Year in the Bible Week 4

Job and His Friends - Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844 – 1930)

Hi everybody! We are still reading Job this week and next, and then we start Exodus on February 1. This stormy, cold weekend is a great time to catch up if you’re behind, but I hope the reading is going well for you!

Someone I love once told me that his biggest problem with the bible was the book of Job. It seemed to my friend that in this book God inflicted pain on Job just for sport, and he couldn’t accept that as good news. But what would the bible look like without Job’s undeserved suffering? We need this book to show us that God’s plan for his people does not keep trouble away from them, and that even as we worship and obey, we can (and do) still suffer. It teaches the right perspective on that suffering in a beautiful poem.

Last week we saw Job’s friends wrongly accuse him of not being worthy of God’s protection and love, perhaps because of his sins (or his children’s sins), or because he is prideful about his righteousness before God, or because of some hidden fault. They simply cannot see the difficulty as more than a just punishment from God.

This week we will get better guidance and theology from Elihu, a new character in the poem. he correctly tells them that God lets suffering happen to His faithful so that they may be humbled and preserved from falling into evil. It is not that God is personally offended by the sins of a man (or a nation) and therefore avenges Himself, but rather that He lets suffering be inflicted upon His people to purify them from the world’s sins and be made anew. When the righteous suffer, it is to keep them in humility and to preserve them from falling intro evil. Job's three friends comment from the perspective of ancient Middle-Eastern wisdom, but Elihu gives the perspective of the Law and the Prophets.

Of course, as Christians, we understand something that was still out of reach for Job. I love verse 9:33, where Job begs for a bridge; someone who would understand God’s will and take the burden of sin on himself, connecting us to the all-powerful Creator and Judge. Job was begging for Jesus! Wow!