40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Job 6:1-30 (Episode 392)

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Job responds to Eliphaz, and he has some words for God as well. Job asks that his vexation be weighed. Why will God not grant his request to die? And the words of his friends have become nothing. 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 Free 2023 Advent Resources Your God is too Glorious, 2nd Edition 2024 NWA Tickets (May 3-4) Join the 1517 Academy 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. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you go to the events page. You can't sign up for the Here We Still Stand National Conference next year. It's already sold out. You can sign up and get on the wait list, though, which is worth doing.

Because when people register for an event a year out, you know, things come up. People move. You know, stuff happens. And some people did, in fact, sign on the wait list last year and ended up getting in. And so it's first come, first serve, of course. So if you want to get on that wait list, you can. Or, of course, you can come to Northwest Arkansas the first weekend of May, and you can go to the regional event. There's still, ooh, I don't know, 25% left of the tickets, so those won't be there that long.

So if you want to come to that, there's a link in the show notes or go to the events page. Find it and come hang out with me and Chad and a whole bunch of other people. It's going to be a good time. Chad, the weather has officially changed here, so my voice, I'm not sick. Don't worry, guys. I'm okay. I know that you guys were all starting to pray. Don't worry. I'm all right. But every fall, you know, I got like a week or two where my voice just gets, you know,

it tries to match Chad. It just drops a couple of octaves. A little scratchy, a little low, but it's okay. I can make it through. I feel fine. All right. We are in Job chapter six. We've heard from Job. then we've heard from his buddy who basically he says a lot of words

if I was to boil it all down come on Job, come on what is it dude that's really what is going on with his buddy if I boil it all down to one thing he could have just said after Job's big thing, come on man

we're holding back what are you not telling us now Job is going to respond, sort of, to what Eliphazer says. And I do like this, I don't usually like chapter headings, but this seems like a good summation of what Job's going to say. In the ESV, it just says my complaint is just. I think that's a pretty good

summation of what Job is about to say in response. Because I do think, as he says, come on, man. Come on, buddy. Like, what is it? like you are not telling everything here uh this is basically what job is going to say he's like no no no no everything i said i am justified in saying yeah i think the only thing i would add to my complaint is just is preface it by you guys are terrible friends yeah yeah that would be that'd be the only thing that i would add because so uh in he's gonna his uh his next speech job's next speech is chapter six and seven and he's going to start out by complaining about how he's become basically uh the target for the archer from heaven like god's got his bow out he's is using uh

joe for target practice with poison arrow tips you know just to kind of add a little bit to to that so he's going to complain at first or and you know rightly so i'm not uh taking anything away from that but then he's going to go on to complain about his buddies and you know what terrible friends they are he's actually going to throw some uh some pretty sharp sharp accusations at them anyway then he's going to switch and he's going to transition to talking directly to god and the bulk of chapter seven sounds a whole lot like what was that job four um or job three where he basically wishes he were dead so he's going to kind of return to the same theme of just how bad his his sufferings are yeah i mean if you are job man if i was job and this was happening to me

i think there would be two things that i would be these are the two words that would describe me angry and confused like i would be especially once my friends came around and started being like what gives man it's going and i would i would be it would be so frustrating if you maybe not for you and me Chad because we're not no one would describe Joe is a unique character that can be described in a very

unique way so maybe I'd be like what did I do and then like there's probably any number of things a long list I'd be like weighing I don't know was that one worse than this one I don't know they're pretty close they're both pretty bad

yeah well yeah Yeah, it'd be one of those things where I don't know if someone's like, man, did you do anything? I'd be like, well, I mean, yeah. Yeah, I don't know where to start. I just don't know which particular one God has decided he's going to use as a pretext for what he's doing to me. Yeah, but Job, he's in this situation like, I don't know, man.

I can't think of anything. Got a pretty clean bill of health. Yeah. And so he starts out by talking about, it's kind of a twofold focus. He says, oh, that my vexation were weighed and all my calamity laid in the balances. So it's kind of a twofold focus. I mean, he's vexed, he's angry, like you just said, you know, so what in the world is going on if you could if you could weigh my vexation how angry and upset and vexed i am at this situation

then you're gonna need a you're gonna need like an industrial size scale that's how heavy it is and then my calamity so that could also be translated like destruction or misfortune so laid in the balances so you know if you had some kind of scales where you could put both my vexation and my calamity my anger and my misfortune on there well then you'd get an idea as to exactly what i'm going through so this and presumably this first part is just kind of addressed either to eliphaz in particular who just responded to jove or just to the friends in general i don't think he's necessarily praying yet or talking directly or indirectly to god yeah I guess he's always talking indirectly to God, but this is more friend-directed.

So if you could do that, then verse 3 says, it would be heavier than the sand of the sea. So yeah, a typical kind of proverbial biblical expression. We're used to thinking about sand of the sea in respect of numbers, not weight. Like Abraham's descendants will be like the stars in the heavens or like the sand on the seashore. But Job uses it differently here. So, yeah, go to the beach and just start shoveling up sand after sand and get a whole truck full and weigh that.

Well, the weight of that wouldn't even compare to the vexation and calamity that Job is going through. And because of that, he says his words have been rash. Yeah, well, vexation is an interesting word. We don't use that word a lot. Not many times have I, you know, have Chad and I been hanging out. I'm like, how are you doing? You're like, well, I'm pretty vexed, I got to tell you. The traffic just had me vexed today.

My vexation is high this week. That's not a word we use, but I like the word because it's a word that, you know, he could just say, like, my frustration, which is kind of really what vexation is. Like, vexation is a sort of frustration. But if it just said frustration, it would not do the same thing, Because vexation is, like, more painful than just being frustrated, right? Like, if you're vexed, of course, being frustrated is an internal thing. But there's a—it's a frustration mixed with sorrow, almost.

That's how, like, when I hear the word vexation, it's like there's—people aren't vexed when they're just angry because they feel, you know, like— whatever, because they're upset about something. It's usually when you see the word vexation show up, some calamity has happened. I mean, and this is kind of why he says my calamity is weighed into balance. So, I mean, that's a total aside, but I like the use of the word there. And that vexation could be weighed, right? Like if it said like my frustration were weighed or my anger would be weighed,

you're like, okay, so you're angry and frustrated. You're like, yeah, but it's more than that. This is like some real internal anguish and frustration. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, you get anger, sorrow, frustration. You put those three together, you get vexation. And by the way, fun fact, Job's book is the only one that has this Hebrew word in it, which actually kind of makes sense.

I mean, there is no greater vexation in the Old Testament than that suffered by Job. so all the occurrences of this word are are found in in job so he says because of this because of the vexation the calamity and the the bulk of it the weight of it yeah my words have been rash and he's not he's not he's not saying usually when we say my words have been rash we're like apologizing sorry about those rash words uh he's not apologizing he's just explaining that yeah of course i'm going to expect me to just to be very kind of stayed and calm and level-headed well no not when i have this tonnage of vexation and calamity weighing upon me of course my words are going to be rash and we i mean we've all been we've we've been the one who's have spoken this

way and we've been in the presence of people who've spoken this way because they're so emotionally distraught the words that come out of their mouth are probably not the kind of words you would ordinarily hear from them yeah no they're they're very upset and so when we're very upset of course we speak rash words and and i mean it's not like making an excuse for it but when you're in those situations you you understand where the person's coming from and so your response should be uh patience and understanding and empathy and just kind of you know bearing with them in the pain that they're going through of course that's not what his friends are are doing they're trying to unearth his hidden sin, whatever that might be.

Yeah, if you were to say that your words are rash, usually you mean that you did not choose them carefully, right? Where you're like, oh, I didn't really, I said that without thinking about it really. Usually like rash words are words that you, if you could take them back and maybe rephrase them or think about them a little more, you would do that. However, Job did wait seven days

before he spoke these rash words. So he did have a lot of time to sort of figure out what it was he was going to say. But I think when you're in this state of vexation and anguish, once you open your mouth to speak, like, I mean, read what Job says. I mean, it's a flood. The flood is unleashed. The dam has broke. And I think you, I've been in this. Of course, we've been in situations where we've spoken too quickly.

And you're like, oh, I was upset and I said that. You shouldn't have said that. You shouldn't have said that. Right. But there's also been times, I don't know about you, Chad, I've had these times where I have had time to really think about my words and really concoct a real tongue lashing. Not that I'm like some, I'm not the wordsmith that Chad is. I'm like fairly good with words when I have a lot of time to think about them.

Not like this on the podcast, but like, you know, I've written some things. That's not always the best either. Sometimes when I have a lot of time to think about my words, just because Job has lots of times to choose his words, also, and while those words start flowing, yeah, maybe you get bumped off script a little bit, too. And so, yeah, I don't view this as an apology at all, but more like,

yeah, man, like, have you, look around. Look around, dude. And then you're saying, like, I don't know about your words, Job. You don't know about my words? Take a look around, dude. Look at what's happening right now. Like, what did you think my words were going to sound like?

Yeah. yeah there's there is no other possibility for job when he's going through what he's going to mean the only thing that's finally going to take away his words is when god words him yeah right when god speaks finally then job is ready to to be silent but he's not he's not there yet so uh he then develops this figure of speech um and in the next two or three verses and begins to describe his suffering and why he speaks the way he does why he can't remain silent and the first thing he begins with is the divine archer the arrows of the almighty are in me and my spirit drinks their poison the terrors of god are arrayed against me and that's just one

verse and that one verse sums up uh sounds to me like hell on earth uh just just the image i mean we've all seen these pictures like of martyrs i can't remember the name of the martyr there's one pic of the martyr who was shot full of arrows yeah uh but i mean we we've seen we've seen pictures from the uh from the wild west right of guys lying in the dirt their bodies are full of arrows that's that's the way it works that's the way that's job is saying hey that's how i feel god has uh set me up as his target he's got his bow got a quiver full of arrows and the tips are poisoned and he shoots one after the other inside me and my spirit is drinking in the poison of these these arrows so as if the arrows that piercing aren't bad enough then you have this internal poisoning taking place

at the same time and then he you know describes these terrors of god that are arrayed against me that uh that word by the way only occurs here and in psalm 88 which if you know somebody it's the darkest of the psalms so uh your wrath has swept over me your dreadful terrors destroy me the psalmist says in psalm 88 psalm 88 is a very job like psalm for those of you who don't who don't know it so maybe that's that's kind of where he's at um he's uh he's a target for god's arrows and he's got these divine terrors that are stacked up against him like a like an army this is weird because he's wrong but not wrong so like like he's not wrong necessarily in what he's saying but he is also wrong so like so actually factually in error well i just this is what i just think

this is the thing that's fascinating about job is that if like if you were really going through something right to have you something terrible happened to you and then i came along and i was like hey man uh what's going on and then you were like oh well what it is is god's really got it out for me and he shot my body up full of poison arrows and he's tormenting me i would be like nope nope that's that's not it uh like uh your theology has gone awry my friend that is not what's happening that but uh and we know because we have like this sort of view into what is actually happening that of course it is the accuser the satan that is doing all this but again and you see and we've talked about this before but since it's so explicit here it's worth bringing

up again uh in the old testament and i think we can learn something from this like they just don't ever give the devil credit they just never are like the devil's really out to get me today like the devil's having his way with me. For them, if you're a monotheist and that God that you worship is sovereign, then the buck stops with him all the time, every time. I think we tend to kind of slouch into a dualism in order to, as it were, we think that we're saving God in many cases. At least that's the way it strikes me so we're gonna we're we're trying to defend his reputation we want to we have this thing of really wanting to keep god clean we're the press secretary for god i think jonathan hyde uses that uh that image so yeah we're gonna we're gonna be the press

secretary we're gonna make sure that you know whatever has happened you know the way the press secretaries are for whoever is in office they're always going to frame the narrative in such a way that reflects positively upon their boss yeah well we can be that way with god too you know so and you're right in the old testament doesn't matter it always goes back to him and uh the the buck always stops at the the top so that's the way that job approaches us yeah then he switches to i mean a very common uh uh in the old testament to use animal imagery to kind of metaphorically describe us so he's what he does in verses five does the wild donkey bray when he has grass or the ox low low in the sense of making like a bellowing noise or whatever whatever sound

ox makes uh do oxes moo i don't know cows do so anyway i don't have a lot of experience with the ox yeah i mean i yeah me either cattle yes uh but not oxen but anyway or the ox low over his his fodder i what seems to be happening here in verse five is uh so these animals if they have grass if they have food in other words if the wild donkey has grass if the ox has it's it's hay they're not going to be bellowing they're not going to be braying because they got what they need, right? They don't make these sounds for no reason. The sounds they make are justified by the absence of what they need. So what Job is saying here is, hey, like the wild donkey, like the ox, so am I. You're not hearing all of these rash words for no reason, because I don't

have what I need. And interestingly, in Job's case, what he really wants is God to speak. I mean, he wants a lot of things. He'll complain, I want God to kill me. I just want to die, all this. But really, what he really wants, and you see this more and more as the book progresses, he wants God to see him. He wants God to speak to him. He's wanting some sort of answer from God.

And he gets that in the end, of course, you know, where were you? So he doesn't get necessarily what he bargained for, but he does get that. That's what he's desiring here. But his grass, his fodder, is this divine encounter, which he's not getting. And so, for that reason, he's crying out. Plus, of course, what he's suffering. You know what's weird is that, and I know we're jumping way ahead, but since you did it, Chad, since you brought it up. I opened the floodgates.

Since you did that. What's weird is that Job doesn't get the response, probably, that he's looking for in the midst of all this. But it's informative because it is enough. when he does get a response, it is enough. And so what it turns out that Job is, I mean, really looking for, I think, is what most people of faith would be looking for in the midst of tremendous suffering. The real question is, has God, like, completely left?

I mean, is he actually just completely... Yeah, walked away and left you behind. Or even worse, is he, like, completely against me? And even if the word that you end up getting from him is like hey just remember i'm god and you're not there's like that's enough in in the in the sense that he has addressed you now yeah yeah i would have taken that yeah i mean a lot of situations in life uh i would have just you know it even that what i think would have been enough yeah without an answer you know not explaining all the details of why this terrible thing happened

but just god saying listen i'm not going to explain myself i'm god and and you're not well yeah at least then you know he's there he's speaking to you he's addressing you he's reminding you of who you are and who he is and i think yeah i would have repented just like choked it yeah shut shut my lips yeah yeah so the next verse uh i struggled with this one i i think i think what he's talking about here are the words of his friends uh it it's not quite clear to me maybe he has some insight on this but verse six says can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt or is there any taste in well this is esv i don't even know what this is in the juice of the mallow fruit of some sort i mean i'm displaying my ignorance here i don't have any

idea what that is but the older translations have uh uh white of an egg is any taste in the white of an egg i think that's what uh king james and new american standard has we really don't know i mean if you have a esv or any note uh any bible with notes it's going to say the meaning of the hebrew word is uncertain because it is nobody really really knows a lot of speculation here but you get the gist of it is there any taste in you know the juice of something or the the white of an egg, whatever it is. The point is that there's nothing there. These things are tasteless. They have to be, something has to be added to them in order for there to be taste. And what seems to be implied by Job is that he's talking about the words of his friends. They're as

tasteless, as saltless, as useless as these foods. At least that's the best that I can do with it. Well, I've always kind of taken these to be kind of what I was talking about before, which is, you know, so can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt? Imagine this, and this might be incorrect, but can something like this be endured without an explanation, right? So, like, maybe you're able to bear up if you have a reason or if you know why. But it seems he's like, listen, there's nothing for me here. This is all absent the thing I need to be able to undertake this suffering. I don't know, might be wrong, but that's how I've always kind of read it, is that he's saying, I'm just eating plates full of suffering,

but he's talking about food here. So I'm just eating, like, the most tasteless, terrible things, and God's not giving me so much as, like, he's like, hey, you're going to have to eat this. You're going to have to endure this. And you're like, okay. And he's not even giving me the seasoning of an explanation of why. Yeah. No salt, no pepper, no pecan sauce, nothing. Just take it.

Just ingest it. Just swallow this. And you're like, these are not good things. Do you have anything that could make this go down easier? And the answer is no. It kind of fits with verse 7. My appetite refuses to touch them. They are as food that is loathsome to me.

Yeah. Yeah. So what you're serving up, I have no appetite for. In fact, quite the opposite. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about. Yeah. So that's verse 7. Verse 8.

Oh, that I might have my request and that God would fulfill my hope. that it would please god to crush me that he would let loose his hand and cut me off this would be my comfort i would even exalt in pain unsparing for i have not denied the words of the holy one so what he seems to be doing is basically contending what he talked about earlier where his request his hope is that god would basically end it and i've noted before that there's no, there's no, there's never an, there's never a desire expressed or a plan expressed that Job would take his own life, but there's plenty in here that he wishes God would take it, would take it for him. Yeah. Then he would, so that would be his comfort. I would even exalt in pain

unsparing because I haven't denied the words of the Holy One. So it goes on in verse 11. What is my strength that i should wait and what is my end that i should be patient is my strength the strength of stones or is my flesh the flesh of bronze have i any help in me when resource is driven from me so he's like it's not like i'm uh i'm not iron man here i'm not bronze man i'm not uh stone man i don't i'm just a man of flesh and blood and so there's there's only so much that my body and my heart and mind are are able to take uh my help is gone my resources are gone and the only thing left for me now is to wish for my own death yeah i mean just this seems like he's telling god uh help me or take me but this like i'm i'm uh i've come to the end of what i can

endure in and of myself yeah he's out of resources uh he's uh he's he's out of basically out of hope and so he he doesn't see any any light at the end of the tunnel so better just to end it now rather than to go on enduring these uh arrows of the archer now verse 14 he seems to to switch and uh i think it's going to continue this through really pretty much through uh almost the end of the chapter here where he's going to talk directly to his friends so he's going to go through an extended comparison of where he's at with regard to his sufferings and needing help and not receiving it in comparison with travelers, guys on a caravan, looking for water in the desert.

But it begins this way. He says, he who withholds kindness, that's our word chesed. So love and loyalty and all those things. He withholds chesed from a friend forsakes the fear of the almighty. So what he's, in talking to his friends here, he's saying, you guys are not showing me love. You're not showing me chesed. And in so doing, you're actually forsaking the fear of the Almighty. And what seems to be implied there is that, like, if you fear God, if you're a worshiper of God, if you're a believer in God, all those things are kind of packed into fear. So if that's who you are, you fear God, you believe in him, you worship him, you trust him.

then the result of that is you're actually going to show love to a friend especially one who is going through what i'm going through and you're going to actually express words of compassion instead of doing what you're what you're doing yeah so verse 15 says uh and this is where he begins kind of this extended metaphor so he calls them brothers i i don't think this is probably talking about his own family i think this is talking about uh lf has billed that and so far So the guys who were there, my brothers, are, this is quite the image, they're treacherous as a wadi, a torrent bed. Wadis over Israel are just kind of dry creek beds that only fill when there's rain. So my brothers are treacherous as a wadi, or torrent bed, as torrential streams that pass away, which are dark with ice and where the snow hides itself.

When they melt, they disappear. When it's hot, they vanish from their place. The caravans turn aside from their course. They go up into the waste and perish. the caravans of timaluk the travelers of sheba look they are ashamed because they were confident they come there and are disappointed for you and this is kind of where he transitions to comparing this to his friends for you have now become nothing you see my calamity and are afraid so the whole image behind this is first of all you guys have withheld chesed from me and in so

doing have forsaken the fear of the almighty and here's what you're like so just kind of picture job he's uh he's looking at his friends he says you know what you guys are like and what i'm like well i'm like a traveler and i'm thirsty and i and i think there's this place where i'm gonna get water i've been there before i know there's supposed to be water there and i get there and there's nothing but sand there's nothing but rocks it's all gone everything is evaporated it's dried up. There's nothing there. And of course, when this happens, I'm in a desperate situation because I'm lacking the very thing that I needed. Well, you guys are kind of like that waddy. You're like that torrent bed. You're like that place where I expected to find water and I didn't. And because

of that, all of your words are nothing to me. Uh, you have become now, you have now become nothing as the yes puts it there or maybe the new revised standard version has even better such you have now become to me so this is this is the kind of the the crescendo of this comparison i looked for water from you i looked for loving kindness from you i looked for help from you and all i got is a mouthful of sand yeah there's this idea here that uh oh you guys got some like water and stuff but uh when the heat gets turned up so like when conditions when conditions are uh extreme what that uh illustrates is that when conditions aren't perfect uh you have nothing to offer me right so like if everything is if conditions are great yeah maybe you got maybe you got water and stuff

flowing but uh i don't know in the cold of winter nope in the heat of summer nope and uh not only that but what really is a bummer is that you've come here and i think there's i think there's an accusation here chad i'm interested to know what you think where he says that you see my calamity and are afraid i think there's an accusation that they're not they've not come to help him but they've come to like investigate to make sure something similar doesn't happen to them like what is it that you did jobe can like we must have like we gotta avoid whatever the heck is going on with job let's make sure we find out what it is so uh it doesn't happen to us and so they're you're not here to help me you're here because you're afraid of the thing that's happened

to me yeah yeah or even uh just to piggyback on that on that they're afraid to uh they're afraid to become too empathetic with job too much kind of part of what he's going through for fear the same thing's going to happen to them you know and well if god is judging if god's judging you like i don't want to be i don't want to help you too much i mean i don't want to get i don't want to try to alleviate the judgment of god if that's if that is indeed what's happening i mean yeah this this stuff happens all the time still today i mean we know the temptation when you there is a temptation when you see even somebody that maybe is a is a close friend who's just going through a terrible terrible situation like even to distance yourself people i mean that's that's a

very real temptation for whatever i mean maybe it's because i mean i just don't have the emotional bandwidth to become involved in this situation you know or maybe we're just afraid because we don't have all the answers we're afraid to get involved with that we don't know what to say or yeah we might look at that and be like oh my gosh that that guy's he has must have angered god look what's happening to him i don't want to i don't want to get too close to him you know lightning might strike me too. I think all of those are, I'm not saying they're legitimate fears, but they're very common fears that people have when they see somebody who is really going through suffering. Yeah. And I think that's why he says, yeah, you didn't come here with love and

kindness. You came here out of fear because you want to know what's going on. Yeah. So then he says uh verse 22 and 23 he's basically saying in these verses look i i didn't ask you for a gift or for uh you know deliverance or anything like that he said he says have i said make me a gift or from your wealth offer a bribe for me or deliver me from the adversary's hand or redeem me from the hand of the ruthless i didn't ask you for any of that i didn't ask you to come and like you know bail me out or to rescue me from someone who has abducted me i didn't i didn't ask you for any of that uh you came here of your own accord to be my comforters and i haven't asked anything from you but what you are doing is demanding from me an explanation as to why i'm suffering the way i am

and i don't know and i don't know why god has set me up as his target then he continues and this is some of this is pretty heavily sarcastic. Teach me, he says. That's the root of Torah, by the way. Yara is the word to teach here. So teach me. I mean, give me some instruction here. I'll be your student, right? I'll be silent. You can teach me. You can just shed all of your wisdom on me. Make me understand how I've gone astray. How forceful are upright words, but what does reproof but what does reproof from you reprove in other words what are you accomplishing what what are you really accomplishing by your insinuations of regard to my hidden my hidden sin do you think you can reprove words when the speech of a despairing man is is wind and this verse 27

and we're almost to the end of this chapter verse 27 is where he really kind of throws it in their face. And I don't know that this is a very fair accusation. I'm going to attribute it simply to Joe being in a very, very bad place because to his friends, he says, you know what kind of guys you are? I'll tell you, you're the kind of guys who would cast lots over an orphan and you would bargain over a friend. Or as the NET translation puts it, yes, you would gamble for the fatherless and auction off your friend. That's a pretty in-your-face accusation to make to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.

Deserved or not, you can kind of understand Job is already put out with them. And if he's already put out with them, keep in mind, only Eliphaz has spoken so far. The other guys have not spoken yet, but he's upset with all three of them at this point. It seems that Job knows that he is a better man than them. And it also seems like Job knows that they know that he is a better man than them.

And so he is very much being like, oh, all right. So you're here out of fear, and maybe this is part of it. They're like, dude, this could happen to Job. Good grief. I mean, he's the most righteous dude around. And he's like, all right, man. I mean, I don't know what's going on. So, yeah, teach me, oh, righteous ones.

We all know how good you guys are. Teach me. I'll be silent. Yeah, just give me those forceful, upright words. Let's do that. Yeah, and then it says, kind of just like, you would do this. You would cast lots over the fatherless and this kind of thing. There does seem to be like, listen, can we stop pretending like I'm some kind of bigger sinner than you guys

when everyone here knows that's not true? I'm not a worse person than you. so like knock it off yeah i think that's where he's going with it what are you gonna teach me dude what are you gonna teach me really fill me with your wisdom all right so we got three verses left and that'll be the end of chapter six and that'll be end of our time so he says but now be pleased to look at me for i will not lie to your face please turn let no injustice be done turn now my vindication is at stake is there any injustice on my tongue cannot my palate discern the cause of calamity so look at me i'm not gonna lie to you just turn to me uh and uh you know let

me know is there injustice on my tongue cannot my palate discern the cause of calamity i think what he's saying here is that you know i i can figure these things out uh i can taste the truth in other words and what i'm tasting here is that everything is bitter to me and i can't find the cause i don't know what it is and uh you're of no help because all all you've done so far is insinuate that the problem lies with me and i'm telling you it does not so that's where he wraps up the chapter and then that's not the end of his speech chapter seven we only got through one chapter today but chapter seven he's going to continue uh with his description of the uh the struggle that we face in this life. He's going to compare our life here.

Almost, it's very, it sounds like Koheleth of Ecclesiastes, honestly. Like, vanity of vanities is the way that chapter 7 begins kind of to feel. But then he's going to shift to more of a direct address to God in the verses that follow. These last verses

almost make it sound like, as they are with him, and as these statements are being made, they're not, it's almost like they can't make eye contact with him. They can't bear to look at him. he probably is horrific to view, and he does this thing like, hey, look at me. Take a good hard look at me, and then tell me that what I'm saying is unjust. You tell me, like, if any of my words, is there any injustice on my tongue, right? Like, you guys aren't looking at me. Look at what's

going on here and then i'll be honest you guys tell me am i wrong for for being for is anything i've said been inappropriate but i need you to take a good hard look at me first audit this situation and then you tell me if i'm like out of order for being upset here and that's that's what it seems like but i'm gonna need you to look right right quit uh quit turning your gaze away to more desirable objects and look at my ugly situation and let's talk truth to each other. Yeah. All right, man.

Well, that is the end of that chapter. We will be back next week to discuss how Job continues. It's all very depressing so far, but we're getting to some classic lines of hope eventually, but we're going to have to take the long journey

there. I will see you next week, Chad. See you then. We'll see you next time.