00:08:23:13 – 00:09:01:40
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us. We continue to get ready to enter the book of job. Today, just a little bit about the layout of job. We’ve mentioned a couple times that, in our opinion, or at least it’s been our decision not to try and tackle job verse by verse, but we’ve chosen instead to take job in chunks and work through pieces, trying to summarize what that what that piece means and what’s in it, and highlight some of the stuff in it.

00:09:01:40 – 00:09:42:00
Clint Loveall
And so job lends itself to that actually pretty well because this, this book, Michael, is unusual in the Bible in regard to its structure. I think there are some narrative books that have a little bit of it. Introduction I suppose there are other books that blend genres. The prophets, for instance, have some story sections. The Book of Judges has a little bit of everything, but job is interesting in that it’s so clearly defined by different styles, and I can’t off the top of my head.

00:09:42:00 – 00:09:48:47
Clint Loveall
I certainly can’t think of another book in which that would be as true as the Book of Job.

00:09:48:52 – 00:10:16:36
Michael Gewecke
Now there’s books where you’re going to suddenly jump from historical narrative into, say, accounting or, you know, building dimensions or. Yeah, no, I think that’s right, Clint. I also want to point out that there may be no other book and you’ll have to check in on this, but I don’t know if there is another book that maybe is written in its structure so as to represent Jewish Near East culture in a way that Jobe does.

00:10:16:40 – 00:10:47:03
Michael Gewecke
In one way, I’m referencing that here is that is a culture in which dialog and conversation is a fundamental part, that it’s not just storytelling, but debate. And you actually see this in the Gospels, where Jesus enters into conversations with Pharisees, Sadducees, and it often has this kind of rhetoric, this debate style back and forth job is interesting because it is sandwiched inside, a narrative of what’s happening.

00:10:47:07 – 00:11:09:57
Michael Gewecke
And inside that is all of this character conversation back and forth and it is a way of representing a thing that would be culturally understood and a practice that would be culturally practiced, and that, I think is interestingly embedded in this book. If you’re not aware of that in the culture, it might just seem to you like, oh, that’s how they’re telling the story.

00:11:09:57 – 00:11:19:48
Michael Gewecke
But this idea of asking the question, Where is God? And then these characters are literally they’re arguing with each other over where God is in this story.

00:11:19:49 – 00:11:46:28
Clint Loveall
And it’s a relatively minimal character list. If certainly if you count characters in a book like Genesis or Exodus, I mean, you’re going to run into the hundreds. Even simple books like Ruth and Esther, you’re going to end up with a significant number of characters. The Book of Job. There’s really six characters. If you call Satan a character and job’s wife a character, maybe you could bump that to eight.

00:11:46:30 – 00:12:13:01
Clint Loveall
I mean, there’s references, but really, this is a story of job, a conversation between job and three of his friends, an outsider who shows up late in the book to correct them, and then God makes an appearance and, and, and those characters comprise the bulk of the book, which is in these, as you said, these sections of dialog.

00:12:13:01 – 00:12:39:29
Clint Loveall
So let’s talk a minute about how Joel was put together. When you enter. Joel, the first part of the book, which is relatively short, is narrative part. And it almost once there was a man named Jobe, kind of story, and it’s going to give some information and and then it’s going to set the problem that that for these reasons that happen off stage, Jobe is about to experience suffering.

00:12:39:34 – 00:13:06:56
Clint Loveall
And then that also is the narrative part. But the narrative part then concludes with Jobe experiencing and undergoing this tremendous time of difficulty and finding himself in pain. And really, that’s the start of the book, and it’s written in story form from their jobs. Three friends show up and we get cycles of speeches in which one of them will say something.

00:13:07:01 – 00:13:32:24
Clint Loveall
Joel will respond, the other one will say something, Joel will respond, the third will say something. And that cycle of response to all three friends happens three times. Except for some reason we don’t fully understand the last cycle. Speech is only two of the friends speak either. The third one has nothing more to say, or we’ve lost that speech or it got folded into some other.

00:13:32:24 – 00:13:55:23
Clint Loveall
There’s theories about that. We can talk about that when we get there. But but that’s the bulk of the book. If you counted the number of chapters, it is that. And what’s interesting about that, Michael, is that it gets increasingly contentious. It starts as the friends offering him some thoughts and pretty quickly it ramps up into argument.

00:13:55:28 – 00:14:25:04
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. So that cycle of these three friends coming to Jobe and making the case in very many ways, these friends represent explaining and offering for Jobe in successive and I would say amplifying ways of of why Jobe is in the wrong or explanations as to what the suffering, is representing the consequences of.

00:14:25:04 – 00:14:33:18
Clint Loveall
Moving almost to accusation. I mean, yeah, they start with explanation and I think they get to accusation.

00:14:33:18 – 00:14:35:34
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, because job’s not getting it right.

00:14:35:34 – 00:14:36:28
Clint Loveall
Because he disagrees.

00:14:36:28 – 00:14:56:29
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. And that they’re, they’re continuing to push it down. And what that does is it has a way of ramping up the story. Because what you’re going to find at the end of the story, as we enter them with the narrative section, you’re going to hear all this talk about suffering and God. Where’s God? And then God’s going to show up and have a word to say.

00:14:56:29 – 00:15:21:16
Michael Gewecke
And so this story is ramping up, I think, in a meaningful way. It’s adding the stakes as it goes along. And I’ll be honest with you, one of the most bad takes ways of reading. Jobe. I think we have to address here at the very beginning. That is, we are even today. I think, tempted to read Jobe with the same kind of lens that these friends offer in their dialogs with Jobe.

00:15:21:16 – 00:15:46:46
Michael Gewecke
In other words, people are very quick to make the argument. Well, Jobe suffering is uncomfortable. Jobe suffering is unfortunate, Jobe suffering is bad. But Jobe had it coming and then there’s all these reasons. Because Jobe sinned. Because Jobe made this mistake. It’s interesting when you hear that in the modern world. That’s interesting, because that’s exactly the take that these friends are bringing to Jobe.

00:15:46:46 – 00:16:10:50
Michael Gewecke
In other words, it’s embedded in the story itself. It’s fascinating to see how the story has been constructed in such a way that it gives us this introduction. Then it almost builds a staircase, ramping up the stakes of the story as it goes. And each time it does that, I think it it sneaks away a little bit of our explanation that we would like to offer in the story.

00:16:10:55 – 00:16:15:25
Michael Gewecke
This this book has been designed to take that ground from us.

00:16:15:30 – 00:16:58:42
Clint Loveall
And I think for that reason, it’s that it’s those cycles of speeches that I think make Jobe a difficult book to study, verse by verse for laypeople, for us amateurs, interesting to scholars. But there is a very repetitive quality to them now. They do tend to intensify, but once you’ve read the first cycle of arguments, you’re pretty familiar with who’s going to say what you just have 20 more chapters of it still ahead of you, and nothing has really changed in the end of that.

00:16:58:42 – 00:17:32:49
Clint Loveall
And then as those cycle of speeches draw to a close and an outsider shows up, and interestingly enough, he refers to himself as a young person and he says, you know, I’ve waited to speak, and then he has some things to say to Jobe and the friends. And so there is this second kind of dialog that happens as he steps in as sort of, a voice of wisdom, a voice of correction, and then ultimately that leads to the the pinnacle of the dialog.

00:17:32:54 – 00:18:25:28
Clint Loveall
God himself shows up and makes a speech to Jobe, a very confrontational, a very personal, one on one with Jobe. Hey, Jobe, you’ve you’ve been wanting to talk to me. Here I am. And that culminates the discourse of this book and really ends the the dialog section. And then that sets the stage for the conclusion. The conclusion is in some ways interesting and in other ways problematic because though it provides a resolution, it’s not perhaps in every from every perspective, it’s not perhaps satisfactory.

00:18:25:33 – 00:18:56:35
Clint Loveall
And that’s part of the power, ultimately of the book of Joel was not only what it does say, but what it refuses to say, what it doesn’t say. And that’s kind of so narrative long section of various dialogs and a little more narrative at the end. And again, that that’s an unusual structure in the Bible. I can’t think of another book where you where you see that kind of that kind of approach.

00:18:56:40 – 00:19:17:11
Michael Gewecke
So you’ve already mentioned this, but I think that it’s a really insightful and interesting touch point. That third cycle that you talked about, where we have the two friends speak and then that third is silent. It’s a great touch point because, when you’re reading it, if you’re not paying attention to the details, you might miss that. You know, it’s possible, especially.

00:19:17:11 – 00:19:20:43
Clint Loveall
By the end, because everything’s sounding kind of the same. Right? I’ve heard this before.

00:19:20:43 – 00:19:41:08
Michael Gewecke
So think about that for just a second, though. Right. And and scholars are going to take this lots of different ways. One way to explain that it’s to say the absence is on purpose. The author wants us to see that the pattern that’s been repeated is now ended, and that the third friend is going to have no words.

00:19:41:13 – 00:19:58:17
Michael Gewecke
That is an interesting way to read the text that the gap is on purpose. Another way to look at is to say, and scholars will talk about this. Well, there was one there, and it’s lost textually at some point. You know, they didn’t have copy machines in the ancient world, so it was lost in the copying. It was.

00:19:58:30 – 00:20:04:13
Clint Loveall
Folded into speech number two, which really should have been right separated and broken into two speeches.

00:20:04:15 – 00:20:25:05
Michael Gewecke
Could be a transmission problem, could be a understanding problem, could just be that over thousands of years it’s gotten complicated. Here’s the really fascinating and interesting thing. Both of those conversations are going to be making conjectures. And there’s something to learn, I think, from both of them actually. In other words, you don’t to your point that you made clinched.

00:20:25:06 – 00:20:49:01
Michael Gewecke
Yes. On one hand, if you’re not a scholar, some of the textual things are wow, that’s a historically interesting thing, but I don’t really see how that helps me in my reading of the Bible, especially devotionals. On the other side of that, it’s books like Jobe that show us that, quite frankly, a lot of the meaning that the Bible has has come from the community that’s delivered it to us.

00:20:49:01 – 00:21:10:52
Michael Gewecke
And so that’s the amazing thing about a book full of holy words of, of God’s Word to us is that even still, that book has contained within it the the work, the the passing on the foibles of humans who have been trying to transmit it. You also have simultaneously the meaning that comes from that, the questions it creates.

00:21:10:57 – 00:21:34:25
Michael Gewecke
Right? Because it gives us the opportunity to ask, what if it wasn’t included on purpose? What does that have to teach us? And if there’s something that would have been there or might have been there one day, what might have been and what might that mean? Both of those, I think, could be generative conversations. Job in its roughness, in its ancient textual, order.

00:21:34:30 – 00:21:49:28
Michael Gewecke
It gives us opportunities to, I think, ask holy questions of the text. It invites us to use our imagination, which I think is invited both structurally, but I think intentionally. We’re supposed to be asking those questions along with job, and these friends will.

00:21:49:28 – 00:22:12:13
Clint Loveall
Try to do justice to various parts of job, and hopefully we’ll be able to make some progress on that. But one of the things that should be noticed, and I write this down, or we’ll try to remember to come back to it, but this is an overlooked reality of the book of Job that is crucial.

00:22:12:18 – 00:22:43:21
Clint Loveall
That the words of job are deep and profound and matter. But don’t miss the silences of job when job’s friends show up. Initially, both they and job. Nothing to say. For a week there is silence and then the words begin. And then there’s the potential that at this third cycle of speeches, one of the friends doesn’t have anything left to say.

00:22:43:26 – 00:23:13:37
Clint Loveall
And so there there is a silence there. And then, of course, when job is confronted by God, his response is to say, I will now be silent. I’ve done all this speaking, but but now you have silenced me. And so what? The text doesn’t say, or at least when the text highlights silence is very important and it’s beautifully incorporated.

00:23:13:37 – 00:23:42:42
Clint Loveall
It’s easily missed, but it’s it’s beautifully incorporated in the into the mystery of this book and the mystery of the story that it tells. And so, pay attention and we’ll try to help in those moments, but pay attention not only to what the Book of Job says. Pay attention when it doesn’t say anything, and that that’s that, I think, is a testament to the depth of this, the way this book is written.

00:23:42:46 – 00:24:05:15
Michael Gewecke
You mentioned yesterday a previous study. Hit the back button if you want to see that, that, there are actually different words for God used inside the narrative section and the dialog section. I think some scholars also talk about how job has different aspects in the narrative section versus the dialog section side. In the narrative section, job is much more faith filled.

00:24:05:25 – 00:24:30:12
Michael Gewecke
You might argue positive. I don’t know if that’s actually a helpful word, but. And then you get into the dialog sections, job becomes argumentative job. Can be harsh. And one way to look at that is to say that these two things are not intended to be opposites, to trouble us, but rather tensions that are intended to show what happens when we encounter suffering.

00:24:30:12 – 00:24:52:48
Michael Gewecke
In other words, it may be intentional that we see both sides of the man, because that’s both sidedness of our experience of hard things. There’s a way in which maybe the story even includes some clues like that, that we are supposed to stretch ourselves to recognize. It’s bigger than just one simple thing.

00:24:52:48 – 00:25:34:33
Clint Loveall
There’s a fascinating idea that perhaps what existed first was the narrative part of job. The beginning and the end, which put together tell a relatively simple story. Job suffered. He handled it well. He didn’t lose faith. He got rewarded. And that perhaps somewhere along the line, someone took that older story and opened it up and provided for us in the dialog section, an exploration of what went on behind the scenes, the inner struggle of suffering and pain and Bible scholars, as they do on most things, fall into two camps.

00:25:34:46 – 00:26:04:44
Clint Loveall
Some people think this book was written altogether, others as I’ve just mentioned, think, well, maybe they started with a framework and then some very capable author went in and added a middle and said, let’s see what else could have been in that story. We we ultimately don’t know. It is interesting that the words used of God and a few other words are present in the beginning and the end, but those words are not present in the middle.

00:26:04:44 – 00:26:30:37
Clint Loveall
They use different words that are not present in the beginning and the end. So that could have been to enhance the different. This could be the same author that just used language to enhance the different sections. Or it could be this idea that maybe the original story is older and somewhere along the line someone revisited it and sort of added some layers, some depth to it.

00:26:30:37 – 00:26:51:27
Clint Loveall
And ultimately, I don’t know that that matters. I think it’s interesting. I, I like that idea. I think that’s an intriguing concept that someone said, well, we have this story that always made sense to us, but now it doesn’t. So what would it be looked like? What would it look like to break it open and and create a middle for it?

00:26:51:27 – 00:26:54:19
Clint Loveall
I, I don’t know, I think there’s something compelling about that.

00:26:54:19 – 00:27:35:45
Michael Gewecke
And no matter which of those you do find compelling, that’s this is the thing that I think we have to give Joe credit for. Doesn’t matter what direction you arrive to job, Joe best something to say to you. So whether you find it more compelling, this is all been integrated work of one person. Or you find that idea that the community has seen in Joe many things over the years and that that the book built through that, that human dialog, it doesn’t really matter, because in each of those perspectives, what we’re going to discover is a book that is wrestling in, in complex and I think intentionally unsettling ways with some of these real human

00:27:35:45 – 00:27:52:12
Michael Gewecke
themes. And if we are willing to open ourselves to the book, it’s going to have something to say to us in our reading of it. Thanks for being with us, friends. It’s good to get to start. I hope there’s been something new interesting challenging for you in this. If so, give it a like. Helps others find it in their own study and we look forward to seeing you all tomorrow.

00:27:52:19 – 00:27:52:57
Clint Loveall
Thanks everybody.