to hear kind of three long speeches job has more to say he's gonna he's gonna kind of give his final closing argument for who he was and now what he's become and then you're gonna have this guy pop up out of nowhere some young angry theologian by the name of elihu i think he's a seminarian he's probably a seminarian yeah i think yeah with with apologies to those seminarians out there i I think Elihu's a second-year seminarian. Hey, I can say that. I've been there. Second-year seminarians, we got it all figured out.

Elihu's, you know, got it all figured out. He's going to drop some wisdom on us. So that's going to happen. And then he's going to be totally ignored, and God is going to finally begin to speak. So you've got three big speeches coming up. You've got Job's last hurrah, Elihu, and then you have God. But before all that, we're going to have this beautiful exposition, this poem on wisdom. I have always thought that that is how Job 28 reads, that it's like the narrator breaks in.

I don't know if they call it breaking the third wall, is that what that is? So you have this person telling a story, and maybe you're just telling the story verbatim, and you're not giving any commentary, you're not interjecting anything, you're just telling the story. And then you pause, and you begin to give your thoughts. You're no longer just explaining what happened and these events, and putting forward, hey, this guy said this, and here's how the arguments went. But now you're actually interjecting yourself and your thoughts into it. And that's how 28 reads to me.

Yeah, yeah. I think that fits perfectly. And so what we're going to see is it's kind of three main sections in, I believe it's only, I believe Job 28 is actually, yeah, it's 28 verses as well. So you're going to have three main parts. You're going to hear, it's going to start out, actually, you're like, what is he even talking about? Like, if you just pulled this out and started reading it to someone, they'd be like, where are you going with this?

Because at first you don't know. I mean, he's like talking about these precious metals and these ancient mining techniques. You're like, okay, so what's the point of this? And then he's going to tell you, you got two refrains, which are, they're not verbatim the same, but basically communicating the same things. Verse 12 will say, where then, but where shall wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding? And then that's going to lead into a talk about all of these things of great value that really are of much less value than wisdom. And then you're going to have the refrain again, from where then does wisdom come?

Where is the place of understanding? that's going to wrap up in those closing verses with God saying, I'm the one who's got wisdom, and let me tell you what it is. So that's the way it starts out. So I'll read these opening few verses, first 11 verses, where we hear all about ancient mining and how this worked. This is unique in the Old Testament. The only place in the Old Testament we have stuff like this being discussed.

surely there is a mine for silver and a place for gold that they refine iron is taken out of the earth and copper is smelted from the ore man puts an end to darkness and searches out to the farthest limits the ore in gloom and deep darkness he opens shafts in a valley away from where anyone lives they are forgotten by travelers they hang in the air far away from mankind they swing to and fro as for the earth out of it comes bread but underneath it is turned up as by fire its stones are the place of sapphire and it has dust of gold that path no bird of prey knows and the falcon's eye has not seen it the proud beast have not trodden it the lion has not passed over it man puts his hand to the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots he cuts out channels in

the rock his eye sees every precious thing he dams up the stream so that they do not trickle and the thing that is hidden he brings out to light but where shall wisdom be found and where is the place of understanding so you got you got to get to the uh you got to get to the first the 12th verse uh before you figure out what those first 11 verses are about and all of this is in various ways some of which are understandable some of which are are a bit ambiguous, but describing, you know, this is what, this is what people do. This is what the ancient people did. And of course, what people still do with modern techniques to find these precious metals. We have all four of them. We have four of them mentioned in this

opening, these opening two verses, silver, gold, iron, and, and copper. So, uh, we have these, these precious metals being mined out of the earth. And then of course, the point when you get to the twelfth verse is, well, that's all great, but where do you mine for wisdom? Where do you dig for understanding? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the whole thing here, is that you gotta think about this time period. What are some of the most impressive things that man is able to do? We take a lot of things for granted, because we don't see how any of the sausage is made, but like, so you're like, you go to the gas pump, and you're like, let me pump this gas into my car and you don't think about like what kind of insane process has happened right let's get

from a to b yeah i mean you're like what like what's going on here like someone pulled like oil out of the ground and like and you've you've made gasoline out of like dinosaur you know bodies or whatever and and it's a it's a crazy thing uh now we have like all kinds of technology for refining and all this kind of stuff but if you think about at this time what is like some of like the the most impressive it's kind of even to me crazy to think about okay so you're over there you're mining for silver like all right i get that so you've someone discovered that here in this hole in the ground you can take a chisel and there's like these silver in here so you can get it out same with gold like you can find veins of gold get it out

you can refine it but then you start being like iron taken out of the earth that's wild that like how early you know you were they were able to figure this out and they could make stuff out of it you know and they could get copper out of ore so this is all stuff where you're like hey you have to you know that you we know this stuff exists and there's like a way to find it and then like a way to use it and these are all extremely impressive things it was like look what we can do here we can yeah we can do all this stuff like we this is this is pretty impressive but the one thing you can't find even though you can find all these other things uh which are very difficult to find and very difficult to do anything with you'll be like what about wisdom you're like

well surely that's easy to find right now yeah yeah more difficult right yeah you do have this uh this contrast that's set up you know these amazing discoveries uh that humanity has been engaged in you're you're like you say you're digging down you find all these things so you were thinking with humanity being able to to do what is described here and and we could of course just fast forward to what we're able to today with science with medical technology with space travel i mean it's on and on and on it's kind of the tower of babel replayed over and over in world history you know what what are they going to do next yeah what are they going to build next What are they going to discover next?

And yet while all this is going on, you really have the greatest treasure of all. And the question is, you know, where are you going to find it? Where's wisdom? Where's a place of understanding? Well, you could hear the argument, because I mean, we made this argument today. You're like, look at all the things we can do. Man, we must be wise. I'm sure they're like, look at what we can do.

Look at the things we're pulling out of the earth, and then how we use them, and the things we create with them oh our wisdom is great like surely we have found wisdom and the answer is no and you know how this goes like we can we can do all kinds of insane things i mean you look at medical advances and all this stuff and then uh you also look around and you're like does anybody have any wisdom because like i mean like we can do a lot and and it seems like we got a lot of like smart people doing a lot of smart things but even in our day and age you're like do you think like wisdom is in large supply is that when you just like have all kinds of wise people walking around i don't think so no no well then i it's funny when this comes up uh this was

unplanned i just was writing about this this morning uh something connection with the book of proverbs i mean it is ironic right because we have we have today what no generation in human history has ever had i mean they wouldn't have been able to dream of what i can i'm holding myself on my hand right here what i can the kind of information that i can access with this and when it would have been undreamt of in any previous generation yep so we have all this you know information we can we can read whatever we want to we can tap into these great intellects just with the touch of a button, but that does not mean that we have ceased to be still the same flawed people that we are. So, I mean, all of this, all of this is not going to

alter our fundamental humanity, our, you know, our low anthropology as our friend Dave Zoll would describe it. And then, so, I mean, hand in hand with the access to all this information in, you our current mining techniques, to use that metaphor. I mean, it goes also the ability to transform that into even greater evil. You know, every discovery is used in positive and negative ways in that respect. Well, I mean, I think if you went back, if you took your cell phone, Chad, and you went back to 1900, and you showed it to them, you're like, look at all the things, all the knowledge I can access.

I mean, of course, they would, first of all, you get burned at the stake or something. for having witchcraft in your hand. But assuming you talked your way out of that, one thing that someone might assume is like, man, so in the future, with all the accessibility that you have to all of this wisdom, all this ancient wisdom,

I mean, you can just access the words of Plato and all these things anytime you want. Surely, you must belong, there must be just everyone must be exercising extreme amounts of wisdom i mean has everyone just become wise and you're and and of course you know we living in this thing like um i don't know i don't know if it's really made anyone wise i don't know if i would i don't know if i would put it that way in fact it might have done the opposite like i don't i don't think that we've increased in wisdom yeah yeah kids just don't go outside anymore that's all that's all yeah

i mean that kind of is the it's one of the points of of not only this section of job 28 but uh what is to come as well i mean so humanity has always had access to at least uh limited things of good you know whether that's intelligence whether that's things that are of value whatever it might be but that which has always been available to to humanity has also been that which humanity makes limited use of yeah and of course that is that is wisdom i don't want to i this is kind of a factual interesting detail that uh some some of our listeners might might find interesting i did so verse three says uh when it's talking about the mining man puts an end to darkness and searches out to the farthest limit the ore and gloom and deep darkness i was just thinking how did that

work practically speaking i mean you don't have like floodlights and and things of that nature so i did a little digging so get this just imagine this is uh written by diodorus of sicily in greek history lived in the first century bc and he's describing gold mining in nubia and he says these these guys they work in darkness and they're like bending and winding through the passages and he says they carry lamps bound on their foreheads so they can work their way through this now these lamps would have been oil lamps there were no other no oil lamps just picture that in your head you got an oil lamp bound to your forehead and somehow this is giving light as you're working your way through these mine shafts it uh it certainly makes you appreciate a lot more kind

of our modern techniques of finding light in the midst of the darkness. All that to say, they found a way to do this, even in the ancient world. Yeah, that's extremely dangerous. Yeah, not recommended. Do not try this at home. If someone yells your name and you turn your head

and you're in a narrow passage and you smash that thing and then that oil gets all over your face, I mean, you're in deep trouble. You're, yeah, you're in bad trouble. There's going to be a lot of light at that point. You'll be hoping for some medical advances at that point. And then, you know, what was the other line in here? It talks about they, oh, verse four,

they hang in the air far away from mankind, swinging to and fro. So they're letting these guys down in these baskets and these ropes, and they're chiseling away. And this is, it's pretty, it's amazing anyway what they were able to do. and then yet where shall wisdom be found where are you gonna mind for for understanding that's a question exposed okay verse 13 is going to continue this uh from a different direction

though man does not know its worth that is wisdom and understanding's worth man does not know its worth and it is not found in the land of the living the deep says it's not in me the sea says it's not with me it can't be bought for gold and silver cannot be weighed as its price it cannot be valued in the gold of ophir in the precious onyx or sapphire gold and glass cannot equal it nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold no mention shall be made of coral or crystal the price of wisdom is above pearls the topaz of ethiopia cannot equal it nor can it be valued and pure gold and then the refrain comes again from where then does wisdom come and where is the place of understanding so i mean it kind of continues in the same vein of this this stuff

of value we talked about gold silver and and copper and and iron earlier but now it's bringing in all these others you know the gold of ophir and onyx and sapphire and topaz of ethiopia and everything else of great worth is nothing compared to wisdom, and nor can it be purchased by means of these precious metals or these precious stones. And the deep and the sea say, well, we don't have it. It's not enough. So it's a long, poetic, detailed reflection upon not only the value of wisdom, but also the limited place in which it can be, in which it can be found. Yeah, well, I mean, it's, the idea here is like, okay, if you can't find it, right, so like, where shall it be found?

And you're like, is it, can we mine for it? Can we seek it out? Can, is it, maybe it's in the deep, maybe it's like, is it, can you go to the depths of the ocean and find it? Now, okay, well, if you can't find it, maybe you can buy it. And the answer to that is no. No, you cannot, right? So you go from, like, we sought all of these,

we're able to find all of these precious things. So can we do that with wisdom? No. Well, maybe we can take these precious things and go purchase wisdom. And the answer, again, is no. It's getting very disappointing, Dan. It is. it's like man this is this could be hard to get i mean if you can't find it if you can't buy it then how in the world are you going to become become wise and then uh the closing section

which is verses 23 to 23 through 28 is going to lead us to to the answer god understands the way to it so kind of a play on words there by the way because we have where is the place of of understanding which in hebrew is bina and then this is the verbal form of that so god bean so god understands the way to it and he knows its place for he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens when he gave to the wind its weight in a portion the waters by measure when he made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder then he saw it and declared it he established it and searched it out and he said to man now all this is here we go this is the whole chapter has been leading to this to this moment he said

to man behold the fear of the lord that is wisdom and the turn away from evil is understanding yeah now dude there's a there's there's one line in here that i love like um but we'll get to it so go ahead okay now there is a part of me that gets the very end of this and it's like that's it wait this whole chapter has been like teasing us you know you can't dig for it you can't find it you can't you can't buy it i mean it it kind of sets it almost feel like it's teasing us like it's setting us up for it's going to drop the wisdom that it's going to drop on us is something that you could never have anticipated i mean it's just going to be one of these mind-blowing awesome moments where something is going to be disclosed to you that you never could

have seen coming but you get to the end and it's like all right come close no no a little bit closer i'm going to whisper this to you this is wisdom the fear of the lord and to turn away from understanding from evil that is understanding yeah i mean so it's but that that is that's the beauty of it though it's not complicated and it is and it is accessible as soon as you begin to understand that its accessibility is found only in the god who gives and then who who speaks this wisdom to us i do love that little line i don't know what you're going to talk about but i mean let me say one of my favorite lines in here beginning of verse 28 and he said to man behold the fear of the lord that is in other words god speaks he he discloses this it's not something

which we kind of figure out on our own, rather it's given to us verbally. It's given to us by God speaking His Word. That's ultimately how we know what wisdom is. Well, it turns out that... What's your line? I'll go there in a sec, but to that line, it turns out that wisdom is found in a very simple thing,

but also like the last thing that you ever want to do. Yeah. Right, you're like, I don't want to... Like, so the fear of God is, you know, this is to worship God, right? This is to hold God as God. So you fear the Lord, that's wisdom. Turn away from evil, that's understanding. You're like, okay, those are the two things I don't want to do at all.

Like, I don't want God to be God, because I want to be God. And I don't want to turn away from evil, because I am, in fact, evil. That's exactly what I want to do and be. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very simple, but you're also like, oh, no, not that. Don't make me do that. Can I buy it? What if I mined the earth of all its riches? I could give you that in exchange. Just don't make me do this. Yeah, it's simple, and it's the very last thing that we want. I mean, you can kind of see both

these as—I mean, there's, in summary form, the horizontal and vertical connections that we have. So to fear the Lord is to stand, like you said, to worship him, to stand in awe of him. The fear of the Lord, as we've talked about many times in the podcast, is an all-encompassing phrase for everything from trust to love to awe to worship. So it's the Old Testament's way of saying that you are in the right place with God. It's a fear of the Lord. And then, of course, more horizontally, turn away from evil. Well, that could be understood also vertically, but mainly you turn away from the evil that you're going to do to others.

So in other words, you lead a pure and a loving and a righteous life. There you go. That's wisdom. That's understanding. Yeah, I mean, the line here, so if you know about wisdom literature, and now we haven't got into a bunch of wisdom literature, but if you know about wisdom literature, of course, wisdom personified is jesus right so like when you when you get to the wisdom literature it

talks about wisdom as a person it's not it's not just like a a knowing something or anything like that so wisdom is is a person and uh and and i would say that's true here that like the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, but the fear of the Lord is also to know Christ, to know who God is and what He's done. So when you think about wisdom personified as a person, and that person being Jesus Christ, you have this amazing thing where, in verse 22, where Abaddon and death, so this would be like hell or the grave and death itself, we'll say that, the grave and death itself they say this we have heard a rumor of it with our ears like that language is amazing like so like you have to think about death and the grave

and you're like seeking out wisdom and what do they say they say oh we've heard a rumor of this of this person named wisdom we've heard a rumor of it like what what would this rumor be that he's the end of you, right? I mean, there's whisperings and rumors, and there's something floating around that death and the grave have heard about this wisdom. It's not good news for them, either. I would say it's bad, very bad news. It's not gospel to them, but it's very bad news to them. I just think that's an interesting thing for them to throw in there. Like, why did death and the grave have anything to say about this? They're like, oh, we've heard about it.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that is a great line. In fact, I think I accidentally forgot to read that when I was reading the verses that follow 20. But yeah, I mean, that's a perfect line to draw from Job 28 all the way to the resurrection. Yeah, you've heard about this rumor. And let me tell you, it's not just a rumor.

It's true. It's coming. Your days are numbered. And there will come a day when death is buried and the grave has its own funeral, when Christ steps forth, wisdom incarnate steps forth. Yeah, I mean, it's great because before that, you know, hey, it's hidden from the eyes of all living. It's concealed from the birds of the air.

No one could find this. But there's like this sort of prophetic utterance that death knows about, right? And that's the rumor, right? is this prophetic word that comes from God, and they're like, oh, it's floating around out there. What's that line? Is that Paul, things hidden from the foundation of the world? Yeah.

That idea. I mean, it's been there. It's hidden. But it's also there's good luck keeping something a secret. Word gets out. It's filtering all the way down into Abaddon and death, the grave. The word on the street is that the end is coming for them. And in fact, that's exactly what happens when Christ steps forth from the grave.

And the rumor is proven to be factual. Well, that's how the gospel works a lot, especially in the gospels. So like, when wisdom is walking the earth, right? So like, when that's happening in the person of Jesus, when he's walking the earth, how many people seek jesus out based on i mean they're this and no one's like sharing a video or something uh like there's people seeking this guy out based on a rumor just hearsay they just hear all over the place all everywhere they're just like i they how why are they doing this because they heard someone like someone told them something and they're like is it true i mean

lepers are coming you know blind people are coming women with dead children are coming like all these and they're all like it's like a uh uh this whispering going around like uh we had heard even like the road to emmaus like we had heard that you know this and this and this and we thought this and this it's all this sort of like language of like there's this rumor going around that this might be the guy and people are like seeking it out right and so i think that that rumor language like works well with with um kind of how it does actually play out for for the grave and death yeah like this this rumor is going to be the end of you because it is it is getting passed around yeah i love it yeah that's a that's a great connection to make from this whole chapter

all the way to when wisdom comes and walks among us. So that's it. I mean, that's Job 28. That's all about the search for wisdom, the place of understanding, and eventually wisdom is actually, doesn't just show up, but he's born incarnate and comes to introduce us to not just to himself,

but to how he is the entry point to this fear of the Lord and turning away from evil and receiving that understanding. I wonder if this, like, break in here, too, is if you're just reading this, and your ears are starting to get exhausted as you're listening to this discourse, and you start to wonder, like, am I just, like, missing it? Because this is all very, like, poetic language, and you're like, man, like, is this really wise, and I'm just not seeing it? Because, like, it's all starting to sound the same. It's all starting to run together. and maybe i'm just not wise enough to you know extract what i need to extract from this and i think that you have this break in here that says no not really like none of this is like really

this is just because some guys talking and not i mean we spend a lot of time talking about it and there's lots of truths and stuff in there but uh like this isn't wisdom like this is people having an argument right yeah it's like the uh the the author of the play like removes all the actors from the stage and he walks out and says hey everybody just give me a minute let me tell you what this is really all about there's a lot of dialogue here there's a lot of action there's a lot of plots and subplots but let me let me focus your attention on what really matters and where all of this is is leading yeah it functions literary literarily like that yeah it definitely Because it definitely seems like Job's friends are what we would call wise in their own eyes, right?

I mean, they certainly think they're dropping all kinds of wisdom. Yeah. But this break seems to tell you explicitly that they're not. Right. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they're definitely wise in their own eyes, and probably were highly esteemed as wise by others. I mean, they clearly can—they're clearly rhetorically skilled. They can talk.

I mean, they can talk a good game. They can talk in this highfalutin poetry. But in the end, are they wise? No. God himself will say that at the end. They have not spoken to me what was right. They have acted according to folly. So in fact, they can sound wise.

They can even say some wise things, but that doesn't make them wise. In the end, they end up being fools that Job has to pray for. in order that God may forgive them. Okay, so that's Job 28. Now we have Job doing a little remembering here. So Job 29 and 30 are really to be read together. We're not going to have time to get the course to get to both of those today, but if you happen to be reading along with us in Job,

then don't read Job 29 without reading Job 30, and don't read Job 30 without reading Job 29, because what's going to happen in these two chapters is basically Job is going to first of all begin by engaging in a little reminiscing about the better days, the good old days when not just, you know, his life was so much better than it is now, but he was able to be in his family and in his community, basically a compassionate patron of people who were in need as well as a defender of justice so he's going to recollect those days in chapter 29 and then there'll be a hard break in chapter 30 which begins but now and you can imagine what that's going to sound like you know this is what it was like but now

look at me and he's not going to just simply talk about his losses and the pain the physical pain that he's enduring, but also just the public shaming and ridiculing that is heaped, heaped upon him. So that's what you have in 29 and 30. So here's how he starts out. And Job again took up his discourse and said, oh, that I were as in the months of old. By the way, that seems to indicate that what he's been going through has been at least a few months in duration so oh that i were as in the months of old as in the days when god watched over me when his lamp shone upon my head and by his light i walked through darkness i as i was in my prime i think the hebrew there is literally yeah the hebrew there is like i was in my uh ripeness

some people translate my my autumn days but in prime is a good way for us to to put into modern English. When I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent, when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were all around me, when my steps, and here's your hyperbole, when my steps were washed with butter and the rock poured out for me streams of oil, you know, I don't know what we would say. When I took baths in buckets of wine, we might say, you know, whatever lavish language you want to use there. So this is kind of where he starts out. He says, when I went out to the gate of the city, when I prepared my seat in the square, what happened, Job? Well, verse 8 says, the young men saw me and withdrew. The aged rose and stood.

The princes refrained from talking, laid their hand on their mouth. The voice of the nobles was hushed. Their tongues sucked to the roof of their mouth. When the ear heard of it, it called me blessed. And when the eye saw it, it approved because, and here he finally actually gets to the point of saying some of the things he did, because I delivered the poor who cried for help and the fabulous who had none to help him. The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. Now he's going to go on, that's just the first 13 verses, but you get a feel for what he's describing. First of all, he's just kind of reflecting back, you know, in a hyperbolic and poetic sort of way about

the better days when the lamp of God shone upon his head and kind of picture, you know, God's walking along with this light shining above him and he's in his prime. God, he's obviously God's friend. God's with him. His children are all great. His steps are washed with butter and the rock pours out streams of oil. I mean, then when he, you know, he gets to the gate of the city and of course the gate of the city was where all the commerce and and and business transactions and and judicial decisions all of those it's kind of the city square you might think of the gate of the city where all this happened everybody sees job coming like we're talking rise if you're if you're not very young you know if you're young to kind of get out

of the way and and everyone has the deepest respect for for job when he speaks they listen when he acts, they notice. And this is, I don't, I mean, I don't take this as Job bragging. I just take this as Job thinking back to who he was and what he was able to do as one who feared the Lord and turned away from evil when he was a wise man and was able to practice this wisdom. This is this is the way things were. Yeah, I mean, it's more just reminiscing on a time when Job was somebody, now he's nobody. And I mean, and part of this argument in this reminiscing is that when he was a somebody, he used that station for good, right? So there are lots of people who are somebodies that don't do that.

They've had long discourses so far about people who are somebodies, and they are wicked, right? They are power-hungry, and they use these things for evil. But Job here is saying, yeah, I was really somebody, and I used my position and my wealth and my status for good. I used it to help other people, which, of course, feeds right into his argument of, so if it's God that's doing this, which it sure seems like it is, I really don't understand. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And it also, it serves to contradict what a few chapters ago Eliphaz,

you know, launched into this string of accusations against Job, saying, you know, he was just, He was breaking the arms of the orphan, the arms of the fathers. You sent widows away empty. You're just making stuff up. And Job says, to the contrary, he says, there's a beautiful line here. He says, oh, I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I mean, it's an image of one who is such a benefactor to those who are in need that he makes them sing for joy.

He's taking care of people, in other words. His ethics, his good works are displayed in good works toward the community, especially to those who are in need. So he's got more to say, but anyway, that's the beginning of him recollecting back on those better days when he was able to be this generous patron to people who were around him. Yeah, and that is it, man. We are out of time, so we'll have to leave it there.

We'll probably get the rest of Job's words in 29 and 30 next week, and then transition from there. Hopefully you will join us. Chad, I'll see you next time. See you then.