Day 7. Reading in Job 14 – 16. 

I’m rereading through God’s Word again this year, but I’ll write/blog about it differently. Instead of only an overview of the text, I want it to be more personal.

I invite you to read the scripture for the day and write “in the comments” what was meaningful to YOU. We can encourage each other.

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Job 14.

As a lawyer before God the judge, Job pours out his frustration. Some of it is not pretty. He knows that even a newborn infant is born with sin and will die at God’s discretion. He knows he will die and asks God to leave him alone so he can enjoy his time left. 

Then, Job seems to vacillate between believing and not believing that there is life after death.  Even an old tree that’s been cut down hopes to sprout again at the taste of water. But where is a man after he’s laid in the grave?   

Job asks God to “hide him in the grave” until His wrath passes. To appoint a set time to remember him. “If a man dies, shall he live again? (His answer seems to be Yes.) “All the days of my service, I would wait, till my renewal should come. You would call, and I would answer You.”

• There are times of stress and anxiety when I would just like to go to sleep and stay there till the troubles are past.  I don’t want to face, endure, or deal with problems. I can sympathize with people sunk in extreme troubles who numb themselves with sleeping pills, alcohol, drugs, etc.  To a tiny degree, I understand what they and Job are experiencing.   
• Oh, Lord, help me to cling to you for my strength and to be compassionate towards others.

Job 15.

Old Eliphaz is back. He’s now condemning Job for attacking God!  “Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash, that you turn your spirit against God and bring such words out of your mouth?”

He condemns Job for thinking he knew more than “the old men of wisdom” who were there with him.  Eliphaz says, “What do YOU know that WE don’t know? Both the gray-haired and the aged are here, (we are) ones older than your father.”   

• What he says is NOT TRUE. I have white hair, I am “aged,” but I am certainly NOT WISE! Age does not automatically equal wisdom. You’ve heard of ‘old fools’?”

Then (nose in the air, I picture) Elephas berates Job. “I (a gray-haired wise one) will show you. Hear me, and what I have seen, I will declare.” Then he explains how it’s the WICKED MAN who writhes in pain, who hears dreadful news, whose prosperity is destroyed, who does not believe he will return from the dead.  (Yep, he’s pointing at Job.)

The next part is funny because WE know what happens to Job in the last chapter.  Eliphaz says that a wicked man’s (Job’s) wealth will not return, he won’t depart from darkness, and emptiness will be his final payment.  HA!  Just you wait, Eliphaz!

Job 16.

I don’t know how Job can keep coming back. Under such a hostile barrage, I would be squirming, face in the mud, unable to open my eyes.  But Job (you have to cheer for him) speaks back.

He calls these wise men “miserable comforters” with “windy words that have no end.” Job says, Yeah, if he were healthy and “wise” like them, HE could speak like they do.  “I could join words together against you and shake my head at you. I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.” (He’s being sarcastic.)

But then, Job slips into depression and laments what God has done to him. (Don’t blame him for this. Think of his loss, sorrow, pain, and miserable, finger-pointing friends. Even JESUS, on the cross, cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?)

• Surely, now God has worn me out
• He has shriveled me up
• He has torn me in His wrath and hated me
• He has gnashed His teeth at me
• I was at ease, and he broke me apart
• He seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces
• He set me up as His target; His archers surround me.
• He breaks me with breach upon breach
• He runs upon me like a warrior.

(These could almost describe his friends!)  And yet… OH, SEE HOW JOB TRUSTS!!! 

“Even now, behold my witness (advocate) is in heaven, and He who testifies FOR me is on high. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God that HE would argue the case of a man with God, as a Son of man does with his neighbor.”

• Yes, let me remember too that I have an “advocate in Heaven,” one who pleads my innocence before God because of His own shed blood. (Like the song says, God looks on HIM and pardons ME.) And I have the Holy Spirit who dwells in me and comforts me.