Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly Come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with my friend and this show's producer, Nate Pyfer What's up? Hey, Nate.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Hey, buddy.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: It's great to be back in the studio recording another episode.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Always.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Always.
Hey, this past week, if you guys are looking for something to listen to, we were invited to be on a show there with Nate's friends, the Nice Cult.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: The Nice Cult?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, the Nice Cult. We got. Let's see, Gunner, Thor, Don and Nathan.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: And they, they do a podcast called Mom, I Joined a cult. Is that right, Nate?
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Well, it's called the Nice Cult. Their mouth, their motto is just Mom, I've joined a cult.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Oh. I was looking at the art and I confused their motto for the name.
Yeah. So they invited us to.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: It's just the Nice Cult. It's a cult about being nice.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: They're pretty awesome guys. They invited us on to talk about maybe some culty things in ancient biblical times and we tried to make it a little bit light and entertaining and find some cross reference things that have survived into medieval times and ultimately made their way into Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: That's right.
It's definitely for any of our listeners that want to hear us in a little bit more of a casual setting.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it was, it was more of a casual setting. Fun. Just sit around with the guys and, and they do a great job. They talk about a lot of different cults, both past and present and, and just help people explore, understand what some of these are about. And some things they do good and some things they do wrong. I guess just kind of informative, interesting and fun to listen to.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: It is definitely worth a listen. You should go listen to it. It was, it was really fun and I'm. I'm glad they let us come on and do it.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome guys.
But thank.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: And they knew else else should I.
We talked specifically about Amy Grant and no joke, Jason, correct me if I'm wrong. As soon as we brought up Amy Grant, Thor began to sing El Shaddai and I about fell out of my chair without any pre like conversation. It's the one song that he started singing. I was like, Thor, you're never gonna believe this. But on our podcast the. That's the one song that really got us into the Amy Grant chat.
Am I wrong about this? No, you weren't Wrong. There was no pre. Conversation. And so.
And then when we explained to him the purpose of El Shaddai, he got a kick out of that as well.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: So, yeah, it was. It was a fun. It was a fun night.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: All right, what are we talking about tonight, buddy?
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Tonight we're talking about Job.
Job.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Do you ever watch Arrested Development?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: You know, I have seen. I've seen maybe a season or two.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: So you get. You get the Gob reference where they spell his name G, O, B.
And so everybody calls him Gob, but it's supposed to be Job.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Is he the one that gets his hand eaten off by.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: No, that's the other brother. This is the magician.
The magician. Anyways, a little. Anybody that's familiar with Arrested Development, Job is kind of a. You'll know this. It's a wink and a nod to you fellow Arrested Development listeners. All right, Job.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: There's a lot of Job references out there. I believe Mission Impossible even starts with some Job references. In the very first movie they did, didn't it? Wasn't. Wasn't it a scripture in Job that they had to, like, track down and.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: That's right, actually. That's so funny that you remember that. That movie is a long time ago.
Yeah, yeah. There you go. All right. Well, we're going to be talking about Job today.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: We're going to be talking about Job. Job.
And maybe. Maybe getting us kicked off with Job maybe. The one interesting thing is we're talking about where he fits in time wise, because we just went through the whole history going through patriarchs going to the formation of Israel, the judges, them getting established in the land and the kingdom and kings and the kingdom being split up, and then ultimately Assyrian domination and then Babylonian domination and then Persian domination that allows them to go back to their home. And then we had the story of Esther last week. And you would think that this would be fitting in after the Persians have come and done their deal, right? But this is not how it is.
The Bible is not written necessarily chronological order. Some things are definitely in chronological order, but Job we place much earlier. To give you an idea of where Job sits, it's in the time of patriarchs, most likely after Jacob and Esau, but before you get to Abraham and when we start talking.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Wait, before you get to Abraham?
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yes.
Oh. Oh, Moses.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Okay, you just about blew my mind there for a minute. I was like, I.
We got a lot of going back and fixing. If this is.
If this is. If this is after Jacob and Esau, but pre Abraham, we've. We're shaking it up.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Thank you. Moses.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Pre. Moses.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: In fact.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Moses.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: In fact, if we're going to be fixing things.
Last week I talked about how the king of Lydia financially supported Xerxes. It wasn't the king of Lydia. It was a wealthy man in Lydia.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Okay? Nobody cares about that. If we're talking about Abraham being after Jacob and Esau, people would care about that. Nobody cares about rich man versus wealthy man versus powerful man.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, and then fast forward many years, Moses. Right? So he was after Abraham, after Isaac, after Jacob and Esau, but still long before Moses is where I needed to go with that.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: All right, we're there.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: And when we're talking about where he is in the land, in his position, and we're talking about some of his friends and who they are and where they're coming from, it would appear that Job is actually not Israelite.
So he doesn't even descend from Jacob.
There's a chance that he does in the genealogies. Your favorite section, Nate. As we're talking begatting and the Begaddery, there are a few jobs that are mentioned here and there that make themselves candidates to potentially be the job that we're talking about, but most likely is actually Esau's grandson, Joe Bob.
And so the name gets shortened from Joe Bob to Job.
I'm surprised you're not in all over that. A name like Joe Bob seems like that would be.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: No, that just sounds close to one of my favorite actors, Billy Bob Thornton. So Joe Bob doesn't freak me out at all. Marduk, on the other hand.
You know what I mean? Marduk.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Marduk. Okay, so Joe Bob might have been a Joe Bob.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: I mean, when you say it like that. Yeah, you're right. That is gonna make me laugh every time. So let's.
Joe Bob, Okay?
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Joe Bob was the grandson of Esau, and he ruled over all of the kingdom. So he was like third in line there. And he ruled over all of the Edomites.
And there. There is some evidence to suggest that this Jobab is the same Job. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna state conclusively that he is, but I will say that the Septuagint and I don't know if we've described what the Septuagint is for our readers.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: I don't know what that is.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: All right, let's take a quick detour into Septuagint in history. We're actually getting really close to when the Septuagint takes place in history. After Persia Conquers Babylon and lets the Jews go back to their home in Israel. The they push all the way up into Greece. As you well know, Nate Xerxes ran into a little bit of difficulty. He still defeated the 300 after a very bloody battle. And things stalled out. And a few generations later, the Greeks actually get a lot of momentum in the form of the Macedonians to the north of them.
Philip's son, Alexander, takes over and he pushes and defeats the Persians and then starts attacking them in the Near East. He attacks them in Israel. He attacks them all the way down to Egypt. When he conquers in Egypt, he sets himself on the throne and makes himself a God, a pharaoh in Egypt, when in Rome, when in Egypt. I guess make yourself a God. Which kind of offended some of his freedom. All men created equal, loving Greek neighbors. But anyways, he continues and defeats all of the Persian Empire and wants to cross over into India and keep pushing east.
His generals are a little upset. It's been a long time. They want to go home. They're tired. They're kind of convincing him to turn around and turn back. And then Alex Sander gets sick and dies mysteriously at a very young age. The kingdom kind of fractures. But when he united the entire near east, he made it so that Greek became the international language, the lingua franca.
And when Greek became the international language, now you had all these libraries that are dedicated so in Alexandria, Egypt. And you probably could guess now, Alexandria being named after Alexander the Great. And you have all sorts of Alexandria throughout the whole near east, but these cultural centers and these libraries and wanting to collect all of these books, they wanted to take the Bible and translate it into Greek because that was the international language. And a lot of Jews started speaking Greek.
So they say there's a little bit of a tradition here that it took 70.
Septuagint means 70.
It took 70 scholars 70 days to be able to translate the entire Bible into Greek.
And so here you have this Greek version of the Old Testament. And for a long time, the Greek version was actually the oldest version of the Bible that we had. So Greek was very important for scholarly study of the Old Testament. And this influence continued on into the New Testament. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, but the New Testament gets written in Greek because of this, because of Alexander, because of how he changed the world. And this is where we get to this whole Westernization in Greece and all that we attribute to them, really. Some people view this as the world beginning. Some others view it as when the world ended. But it was either way, a very tipping point, very crucial point. Okay, so the Septuagint is the Greek version of the Bible that gets written after Alexander the Great. When Greek becomes this international language in the Septuagint, as they translate the Bible and they write, they actually add here that Job in the book of Job was the same Jobab that was the grandson of Esau that ruled over all of the Edomites. So that's where they're favoring.
That's their interpretation.
Job is Hebrew or Semitic. So a lot of these languages, I say Hebrew. And if you look at it and say, well, Job wasn't necessarily a Hebrew, the Semitic languages are very close to each other. And you have a lot of these different languages. The Ugaritics, some Canaanites spoke Ugaritic. Ugaritic, named after the city Ugarit, which wasn't too far away from Israel, where their library was destroyed and preserved. And we look at their language, it's almost identical. So I shouldn't necessarily say the Hebrew name Job, but the Semitic name Job means he was persecuted, he was hated, he was treated like an enemy.
So if you look at the name Job, and we've talked a lot about names throughout this podcast in different episodes, like you look at Boaz versus the weakly and the sickly as we've talked about strength and all of these different things, Job could have received this name almost as kind of a nickname for what he went through. So I don't even know how much weight I would put into any of interpretation linking him to a specific Job and a genealogy. For all we know, his name could have been anything else. But they changed it to Job based off of the experience that he went through, if that makes sense.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: All right, I do like the. There is some evidence that suggests that he's not Israel.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Would the suggestion that he was Esau's grandson makes sense of why he had a lot of wealth and why he had a lot of various high stature things.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Well, particularly if he's king over all of the Edomites.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: If he's the wealthiest man in the east and he also happens to be king over all of them, that could explain the position that he had, the power that he had, the influence that he had.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: So obviously he was a man of power and they talk about all of the things that he had.
Let me kind of break this book down a little bit, because this is an introduction into Hebrew poetry. The guy that writes this book and puts it together, at least from an Israel perspective, and you see a Couple different perspectives here.
The Israel perspective is a poet. And why I say an Israel perspective or Jewish perspective as they're taking this book is you have a writer that's unknown who's, who's taking the story of Job and telling it and adding it into the biblical account.
And the reason why you see this difference is when you see Job speaking and his friends speaking, it's different from the voice of the person that's telling the story.
And Job's speech is very poetic too. But Job isn't referring to God as Jehovah very often, which is very unusual for an Israelite. If Job was Israelite, you would expect them to be saying Jehovah or Yahweh or whatever the case may be over and over again. But he's not. And he's not calling him Elohim either. Interesting enough, Job is referring to God as Eloh.
And Eloh makes sense. In fact, I'm surprised we don't see it more often in the Bible.
We've talked about this. The I am ending is a plural ending in Hebrew. So Elohim would be the plural. So you would expect the singular version of God to be Eloh, what Job is calling him. But you don't see it in almost any other scripture outside of of how Job is addressing his God. So it's kind of interesting, it's kind of unique, but it also suggests that Job culturally is a little bit different from the people that we see in the Bible, even from the person that's kind of recounting the story.
Most likely, the story of Job was a very famous story. And so you've got a poet here who is taking the story of Job and adapting it into the scriptures and trying to use it to convey a message and to convey kind of a moral of the story, what to teach the people and include that in the canonized account.
And that being said, now we kind of have an understanding of whereabout this is taking place, because even the lands isn't necessarily part of Israel. This is part of the lands that the Edomites had that Esau has. Even his friends are not Israel, they're Israeli. They're coming from the Edomites, from different parts of the world here. And we've got the cultural setting, the time setting. Now maybe it's important to ask the question, why is it included in the Bible? What's the point of the story? What's the moral of the story with Job?
And I think what this book swings at is tackling one of the age old Questions that still baffles us today.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
And why do bad people sometimes not have any bad things happen to them? Why do the wicked go unpunished when the righteous seem like they're punished for just about everything or anything?
And it seems like that is the subject that the book of Job attempts to address.
Do you want to go down that lane yet, Nate? Or do you want to take a step back and maybe talk a little bit more about the setting of Job? The beginning, the introduction of his family, what he's doing, why Job's so great?
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Maybe let's set up Job a little bit more. I think that that's probably a pretty good dismount. A landing spot.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Perfect.
All right, Job, we've talked about this before, that people are like sheep when they only move if they're scared or hungry, right? And this idea that a lot of times we don't turn to God really the way we should unless we desperately need his help. We feel like maybe we've sinned or we're in a bad situation, our life is in danger, or we feel like we need God, we turn to him and we pray fervently.
And learning how to seek him, not just because we're scared, but finding a desire to be hungry for God without any external forces that are forcing that on us. How do we find that hunger where we turn to God and pray and think about some of your prayers, maybe in your own life. Are your prayers of gratitude ever as sincere or intense as your prayers of desperation, of need?
Do we ever hold a fast just simply to thank God for His being good to us or for the small things in life that we're receiving?
Or are the fasts just typically reserved? Because you know what? We don't have enough money in the bank to cover this month, and we need some miracle that's going to deliver us, or somebody's in the hospital and we need to figure out how to help them.
How do we maintain that type of dedication or fervor in the good times is the bad.
And Job is a man who has that figured out. That's my impression of him as I start reading.
Because he's gathered together his sacrifice to offer sacrifice to God not just for his trespasses, but potentially any trespasses that his children may or may not have committed.
It's not like he knows that his children are off the course of wandered astray.
He is intensely praying to God when times were good, with the same type of intensity that he would have Been praying to God, had times been bad.
That's what strikes me as amazing about Job. That's what makes him a superhero in my eyes, even before any of the disasters strike him.
And then we get to his kids and the children. It says that the language here, I feel, is very important. It says on a certain day the children would gather themselves together and they would meet at a different son's house and they would invite their sisters to come with them, and they would have this feast with all of the children combined.
Nate, did you want to go down feasting at all? It seems like it's pretty.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: No. I just asked you a question on the way over, and I. I feel like you gave me a pretty reasonable answer when I just. I. I was curious as to why every major Jewish celebration there was always a feast involved with it. Like, what was the importance of sharing a meal together or of the food or if there's something culturally there that I was missing. And I. I think it's worth maybe just chatting about real quick.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Real quick, as I mentioned then, and we see it even today, every time we get together as a family. Typically we like to have a meal or some sort of celebration. We usually do it around a meal. And there was something sacred about this communal meal, about sharing or breaking bread with each other. And the communal meal wasn't just something that you enjoyed within your family, but that was the whole point of a sacrifice. When you're bringing part of the meat to the priest and the priests are partaking of that meal, you've got a couple things going on. As you're burning some of the meat on the altar, that's symbolic of God partaking of the meal. It's a sweet savor unto the Lord. It's ascending up unto him in smoke, and that's his portion that he's eating, where the priest might represent mankind. So you're sharing a meal, God with man, that's bringing them together and binding them together. But also the priest can represent God in that instance where the priest is taking some of the meat out of the pot and partaking of it along with the people that brought the animal. And as you participate, it brings the priest and the people together. So the priest is almost playing this dual role, representing God on the one hand and then representing the people on the other between God. So you've got, you know, this God, this priest and this people, where the priest is really a Jesus Christ type character who's making intercession, who on one hand faces God, and on the other hand faces mankind and brings God and the people together with this community.
So there is something sacred and significant about sharing a meal together, breaking bread, and you'll see it all throughout, all throughout the Bible. So they're. And it's a cool tradition that, whether knowingly or not, we still participate in today when we get together as family. So I, I think it's kind of cool when you see this family getting together and breaking bread and sharing a meal as they, as they enjoy their harvest and they enjoy each other's company.
But what you notice in this, or what I hope you notice is somebody's absent in this. Why are they not having the meal at Job's house? Why is it that the brothers are all getting together, yet Job is left out? And he is preparing sacrifice on their behalf while they're getting together. So he's doing his own communal meal with God and sharing this in respect for his family that's all gathered without him.
And the reason why I want to make that point is because in the very next verses you see a very similar gathering using the very similar verbiage.
It says on a certain day the children of God would gather together and go back and look at it. If it says the sons of God or the children of God in Hebrew, it's the B' nai Elohim. And anytime you have the masculine plural, it can refer to all males, so the sons of God, but it can just as easily refer to mixed sex group of females and males. So it could be children of God. If you choose to translate that as children of God, you have just a valid as an interpretation. And this children of God, the B' nai elohim, is a theme that actually shows up a lot of times throughout the Old Testament. This idea that you would have an assembly of the children of God who would get together and they would discuss things and make decisions, which I find kind of unique and kind of cool because we don't see that a lot in.
I think we miss it a lot. It's there, but we don't recognize it as here. We have an assembly of the children of God getting together and you'll notice that there's one person in the assembly that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be there. Satan, who had gone to and fro across the earth, is now visiting the assembly of God.
But there's also one person who's left out. Just like the assembly of the children of Job, Job's not present. Well, here at the assembly of the children of God, you don't have this God, the Father, you have Jehovah, who was presiding over all of the children of God.
And this is significant. This is very significant. For from our perspective, in the Latter Day Saints, in the church of Jesus Christ, we believe that Jesus Christ is a son of God and that he presides over the children of God, and that the children of God have the opportunity to be like God.
And I think we've caught a lot of grief for that belief because it's not very similar to what a lot of other Christians believe.
But in the ancient world, this was very much the idea that Jehovah was a king of gods and that the children of God, they were gods, just like you would expect in a polytheistic.
Help me if I mis. Explain this, Nate. Think Zeus.
Zeus was not the father God in the sense that he didn't give birth to Poseidon, he didn't give birth to Hades. He was the king of the gods of his generation. And the children of gods you're talking about, the B' Nai Elohim in this instance are the children of Kronos, right? And Kronos is missing. It's Zeus, who's the king of the gods, who's pulling all of the children together and presiding over them and making these decisions. Then you see that in the Canaanite culture with baal, who became the king of the gods. You see that in the Babylonian culture with Marduk, who became the king of the gods, he is presiding over other gods of his generation.
And to see this story kind of taking place and putting this assembly of the children of God right next to Job and his children makes it very. I mean, they're parallel. They run right next to each other, drawing some very strong similarities.
So Job in this case is almost like God the father and his children are like this generation that he's trying to raise. He's trying to help to make them like him. And, and then you've got the eldest son here or this Jehovah character who's presiding over the assembly. And so it's, it's, it's an interesting comparison. Is that, is that too much of a stretch? Nate?
Okay.
And then the, the reason why you have this council is hopefully trying to give context to the understanding of why Job is about to go through what he goes through. Because without that window, without understanding what's going on here, it doesn't make a lot of sense, which is why you're going to have this conversation between Job and his friends.
So in this council, God says, have you not Considered Job, who's a perfect man, who's wonderful, and Satan says, you know what? He's wonderful because you've treated him really well. You've hedged up everything around him, blessed him.
Why would he doubt you? Why would he have any reason to hate you? Because you've always given him everything he'd ever want.
And he says, well, you take away everything he has, and I promise he'll curse you. And so now this test begins. Now consider again, whoever's writing this, we don't know that they have a firsthand account into the assembly of the children of God, or God. This is somebody who is trying to explain what's happening and give us some context that they may or may not have access to.
So take it for what it's worth.
The challenge is going to be that if you strip everything away from Job, does he still worship God? And so God permits this to happen, and you start getting this weird series of events where a single messenger, and it's fascinating to me that there's always one messenger who says, I alone am escaped. To tell you the tell.
The Stabeans came up and. And these people came up and they destroyed all of your children, they destroyed all of your camels, they took all of your sheep. They've done all of these bad things and all of your fortune is lost within a day. You lose all of your children, all of your sheep, all your camels, all your possession, everything. And to where you've lost it all.
And I love.
If you don't mind, I'm just going to share a verse here. This is chapter one.
They're sharing a wine, drinking in their oldest brother's house, and they're starting to bear all this bad news.
And this is.
Okay, verse 16.
While he was yet speaking, there came also another and said, the fire of God is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them. And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
So who does this servant attribute this to?
He says, the fire of God has consumed all of the sheep and everything else.
The servant's blaming this on God and going back to this council. Was it God that said, I will go and destroy everything in the council? It wasn't God that's saying that he was going to send these plagues, right?
So I think there's a valuable lesson to be learned in that. How many times do we attribute something to God that we know not really where it comes from?
An act of God. If the earthquake comes or there's a tsunami and it killed 500,000 people. And like, wow, God must really hate them. Why did God do that? How many times are we attributing something to God that God did not directly cause or directly do?
And when we get to the very end of the verse, Job, I think, exemplifies this. It says, in all this, Job sinned not nor charged God foolishly, so he didn't lay the blame at God's feet foolishly. And I think that's what it means, foolishly, not knowing better, not knowing where it comes from. And I think that's one of the big lessons in the book of Job, is where are these things coming from? When you talk about bad things happening to good people, sometimes it is God, but sometimes it's just the circumstances, sometimes it's just the situation, or sometimes it's the devil himself or opposition or bad people that are causing bad things to happen. And when you charge God foolishly, like, why did you do this to me, God? When God had nothing to do with the suffering that you're going through? And so many times I think we blame God for things that happen to people that maybe shouldn't be laid at his feet.
All right, anything else there, Nate?
I. I'll keep going.
All right. With.
With Job, he's got.
Not only does he lose all of his possessions, but then it gets to the point where he himself goes through some excruciating pain.
His. His whole body gets covered in boils, and he is scraping them with pottery. So pottery, as you break it, can actually be very sharp. You can almost use it as a razor. And he's using this broken pottery to try to alleviate the pain that these boils are causing all over his body.
Everyone has turned away from him. His wife is looking at him like, man, you've fallen really from pretty far from where you were.
He's, like, in a dung heap there. And his friends come out to see him. And I think his friends get kind of a bad rap on this because they look at it and like, man, these friends aren't very good friends because they come in and they're laying all the blame at Job's feet. But at the same time, can you blame friends?
At least they showed up, right? At least they came to try to help Job. Job had gained a reputation for helping other people in times of trial.
And now his friends are coming to try to console and help him with some of the things that he's going through, although they don't do a very good job at it. And sometimes we are not always good at saying the right things when other people are going through bad times.
I think we've all been there when we come to help somebody else and say, oh, this too shall pass, or. I don't know. What else do you say sometimes, Nate? That you just feel like this is not super helpful. In fact, if you hadn't said that, maybe I would have been a little better off.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: I mean, I'm not going to run through the list of things I have said in those circumstances, but we get the point, all right.
There's never really a good thing to say in those circumstances, I think, is the point you're trying to make that I agree with.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Sometimes you just want things to get better, and nothing you say really helps.
But at least they showed up, right?
So you get these guys saying their little spiel, and you get into all this poetry, and I'm not going to blame you if you haven't read it all.
This is 40 chapters worth in job that we're covering in one week here.
But as they're going through it. And these guys have some pretty interesting names where Job means he was persecuted.
Eliphaz, who is talking to him, his name is My God is Gold.
And you're like, okay, so you're worshiping your riches or you're worshiping your status. And for these guys to come in and say, look, if you would just be righteous like me, you would have all the gold.
Obviously, you've kind of fallen from grace here.
And they're jumping to conclusions about Job's righteousness just based on his circumstances and his situation.
And this is something, again, I feel like there's a lot that we can relate to in the book of Job when we talk about in our life. Oftentimes I think we want to put ourselves in the situation of Job because we relate going through all of these trials. But a lot of times I think we can actually find ourselves in the situation of his friends.
When do we look at somebody who lost their job and maybe look at them and say, you know what? They probably weren't a very good worker, or maybe they had that coming.
Or maybe they've got something in their life that they've got to fix, and if they were just a little bit more righteous, they would have it a lot easier than what they do now.
Or look at homeless people who were asking for money on the streets and say, you know what? They had it coming.
If they weren't so apt to spend the money on drugs or whatever the case may be, maybe God would take care of them and bless them like, he's blessed me in their life. This is the situation that his friends are coming in, and they're trying to barrage him with this and help him, like, look, if you're going to ever come out of your situation, you've got to be honest with yourself and repent and be a better person than who you are.
And I don't know that you can be a much better person than who Job was before this came. And to have these guys counseling him on how to be a better person, it's very ironic, and I think it's critical to the story.
So they give their speech. Job gives his rebuke, and it goes back and forth. You've got three friends that are saying their spiel, and Job replies. And they.
Almost all three of them get three chances to kind of come back at him and put on another level of speech.
And Job stands up to all of it. Then finally, one of his friends, the fourth friend that hasn't said anything yet, his name is Elihu, which means he is God, or my God is him. He is my God.
He says, look, I've held my peace because I'm the youngest out of all of you. I shouldn't have any right to speak because I'm not as wise as you. I haven't been around as long as you guys have. You're a lot more wise than I am. But I am filled with the spirit of God. And the spirit of God is not a respecter of how old people are. And sometimes it can fill the youth up. And he goes into this big, flowery speech and how he's full of the spirit of God.
And he kind of rebukes his friends, and he rebukes Job a little bit for some of the things that he said.
Job, sorry, I'm going to try to get to some points here. Bear with me a little bit.
Job has gotten to the point where he hates the day that he was born. He wished that he had never been born, because then he wouldn't have to know all of the sorrows that he knows. He wouldn't have to experience what he had experienced. He figures if he was just born just to go through this, then better he hadn't been born. And so Elihu here is going to say, you know, talk a little bit more about God and give him a better understanding of what God's all about, and maybe correct Job a little bit, but not in the same way that his friends do. And when he finishes speaking, God himself is going to speak And God is going to censor Eliphaz and Zophar and his three friends, but he's not going to censor Elihu. As harsh as Elihu was, he's not going to censor him.
He's okay with what he said, but he's going to stand up for Job and say, like, Job did not do what you guys are saying he did. The reason for his afflictions, the reason for his suffering is not a recompense for any wickedness that he's done.
And this is the whole point of the story of Job, is the idea that we're not just punished instantly for every bad thing that we do in life. That's not how God operates.
As Job had pointed out, you've got all these wicked people that seem to prosper, that seem to benefit, that are stealing, that are getting away with it, and yet you don't have any of these consequences hitting them. So then why now is Job going through all of these things? Or why does God occasionally send bad things or trying times in the life of good people?
It's not about punishing them. It's because he loves them. And whom God loves, he chastens and he tests and he proves, do we still do that which is right? Do we still turn to God? Do we still believe him when times are tough, just as we did when times were good?
And in this time, God censoring his friends, tells them, you've sinned and I will not forgive you unless you turn to Job and offer offerings to him. And only through Job will I forgive you.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Yes, because now Job becomes a messiah like character, where he starts off almost as kind of a God character with his children or whatnot.
Now he's taking on a frail mortal role. Before he's just the perfect guy that nothing could go wrong. Now he's taking on this mortality, and he's taking all of this suffering and all of this persecution is being laid on him. And because he has gone through this suffering and because he's gone through this stage, now he can act as an intercessory for his friends and. And through Job, they can receive their pardon, their forgiveness. And so now you have him switching roles from a God to a messiah to a savior.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: And then at this point, when God forgives them, things change for Job and he becomes exalted and he receives double of what he started with.
And so he has 7,000 sheep at the beginning. He is going to have 14,000 sheep, and he has 500 becomes 1,000.
Everything that he had Doubles, except for maybe one very critical, important part.
He had seven children when he first began.
And then after they all died and he lost everything. And he went through all of this, and now that he is going to be exalted, he finishes the story with seven children again.
And I think that's very important, that his sheep doubled, his oxen doubled, his camels doubled, but his children do not.
And he was counted as the most richest man in the east in the very beginning when he had half of what he finishes the story with. Now he's doubly the most powerful, wealthiest man in the world.
But the reason why his family, his children, are not doubling is the fact that he never lost the first ones to begin with.
You might lose your possessions, but your children, according to God, if you're sealed to your family, you're sealed to the children.
Can you really lose them?
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: So I think in this story of Job, you have a testimony of this idea that families are eternal in nature. Because really, his children did double. He had 14 children. In the end, he never lost the seven that died.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Some great insight into that.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: And what's the significance of doubling? Or why not tripling or quadrupling or what's the significance of a double portion?
[00:42:01] Speaker A: That's the birthright, baby.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: That's the birthright.
So now he's receiving the firstborn portion through God.
And this is something we've talked about quite a bit, this idea that a double portion is the inheritance, the firstborn. Go back to the struggle with Jacob and Esau over that firstborn who receives that inheritance.
And this idea that if we wanted to receive that inheritance, we would have to, in the case of Esau, or, excuse me, in the case of Jacob, dress up like Esau, impersonate him to try to gain that. Well, Job, in being this perfect man, or being this righteous man who made it through, he becomes the firstborn. He receives this inheritance. It's symbolic of not just an earthly inheritance.
Because then we would have to question the story. If you had somebody who had bad things happen to them and they weren't restored in this life, they ended up dying because of the trials or the struggles or what happened then. Where's their justice if it didn't happen in this life?
It's not just about happening in this life. It's about the grace of God accepting them as if he had accepted his own son. Christ is the firstborn son. And Job here, having impersonated Christ and gone through all of these trials and these struggles and being a type and a shadow of Christ and not denying God, but holding strong through here, he becomes as if it were the firstborn son and receives the inheritance of God. This is symbolic of the hereafter and him receiving that status.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: That's great insight as well.
Fantastic stuff.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'm sorry, I think I took a pretty interesting story and I made it fairly dry.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: No, no, I think the thing is, I think that everybody knows the story, Right?
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: And I think that our job hopefully shouldn't have to be to tell everybody the details of the story. I. I would be shocked if those listening to our podcast had never heard of the story of Joe before. And therefore, like, I really appreciate the.
The added kind of insight and really kind of some of the surrounding context and details around the story, considering I think that's one of the few Old Testament stories that everybody knows.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
And there's some fascinating things with Job, on one hand, talking about how he wishes he was going to die, and he can't wait to die, and just death and how great that's going to be, and that's the end.
But after Elihu speaks and he kind of reasons and talks about the glory of God, then you have Job saying that though I die and the worms eat my body, yet in my flesh I shall see God.
And it's a passage of scripture in the Old Testament that really testifies of the resurrection in a way that not very many passages in the Old Testament do.
And if we were to look at the story of Job, consider his trials almost as symbolic death, having lost his family, having lost his riches, having lost everything as a symbol of dying, and then him being raised back again in the end to his status as a symbol of resurrection.
The story of Job is very much a very powerful image of a testimony to death, resurrection, and what it will be like for us if, despite whatever happens in our life, we choose God.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Great stuff.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Anything else?
[00:45:48] Speaker B: You've got a.
You've got a really interesting analogy, Nate, that I think really fits with the story of Joe. Okay. I don't know how much down this road you want to go.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: You tell me, and I'll go down as much as I feel ready to go down. What are we talking about?
[00:46:03] Speaker B: When you talk about the process of making an instrument and what it has to go through to turn into what it is, I think that is what Job really is supposed to be teaching us.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Okay.
I mean, do you. Do you want to talk about this now? Because I think that it's apropos.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: Okay.
I mean, let me. What? Instead of going into.
Instead of going into all of the symbolic detail.
Because I definitely think that especially as we've kind of, I mean, last week, we could have very much gone into this with Esther.
I think that when we talk in the New Testament about Peter and Paul, you know, there's. There's definitely some other instances that this analogy kind of comes up. But I think this is probably just as good a time as any. Maybe, maybe. Maybe tonight, maybe I'll throw some stuff out there. Jason.
Maybe we'll kind of let our listeners put it together a little bit. Maybe we won't. Maybe we won't just hand over all of our, our.
Our thoughts on it, and maybe we'll save it so for.
We'll kind of add some details to it as we go along in the future. What do you think?
[00:47:21] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: So I one time just read an article about the process of building a guitar, an acoustic guitar, to be exact.
And there's a lot of. There's a lot of interesting things that I don't think that. Or that I kind of took for granted. But I was. I was reading about this specifically to prepare for a Sunday school lesson. But the process basically is, you know, you need to take a piece of wood.
You need to take that massive tree or wherever you get the wood from, you need to cut it down into a manageable piece of wood to work with.
You then soak the wood in water to make it pliable, to make it flexible enough. You have.
You have a pretty rough frame that you then kind of fit the wood into, which is going to kind of basically be the shape of the. The guitar, various different pieces.
You know, you have your glue and your clamps and, you know, you basically let it then re. Dry or reset in kind of that new mold or that new shape.
But then you do a lot of bracing on the inside of this guitar, right?
You. You find anywhere where there might be some weak spots.
You build some pretty specific pieces for those just to support it. But not only just to support it, but also to let it resonate and to be full, lush sound.
You can definitely go overboard, by the way, with putting way too much, too much support or trying to over compensate for some of those things. It can kind of kill a lot of the resonance of the body, the guitar.
But then you take, you know, some instruments, some tools, and. And you try to basically even or smooth out a lot of the. Kind of the rough edges that not only are going to give it a beautiful shape, but again, really affect the tone.
You paint it you be very careful obviously with the stains and the various things that you're going to do with it.
And even though you can repeat that process indefinitely infinitely, no two instrument will ever be the same.
But then when you, you get to look or play an instrument and it doesn't have to be a guitar, everything has its process that's like this. But guitar, something I'm familiar with, there's something interesting about holding that finished instrument and playing it and, and the.
How beautiful and, and rich and lush a well built guitar is. And to think that that was such a long and for that piece of wood, a very violent process to eventually become, you know, an instrument in, in the master's hand or whatever. You know that old church video.
I don't know, something to think about.
[00:50:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
And there's, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe I'll leave, maybe I'll leave you guys with this thought. This is something that we talked about in an earlier episode and I can't exactly remember which episode it was, but it's been long enough and I think it's fitting enough that maybe we can mention it here and it would fit.
As we're talking about what they're going through and as the friends are accusing Job of not being righteous and Job's making his defense and he makes some very interesting points. If we're in Job, chapter 24, and he talks about why seeing times verse one are not hidden from the Almighty God. Do they know him not to see his days? Some remove the landmarks. They violently take away flocks and feed thereof. They drive away the ass of the fatherless. They take the widow's ox for a pledge. They turn the needy out of the way. The poor of the earth hide themselves together.
Behold, as wild asses in the desert go, they forth in their work rising betimes for a prey. The wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children.
And Job's saying these people are getting away with stealing and plundering and taking from other people. They're living in wickedness, yet the wilderness still provides for them. They still have food. And as we've read in different parts of the Bible, the rain shines on the wicked and the just. And it doesn't matter at the end of your life whether you're righteous or whether you're wicked.
The final statement of life is death either way, and rain comes to both.
So why then is the wicked going unpunished? If what's happening to Job is supposedly punishment, then why isn't everybody made out with punishment all the time?
It's something very hard to struggle with.
And this punishment. I think one of the most powerful lessons we learn from Job is that this is not hate.
This is the love of God. And you might be joking and saying, if this is God's love, then I don't want it. I don't want him to love me if this is what his love means.
But as you're talking about the instruments, Nate I mean, it's love that turns that instrument into such a beautiful piece, something that's going to be worth something even though it's a hard process to go through to get to that point.
And this comes from a book.
This is the Greek heroes. And this is going to be Athena speaking to Perseus. And Athena calls him to do a mighty work. And this is what she says.
Perseus, you must do an errand for me. I am Paulus Athena, and I know the thoughts of all men's heart and discern their manhood or their baseness from the souls of clay. I turn away and they are blessed, but not by me. They fatten at ease like sheep in the pasture and eat what they did not sow. Like oxen in the stall they grow and spread like the gourd along the ground. But like the gourd that give no shade to the traveler when they are ripe death gathers them and they go down unloved into hell and their name vanishes out of the land.
But to the souls of fire, I give more fire.
And to those who are manful I give a mite more than man's.
These are the heroes, the sons of the immortals who are blessed but not like the souls of clay. For I drive them forth by strange paths, Perseus that they may fight the Titans and monsters the enemies of gods and men.
Through doubt and need, danger and battle I drive them. And some of them are slain in the flower of youth no man knows when or where. And some of them win noble names and a fair and green old age.
But what will be their latter end, I know not. And none save Zeus, the father of gods and men.
Tell me now, Perseus, which of these two sorts of men seem to you more blessed?
And so when we're going through difficult times when we feel like the world's turned against us if we can't make ends meet or we feel like we're always struggling and it seems like we've lost favor or one bad thing after another happens around us it's going to be hard. And maybe it's just another cliche thing that you don't want to hear, but it is the love of God.
And it's a love for a very special person, a person that can understand, that can go through the trials, that can go through the tests, that can take these and forge from it a better person, a person that is worthy of that double portion in the end.
And that's what Job teaches me.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: And being, you know, possibly prepared to save somebody else too, like we talked about with Esther, like maybe these things, especially in our day to day lives, just, you know, to take it from kind of the abstract and maybe put, put a very fine point on it, is that, is that I know Jason, you and I have talked about, and I'm sure we have plenty of stories that we could share of trials that we went through in a certain time of our lives that we were able to recall later and use to help build somebody else up or to sympathize with somebody, or to strengthen somebody else, you know, or to teach somebody because of what we had learned. I mean, truly, my entire life, I look at and I can pinpoint some very specific instances where I was at my lowest.
And those are pivotal, pivotal moments for the amazing life that I currently have that I love. And I know you asked this earlier, my thankful prayers are way more sincere. I try not to ever ask for anything, whether that's right or wrong, because I don't feel like, I mean, I'm the luckiest dude in the world, right? I don't feel like I deserve the awesome life that I have. That doesn't mean that there aren't sadnesses and that there aren't tough things.
But, but truly the, the, the great things that I, I feel my life in my life right now, I can point to the pivotal moments that were my darkest, that I was being taught something at the time that I didn't realize, right? And so I don't think that this is even just an abstract thought. This isn't just a cliche for me at least. It's not, Jason. It's not.
It's.
Can we, can we learn to do the hardest thing, which is when things are the hardest? Can we try to go, well, what am I supposed to be learning right now?
Can I have, can I have perspective on this? Can I look at this a little bit further away?
Can I somehow pray? Simply help me get through this and help me know what I'm supposed to learn from this instead of, instead of please take this away from me.
Like, maybe that's the hardest prayer, right, Is to not, hey, Please, I'll do anything if you'll just get rid of this trial instead. Go.
Okay. Thank you for everything that I do have.
I'm still alive. What do I need to learn from this?
[00:58:11] Speaker B: You know, that's the hard. That's the hard prayer.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: But, I mean, if we can have that perspective, though, it's just think of the opportunities in your life, Jason, whether it be on your mission, whether it be in your callings, whether it be in your job, that something comes up that you can almost just immediately recall, oh, my goodness, I do know what you're going through.
Hey, let me ask me some questions. Let me talk you through this. Or just let me be here for you as somebody that knows and can really, truly, sincerely say, hey, it gets better.
Like God, maybe not even just trying to, like, punish us, to be like, hey, I love you and I'm punishing you because it'll make you a better person.
I mean, maybe truly it is to go, hey, this does suck, but somebody else down the road's going to need you after this trial. Somebody else down the road. You don't know who you're going to save.
[00:59:12] Speaker B: Well, in a very real sense, Job saved his friends that originally thought they were coming to save Job.
[00:59:20] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:59:22] Speaker B: Originally they thought they were going to help him repent and come out of this and figure things out and have this comfortable life, when what they didn't realize was the comfortable life isn't the more blessed life. It's the ones that hold to God and realize that they have to go through that to become the person they need to be. You have to go through this humbling process. If you're going to be humble and be like God at the end of the day. And what great person in history.
What great person in history can you think of that didn't have it absolutely terrible before they got to where they were?
[01:00:00] Speaker A: Totally.
[01:00:01] Speaker B: And maybe one cool thing that we could. That we could really put a bow on this with.
In Greece, if you go down to the temple of Hephaestus, and in the temple you've got your column aids, and then above the columns, you have in the front and the back, this triangular space. And then you have these little square sections that kind of go along the edges, almost like a.
Not a soffit, because it's up above, you can see it. But these, these. They call them atopes, but as you look inside of them, carved in each one are the labors of Hercules and Theseus. And you look at some of these Greek temples and this is a temple where you're supposed to be going into the presence of God and worshiping God, yet they carve the labors of Hercules or Theseus right into the structure of the temple itself.
And that might seem weird, but it's so fitting in this idea that if we are going to return to the presence of God and you look at the story of Hercules, this guy had lost his entire family at the beginning of the story and had gone mad. And in order to restore himself, in order to get back into the good graces, he had to do these labors that were impossible tasks that he was asked to do that no one could ever be able to do.
And he would go. And not being qualified to do it on his own, the gods would bless him with the divine gift of help to strengthen him and to help him along his way, where each feat became more impossible than the last. And yet he overcame it, and he overcame it, and he overcame it. Then on one side of the temple, and it's decorated the deification of Hercules, where he's finished the last feat and he's brought into the council of gods, and he himself made a God because he's finally overcome everything that he was asked to do. And what better image do you have than for a temple? What better image than you have than what you see? Even with Job, it's very much.
I could almost look at this and say, this is a temple text.
If we want to get past the cherubim and eat the tree of life, remember, cherubim, have a flaming sword. This is not just a walk in the park.
And I don't know what your trials look like or what your life struggles are. And I think a lot of times we keep that very hidden and very personal, very to ourselves. And people don't realize what kind of hell we go through on a regular basis, or the struggles that we have, or the things that keep us up at night.
But those things, we can receive divine help to help us conquer them and bring us back into the presence of God. And that's what I learned from Job, the hero's quest, which is.
It's a powerful lesson. And it's not a hero's quest if you're not fighting monsters and Titans and things that otherwise you wouldn't be able to accomplish or overcome.
[01:03:21] Speaker A: Awesome stuff, man. What are we talking about next week?
[01:03:24] Speaker B: Next week, I am super excited because we're going into Hebrew poetry, and we're going to start into the Book of Psalms, and I can't wait to teach you about poetry, parallels.
[01:03:34] Speaker A: I'm ready.
[01:03:35] Speaker B: All this fun stuff.
[01:03:36] Speaker A: We're all ready. Okay, well, until next week.
[01:03:39] Speaker B: See ya,
[01:03:46] Speaker A: Sam.
