The Bible in a Year – 10 August

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

10 August. Job chapters 17-20

We now observe perhaps Job’s lowest point. In chapter 17 he feels not only punished by God but forsaken by other people, and ready for the welcome darkness of death.  Bildad (who in chapter 8 had accused Job of impurity before God) claims in chapter 18 that it is only the wicked who suffer sudden calamity, disease and homelessness, as Job has experienced.  Zophar makes a similar point in chapter 20. Job’s reply to Bildad in chapter 19 is essentially that even if it is true, even if he is being punished for wrongdoing, then it is God’s judgement and not man’s, and so there is no excuse for his friends to criticise him.  That is an important lesson for everyone – being critical of someone’s wrong actions is one thing, but being critical of the suffering that results from it (whether ‘natural law’ such as cancer resulting from smoking tobacco), or the judgement of human courts, or punishment by God as Job’s friends understood his troubles) is another matter, and should be avoided. Job’s rejection by his family, servants and friends is worse for him than the physical torment of his sores.

 

In 19:25-26 we have what seems like a ray of sunshine amid the gloom. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God”. These words are familiar to anyone who knows Handel’s Messiah, as they start part 3 of the oratorio, following the triumphant Hallelujah chorus at the end of part 2.  They appear to refer to the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time, at least that is the context within Handel’s arrangement of Scripture.   In this original context they probably mean, rather, that unlike the false accusations of men, after death Job himself will at least meet with God and receive a fair judgement of his life.