06/14/2024 – Day 012 – Job – Chapters 3 – 4 / Apparently, my commentary is going against the grain of my usual mentor sources…Thoughts?
On this day 012 reading in last cycle, I focused on Chapter 4, Eliphaz’s response to Job in a post on 03/11/22. You can search on “Day 012” and you will see this post. I am going to focus on Chapter 3 and Job here today.
Through Job’s horrific suffering, he expresses a regret that he was even born. To me, this only makes sense if a person does not believe in a judgment and an after-life. Well, we shouldn’t be shocked at that. If Job is a closer to a contemporary of of Abraham, that would put him around 2200 B.C. , as opposed to Moses in 1526 B.C. Amazingly, Jews did not really have a belief beyond a shadowy Sheol until the Maccabean. revolt and the Pharisees origin, or around 175 B.C.
In chapter two last week, we recall that Job rebuked his wife for calling him to curse God and die! So, even with his suffering, he presumably, still has no inclination to follow his wife’s advise, thereby honoring and fearing God. But baring any hope for an afterlife at this point, it stands to reason that he would question the purpose of being born. I don’t know why here, but I don’t see any the commentators that I typically reference , even so much as broach this premise.
Let’s follow this, for I submit we will witness a Holy Spirit transformation in Job as we progress in this book. A little peek forward , I present to you Job’s reply to Bildad, Chapter 19, verses 25 through 29:
“But I know my living Redeemer, and He will stand on the dust at last. Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet I will see God in my flesh. I will see Him myself; my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger. My heart longs within me. If you say, ‘How will we pursue him, since the root of the problem lies with him? Be afraid of the sword, because wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know there is a a judgment.”
Whoa!
Take a look at got questions.org on these verses;
https://www.gotquestions.org/though-slay-trust-Him.html
So, I will take issue with the authors here on their last paragraph that I am pointing to these verses to the exclusion of Romans 8: 18-39 and 1 Corinthians 15: 42 – 58. Come on, are you serious? But I am saying these verses point to our unfathomable God, that the Holy Spirit would provide Him the Truth of His redeemer 2000+ years before His incarnation. Is that so inconceivable? What is impossible with God Almighty?
Soli Deo Gloria!
p.s. – I have not read this book, but with a Chuck Swindoll book I don’t know how you could go wrong:
“Job – A Man of Heroic Endurance” by Charles Swindoll