00:00:01:08 – 00:00:24:07
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for joining us this Monday as we continue through the Book of Job. We move into the second round of dialog or speeches. This starts in chapter 15. Each of job’s friends now has had a chance to say something. Job has responded to each of them. And now we do that again.

00:00:24:07 – 00:00:58:03
Clint Loveall
And in this second cycle of speeches, we hear again from all three of them. And just as it was in the first round, one of them will speak. Then job will respond. And I don’t know, Michael, if there’s a great deal of new that happens. I think the first round of speeches largely set the stage and to some extent, mostly what we hear from now is a variation on the themes.

00:00:58:08 – 00:01:59:02
Clint Loveall
I do think one of the things we’ll notice in this second round is maybe a growing discontent between job and his friends. Some of the accusatory language pointed at job, and some of job’s kind of snarky, snarky replies maybe are more noticeable. The other thing I think we’ll see in this second cycle of speeches that maybe wasn’t as evident in the first go round, is that jobs seems to resent their implication that he there’s a growing unsettled ness, it seems, on job’s part as he pushes back on his friends, I think, and, really interesting if you just imagine that you’re in job’s place and not only are you suffering and struggling and asking

00:01:59:02 – 00:02:33:09
Clint Loveall
the biggest and hardest questions of life. You’re now arguing with your friends about whose fault it is that you’re suffering. It’s it’s an interesting place that this book goes. And so often. People who most want to explain suffering are the least helpful with their explanations. And I think that continues to be the case here. So today we hear from Eliphaz, his second speech.

00:02:33:14 – 00:03:01:14
Clint Loveall
Not not terribly. He doesn’t assault job, but he’s pretty. He’s pretty outspoken. He said, starts here. Should the wise answer with windy knowledge and fill themselves with the east wind? Should they argue in unprofitable talk or in words which they can do no good? But you are doing away with the fear of God hindering meditation before God.

00:03:01:19 – 00:03:35:22
Clint Loveall
This is a really interesting turn that we take, and I don’t remember that we saw this as much in the first cycle of speech as the accusation against job that he’s he’s detracting from faith or that he’s somehow in in his pushback against God and his unhappiness with God. He’s making God look bad. He might be harming other people’s faith that he’s he’s going against the grain and that there’s a problem with that.

00:03:35:22 – 00:04:06:34
Clint Loveall
Ultimately is, Eliphaz thinks part of the problem is verse six. Your own mouth condemns you and not I. Your own lips testify against you. So, then we again, we move pretty quickly to the idea that look, job, God makes people suffer when they’ve sinned. You’re suffering. Read between the lines. You must have sinned. Kind of get we we we don’t leave that very.

00:04:06:39 – 00:04:09:36
Clint Loveall
We don’t get very far from that throughout the rest of this.

00:04:09:41 – 00:04:27:43
Michael Gewecke
I think in pursuit of some of those sub threads. Because I think you’re right, Clint. There’s a lot of these major threads that are going to be repeating here. I do you think there are some sub threads that make their way in here that are not necessarily new or novel, but I do think they’re still significant and they’re worth talking about.

00:04:27:48 – 00:04:47:06
Michael Gewecke
And I do think that we encounter that pretty early on here in job chapter 15. So let’s look at it in verse nine and ten. What do you know that we do not know. What do you understand. It’s not clear to us. The gray haired and the aged aged are on our side. Those older than your father, Clint.

00:04:47:06 – 00:05:11:18
Michael Gewecke
That is a on going and even present today foundation for an argument. When we turn to tradition, when we turn to the thing that we’ve handed one generation to the next. You know, if you want to simplify this for a Sunday school class of kids, you’d say, hey, Joe, what makes you think that you’re smarter than everybody else that’s come before you?

00:05:11:18 – 00:05:39:37
Michael Gewecke
Right. And I think that that often does get referenced, especially when we’re talking about theology, when we’re talking about what we know about God, what we believe about God. Because you so much of that is handed like a marathon, the baton from one generation to the next, and certainly there is great wisdom in listening to those who have come before us, because they have a way of running us while we are in the midst of lives that by definition, pull us in lots of different directions.

00:05:39:37 – 00:06:03:30
Michael Gewecke
That’s true today, but that’s been true every day. And so there’s wisdom there. But, Clint, I think that there’s an argument to be made here that Jobe is arguing for an honest appraisal of his situation in light of where he is on on this day. And his friend’s response is, well, Jobe, that’s not true because of what we know.

00:06:03:41 – 00:06:31:15
Michael Gewecke
And Jobe, I think, would push back on that and say, I would have agreed with you until I came to know something I did know before, right, that there, by definition, has to be a first. If our understanding is going to move forward. And so there’s a really fascinating argument being pushed here that I think it’s worth exploring, that sometimes just because we’ve been told the thing and everyone has thought it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true.

00:06:31:15 – 00:06:33:16
Michael Gewecke
And that’s where Jobe is pushing back in this.

00:06:33:16 – 00:06:56:56
Clint Loveall
And in this first speech. There’s not a I mean, Alpha says a couple of hard things to Joe, but this isn’t as edgy as we’ll see the next couple of speeches become. In fact, Eliphaz is going to use most of his time at the microphone, so to speak, just reminding Jobe of how things work. And he has this most of his speech is, look, Jobe, we know this.

00:06:56:57 – 00:07:23:43
Clint Loveall
The evil people, they they don’t do good. They don’t care about God. And and they suffer for it. They get they stretched out their hands against God. They live in desolate cities, in houses. No one should inhabit. They will not be rich. They will not endure. This is what happens when people participate in evil. They they are punished.

00:07:23:43 – 00:07:53:42
Clint Loveall
They suffer. And then that’s kind of where he leaves that. And that’s been the thrust of his argument. I’m not sure this is ultimately true, but Eliphaz seems a little less offended by job, perhaps, than his friends. If you’re with us tomorrow, the next cycle of speeches, I mean, it. There’s some name calling and some accusation.

00:07:53:42 – 00:08:22:00
Clint Loveall
Eliphaz has done a little of that, but it seems to me a little less, job’s answer is, again, wonderfully constructed. It’s it’s rich. It’s deep. Verse one of chapter 16. Job answered, I have heard many such things. Miserable comforters. Are you all you keep saying the same thing and you’re not comforting me. Have windy words no limit.

00:08:22:04 – 00:08:45:38
Clint Loveall
What provokes you to keep on talking? I could talk as you do if I were in your place, I could join words together against you. Shake my head at you I could encourage you with my mouth. And the solace of my lips. Would assuage your pain. If I speak, my pain is not assuaged. And if I, forbear, how much of it leaves me?

00:08:45:43 – 00:09:15:00
Clint Loveall
And. And this is where the language of Jobe again turns to what he understands to be an honest appraisal of his situation. But this is the very language that makes his companions so uncomfortable. I think verse seven, Now God has worn me out. He has made desolate all my company. He has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me.

00:09:15:05 – 00:09:48:58
Clint Loveall
He has torn me in his wrath and has hated me. He has gnashed his teeth at me. My adversary sharpens his eyes against me. Now this I think. Michael, this week brings us to a very interesting point in interpreting job, which is, having read the first part of the story, we know that what has happened to job has happened with God’s approval.

00:09:49:03 – 00:10:25:55
Clint Loveall
And yet we know that God allowed that to prove job’s righteousness when challenged about it. And yet the longer this conversation persists and the longer job. Struggles with this pain, the more likely he is to now think of and and hear literally speak of God as an adversary. God is the one. And he has done this to me.

00:10:25:55 – 00:10:47:51
Clint Loveall
He has torn me. He’s coming after me. He has shriveled me, which, from job’s perspective, I think we can say must clearly seem true. But it’s it’s not clear, as readers of the book that it’s may be an entirely fair assessment of job’s situation.

00:10:48:03 – 00:10:55:24
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I think that that’s an important turn to have in this conversation, because we can empathize with job. But I don’t.

00:10:55:24 – 00:10:56:56
Clint Loveall
Think certainly he feels that.

00:10:56:56 – 00:11:18:12
Michael Gewecke
Way. Yeah. And and I think any one of us, if we were in the circumstance of the suffering of our family and then ultimately the suffering in our bodies, that is going to put us in a position where where we can see the merit behind job’s complaint. But then, you know, I think it it’s worth slowing down here.

00:11:18:12 – 00:12:10:44
Michael Gewecke
And to your point, I think it’s it’s worth leaning in. Verse nine, God has torn me in his wrath and hated me. He has gnashed his teeth at me. My adversary sharpens his eyes against me, that there is a way in which Joe is is flinging wildly in this argument the idea that God is the one who hates job, the one that that this, this inequity between the divine and the mortal, the the desire for God to to be able to have a conversation in which there might be some connection that can so easily give way in the pain and the suffering to accusation which goes beyond what we know.

00:12:10:44 – 00:12:31:44
Michael Gewecke
The set up of this was now, can we empathize? Yes. Can we have compassion? Absolutely we should. But I think you’re right that in this moment of difficulty, in the pressure of this time, there are there are ways in which I think Joe flings wildly and doesn’t always hit the mark in his complaint. As for what we know, as the reader.

00:12:31:44 – 00:12:57:11
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I would agree. If you, again, this this is so wonderfully written and the language is so, it it’s just so engaging and, and at some point, so troubling. If we continue with like verse 12 and 13, here I was at ease. But he broke me in two. He grabbed me by the neck and dashed me to pieces.

00:12:57:16 – 00:13:24:55
Clint Loveall
He set me up as a target. His archers surround me. He slashed open my kidneys and shows no mercy. Again from the ash heap upon which Joe sits. I think we can understand that Jobe feels this way, but I think for the first time in the narrative, even the reader would go, well, Jobe, that’s going that is perhaps going a little far.

00:13:25:01 – 00:13:56:53
Clint Loveall
And that’s the wonderful thing that this book seems able to do, is to give us the theology and the philosophy of the question of suffering, while simultaneously letting us hear the experience of the sufferer, and to be able to hold those two things in tension and allow the reader a foot in both worlds, I think is a remarkable accomplishment of this book.

00:13:56:58 – 00:14:24:31
Clint Loveall
This is uncomfortable language specifically because it’s pointed at God. Yeah. And I think that it it pulls the reader into the arguments. We don’t agree with the friends. We know better, but now we’re not quite sure we agree with Joe either. And, and and that I think is is an interesting step in this book.

00:14:24:36 – 00:14:57:55
Michael Gewecke
So, Clint, I think that is a really helpful insight for us is if we come to a book like job and we’re looking for who the hero is and who the antagonist is, if you’re looking for good and bad, right and wrong, if you look to just vilify the friends as being completely wrong in every way, I think you’re missing the nuance of what this book is doing, because to your point, on one hand, I think the reader comes with so much weight of compassion and empathy with Jobe that we’re on Jobe side, you know, God, this is too much.

00:14:57:55 – 00:15:17:36
Michael Gewecke
You shouldn’t have done this. That that’s a natural response to this book. Then there are these other moments you say, okay, Jobe. Yes, but let’s take a step back here. I mean, there there are some. You may be going further than you need to in this argument that you’re making, and maybe the friends aren’t. All right. And yes, maybe they should have kept their mouth shut.

00:15:17:36 – 00:15:39:03
Michael Gewecke
But they’re not all wrong either. Joe, that that’s the really nuanced and complicated way of looking at this book, because I think one of the things that we miss is when we experience our lives to be disrupted by suffering, like Jobe is in this book, what do we want? We want there to be some order. We want things to be put back to.

00:15:39:03 – 00:16:21:09
Michael Gewecke
Right? We even if it’s different, we want the world to be stable again. And these friends represent that. These friends represent the idea of what makes the world stable. This is how you can rely upon God to do what God’s going to do. This. This is it. The job you just you’re off track, get back on and job rightly dismisses that simplistic argument, but in dismissing it fully and wholly, he really at some points untether himself from the reality that God does bring order again, that even in the midst of chaos and our lack of understanding and confusion, God is capable of meeting us even in that place.

00:16:21:09 – 00:16:41:39
Michael Gewecke
So here, Jobe describes God is the one who’s literally dashing him to pieces. And yet also, we know God is the one who’s capable of restoring. God is the one who’s capable of meeting us in the midst of that chaos. Jobe is not going to say that job’s not there right now, but I think that this book is trying to.

00:16:41:43 – 00:16:55:45
Michael Gewecke
I’m not trying. I think this book succeeds in presenting the multi-layered level of our experience, of the saying, and also the truth that’s in that thing and also the truth the other see around the thing. All of that’s happening simultaneously here.

00:16:55:49 – 00:17:27:00
Clint Loveall
And then as as we follow job’s response here, his speech, we get to verse 15. And, and I think this is, again, a small seed planted in the cycle of these speeches. We’ll see another instance, I think, an outgrowth of this tomorrow. But it’s translated this way. Where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? And right.

00:17:27:05 – 00:17:58:55
Clint Loveall
This is the question that hangs over human suffering. Where is our hope in it? What is our hope in it? If it’s not from a system, if our hope is not in a full proof system that can can never go wrong. And if our hope is not in a formulaic God who always follows the pattern, if A then be but maybe gets it wrong, then then where is the hope?

00:17:58:55 – 00:18:33:19
Clint Loveall
And I and I don’t want to make too much of this yet, because I think this is, not a driving question for Jobe yet. Jobe is still frustrated that he does not have a way to make his case, but in bringing up the idea of where he is hope in the midst of suffering. Again, the the author authors of this book have brought in this this beautiful thread that’s going to begin to get woven through the rest of the words.

00:18:33:20 – 00:18:41:17
Clint Loveall
And, I think put a put a star by this because I think it matters. Later.

00:18:41:22 – 00:19:11:09
Michael Gewecke
I’m not going to push ahead here. I hope you’ll continue joining us for this. I just think there are ways in which we’ll see even tomorrow, where the friends push back and say, Jobe, it’s not just God who’s tearing at you, it’s you tearing at yourself. And that’s always a complicated, inevitable truth of our suffering is we get caught ourselves in the suffering, often makes us turn inward, and we become, in many cases, our worst enemy.

00:19:11:09 – 00:19:43:39
Michael Gewecke
And I think that there’s a way in which, as this book will continue on, and I think it’s an inverse proportional relationship, as the book goes deeper and job in this argument with his friends becomes more, turbulent. I think also what you’re going to see is you’re going to see an increasing need for God to reenter the picture that that it’s constructed in such a way that those arrive at a point of maximum requirement at the same time, I.

00:19:43:39 – 00:20:11:42
Clint Loveall
Don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it in these these terms before, Michael, but as we go on, the friends now are essentially concerned about job on two fronts or arguing with Joel, perhaps on two fronts. The first is the initial cause of the suffering, which they assume to be job’s disobedience or job’s sinful actions, something that they think has caused Jobe his initial suffering.

00:20:11:47 – 00:20:49:52
Clint Loveall
But now, in defending himself and in claiming to be righteous and pure and not deserving of that, in in their mind, he’s only increasing the offense. He’s only increasing the iniquity and thereby maybe increasing the punishment as well. So, it it is from there. From their perspective, perhaps job’s problems are getting bigger, as he seems to stubbornly refuse to listen to them and and admit their wisdom, which, spoiler alert, jobs.

00:20:49:57 – 00:20:51:28
Clint Loveall
Jobs not ready to do yet.

00:20:51:28 – 00:21:20:06
Michael Gewecke
Well, and let’s be clear which of us has not been with someone that we deeply love, making choices that we think we see clearly are not helping them, and they are not responsive. But that’s an incredibly frustrating experience. Whether or not these friends are right, if you read that they’re wholeheartedly trying to help their friend, then yeah, that’s that’s a dystopian image to see your friend keep digging in like, well, yeah, God’s coming after you because you’re being insolent.

00:21:20:07 – 00:21:20:57
Michael Gewecke
Stop it.

00:21:21:01 – 00:21:52:15
Clint Loveall
I think the I think the interesting question so far that runs through job in these dialog sections is, are the friends ultimately concerned for job or concern for protecting their worldview and it it’s possible that both are at play, but I think there’s an indication here that ultimately, if they have to pick one, the they’re maybe a little more concerned for their worldview than their friend.

00:21:52:15 – 00:21:56:26
Clint Loveall
I don’t know if that’s entirely fair, but I, I it’s possible.

00:21:56:31 – 00:22:10:37
Michael Gewecke
We would love for you to continue along this journey. There’s a lot, here to job, even as it may have some cycles. So we hope that you’ll join us for the conversation that continues tomorrow. Like this video helps others find it in their study and subscribe so you don’t miss studies like this. We will see you all tomorrow.

00:22:10:42 – 00:22:11:15
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.