00:00:00:01 – 00:00:23:48
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being back with us. Sorry about a couple days off, but thanks for joining us as we continue through Joe. We are in the 22nd chapter, which gives us the entry to the third cycle of speeches. One of the interesting things about this cycle is that some scholars, speculate that it may be messy in terms of the composition.

00:00:23:52 – 00:00:53:11
Clint Loveall
Couple of evidences of that. First of all, so far, who has been the third speaker doesn’t get a speech in this cycle. So only two of the three friends speak. One suggestion is that so far, speech somehow migrated into build that speech. And so there are scholars that say what we should do is take part of build that third speech and make it so far speech.

00:00:53:11 – 00:01:15:15
Clint Loveall
Other people believe that that’s intentional, as if the author of job is is eventually just saying. And then they had no more to say. They’re just they ran out of words. They were getting nowhere. And so so far is silent. We don’t know if that’s which of those is the case. If either of those is the case.

00:01:15:19 – 00:01:48:16
Clint Loveall
The other thing that happens and we run into it today, there are words from Jobe that sound very much like things we’ve heard the friends say. And scholars wonder if those were originally job’s words or if something got shifted and messed around. It’s not exactly clear why Joe would repeat the arguments that he’s been arguing against. And it’s just one of we’ve we’ve said this from the outset, just one of the ways in which this book has a lot of layers and a lot of messy and sometimes we don’t always track it.

00:01:48:21 – 00:02:18:31
Clint Loveall
As we jump into these third speeches, though, we start with Eliphaz. And unlike the round two of speeches, which was, for the most part pretty respectful. This one gets, ugly kind of fast. So verse two. Can a mortal be of use to God? Can even the wisest be of service to him? But then look at verse four and verse five, is it for your piety that he reproved you and enters into judgment with you?

00:02:18:36 – 00:02:43:43
Clint Loveall
Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to your iniquity. You have exacted pledges from your family for no reason. You’ve stripped the naked of their clothing. You’ve given no water to the weary to drink. You’ve withheld bread from the hungry. And, verse nine, you’ve sent widows away empty handed. The arms of the orphans you have crushed.

00:02:43:48 – 00:03:09:00
Clint Loveall
Therefore snares are around you, and sudden terror overwhelms you. In other words, job, whether you will admit it or not, you are guilty. You are sinful. You are wicked. Some of these charges are very harsh, particularly, I would think, the one about exacting pledges from your family or taking what belonged to them, in the aftermath of job losing his family.

00:03:09:05 – 00:03:33:43
Clint Loveall
That is a that’s a stunning and stinging insult for the, for Eliphaz here to give voice. This has a harshness to it, I think, Michael, that we have we didn’t we didn’t see as much in the second cycle. All geared, all held in place by this idea. Job. You you are indeed guilty.

00:03:33:52 – 00:04:26:11
Michael Gewecke
So there could be a variety of interpretations here. Actually, if we did not begin this book with the prelude that we had and the important part for this section of the conversation is we’ve been told that job stands before God in God’s own words, that no. And like God’s, there’s no one like him. So because we have that information, because that’s in the back of our mind, then when we turn to this section, we can say, Clint, with some very firm degree of confidence that these accounts of wickedness are manufactured, that that this is being created, that this is being imagined, that he is being charged with things which, quite frankly, we, the reader, know

00:04:26:18 – 00:05:01:34
Michael Gewecke
that God Himself has not levied against job. And because of that, Clint, I think what we see is a natural extension of the argument that for a while was sort of circling around the point and now comes to the point, if job is indeed being punished for actions that have been taken or from actions that have been withheld, as we have eliphaz arguing here, then ultimately that they just find them, they just write, they just say, hey, look, we might not know all the things, but we can at least be concerned about this list job.

00:05:01:35 – 00:05:27:16
Michael Gewecke
This is some ways in which you have messed up and when they get really practical, I think you’re exactly right. Point. About this point, Clint, in a way emphasizes the in humanness of the theology that gets these friends there. Because you have a man who’s suffering of a man who’s arguing, quite frankly, to this point, Jobe has not decried God.

00:05:27:16 – 00:05:57:33
Michael Gewecke
I mean, he’s certainly had hard words and he’s lamenting and he’s saying, you know, and God is my accuser. That doesn’t let me speak back. Why can’t I have dialog? But these friends are accusing Jobe of unfaithfulness at a constitutional, fundamental level, which is unfair. And the fruit of this kind of very legalistic theology that bad people get bad results, good people get good results.

00:05:57:34 – 00:06:17:56
Michael Gewecke
This is the fundamental argument we’ve seen from the friends. We now see how inhuman it is when they point that full blunt force at Jobe, at his suffering in his place of of life, because what they charge him of is not real. It’s not true. It’s inhuman. And I think the fullest sense, because it’s not even accurate to reality.

00:06:18:05 – 00:06:18:23
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.

00:06:18:23 – 00:06:44:22
Clint Loveall
I think that one of the interesting sort of psychological, takes on this part of Jobe is that the more Jobe protests his innocent, the more angry the friends seem to get at him, and the harsher their comments become because they have started with an outcome they have seen Jobe suffer and they believe they know what it means.

00:06:44:27 – 00:07:13:53
Clint Loveall
Jobe says, no, I you’re not right. I haven’t done any of those things. And instead of them saying, well then what’s going on, Jobe? They become only more angry, only more entrenched in the idea that they started with. And so the, the, the, nastiness, the edginess of their comments here seem to escalate. So then we moved to Jobe.

00:07:13:53 – 00:07:22:21
Clint Loveall
Look at Eliphaz ends with turn repent to do good. It’ll be better. We’ve heard all that before.

00:07:22:21 – 00:07:22:56
Michael Gewecke
All before? Yeah.

00:07:23:00 – 00:07:58:55
Clint Loveall
Jobe then moves to his answer and interestingly enough, he he doesn’t really engage for the most part, what Eliphaz is said he goes directly to God. Verse three. All that I know knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling. I would lay my case before him. I’d fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me and understand what he would say to me, what he contend with me, and the greatness of his power.

00:07:58:58 – 00:08:30:24
Clint Loveall
No, but he would give heed to me there. An upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge. So this is very interesting. As Jobe moves into a section here where he’s saying, I just wish that I could get an answer. I just, I wish my prayer is that I could sit down with God and lay out my case before him.

00:08:30:28 – 00:08:57:06
Clint Loveall
And yes, I know that I couldn’t understand it fully. Yes, I understand his greatness in his power, but if he could just give me an answer, Then he continues, I’ve held to his steps. I’ve not departed from the commandments, but he stands alone. And who can dissuade him what he desires? He does. In other words, we’ve heard this from Jobe before.

00:08:57:10 – 00:09:34:46
Clint Loveall
I have no recourse. I’m in this position. I’m suffering, I’m broken. I’m hurting. God refuses to hear my case. God refuses to give me an audience. I’m alone. And then Jobe gets to where he often does. If only I could vanish in the darkness. Darkness would cover my face. So, Michael again, not, I think, not new territory for Jobe, but this this gnawing sense of unfairness.

00:09:34:46 – 00:09:54:03
Clint Loveall
And if I could just explain to God, if I could just talk to him, if I could just get an answer from him, something is not right. And I wish he would explain it to me that none of us, probably certainly to job’s level. But all of us have encountered something like that in our faith life.

00:09:54:03 – 00:10:17:02
Michael Gewecke
I think there are at least two tensions in this text. One is presence versus absence. Right? Yeah. The idea of, both Jobe longing for the darkness as we saw here at the end of this text. If only I could vanish in the darkness. But there’s also a god. Where are you? Because if I could see you, I would make the argument right.

00:10:17:02 – 00:10:44:42
Michael Gewecke
If only I could find him in verse two. So there’s an absence here, but there’s also this sense of, wanting to have a presence. And then I think that there’s another element here in the text of, our confidence in God. And also a sense of betrayal, of vanishing, a sense of grandeur, of greatness that lies beyond that sort of escapes that confidence.

00:10:44:42 – 00:11:15:36
Michael Gewecke
I think Jobe here, in a way, builds his entire argument on faith clench. Right. That that he in fact says, God is my judge, right? Forever be my judge. That that’s an argument from a person of faith. And yet it’s a person of faith who, at his core, wants to make the argument that God has been unfaithful, that God has at least turned his eyes.

00:11:15:50 – 00:11:44:24
Michael Gewecke
God. God has allowed. God has, had part in unfair suffering and pain in job’s life and I think for anyone who’s experienced suffering that doesn’t need explanation, it doesn’t need description, it doesn’t need for us to flesh out why that might be. I do think one of the more astonishing devotional lessons from a text like this, though, is that one can live in those seemingly opposite things simultaneously.

00:11:44:24 – 00:12:08:58
Michael Gewecke
You can doubt God and have faith in God at the same time. And if you’re experiencing that, it can be a scary experience. But I think Jobe is modeling that in a scriptural way that is very powerful, that that in a way Jobe feel slighted by God. And yet Jobe has trust in God and those two things can be held together, even if it feels like they’re ripping you apart.

00:12:09:03 – 00:12:38:01
Clint Loveall
This isn’t a consensus among scholars, and there would be biblical, very good, qualified biblical scholars that I am not qualified to argue with who would not agree with this. But having said that, there are moments, Michael, where I get the sense reading Jobe that Jobe agrees with his friends philosophically yeah, that good. Get good and bad get bad.

00:12:38:06 – 00:13:19:40
Clint Loveall
But he believes himself to be an exception, a broken rule that God has missed something or that the system has gone awry. And in his case, it hasn’t worked for him. In fact, it’s worked against him. But Jobe, in many instances seems to believe the same thing that the three friends believe about the nature of life. Jobe just now finds himself on the wrong side of the fence and argues that he shouldn’t be, and again, not everyone would let me get away with that, and that’s fine.

00:13:19:53 – 00:13:51:25
Clint Loveall
But I think if you can hold on to that idea toward the end of the book, maybe what happens to Jobe and his friends is that they receive an entirely different paradigm. And I’ll leave that for those chapters. In those parts of the book, we can come back to it. But job’s Jobe feels that he’s been wrong. In other words, a system that should function flawlessly and the God who oversees it.

00:13:51:30 – 00:14:13:37
Clint Loveall
It hasn’t worked in his case, and that that troubles him. I need to fix. I need to tell him I need he needs to know this. But he won’t listen to me. He’s out. He’s not available for comment and etc. and then Jobe moves to in the 24th chapter. And this is a tough chapter. Translation wise and interpretation wise, but we won’t spend a lot of time with it.

00:14:13:37 – 00:14:44:35
Clint Loveall
Jobe moves into a kind of lamentation, a complaint about the wicked. Well, how many the wicked are on earth, what they do, what their effect is on people, how bad they are. And eventually he closes with a very interesting section that we know the wicked get punished. He. This is the part where he says something beginning in about verse 22.

00:14:44:40 – 00:15:09:36
Clint Loveall
It it seems as though Joel was now making the same case his friends have made. And some people say, well, these might have been one of their words. And it got misplaced. Or maybe Joel was trying to make some other point. These are very hard to understand. Why is it that Jobe suddenly voices a similar argument? I think what’s interesting aside, and that’s not a question you and I can answer today, Michael.

00:15:09:36 – 00:15:39:38
Clint Loveall
I think what’s more interesting is the reality that when one feels unfairly suffered, suffering one, one feels that they are unfairly suffering in life. How natural is it to look out and go? But they’re worse than I am. They’re worse than I am. And and from that place of pain and loneliness, Jobe looks into the world. And what he sees is not any good.

00:15:39:43 – 00:15:54:28
Clint Loveall
He focuses on the bad. There’s so much evil out here. And yet I have this horrible experience that I don’t deserve. And I don’t know if that’s intended, but it’s. It’s interesting to me how natural that reaction can be for us.

00:15:54:43 – 00:16:25:03
Michael Gewecke
So I think my response here, I, I think that this chapter is tough because you really have to take the whole chapter as a whole. We can’t just read snippets of it. I, I do think, though, Clint, that in an interesting, interesting way, Jobe sees something because of his suffering he couldn’t have seen before and specifically here, verse 22, God prolongs the life of the mighty by his power.

00:16:25:03 – 00:16:46:33
Michael Gewecke
They rise up when they despair of life. He, God, gives them, secure the. And they are supported even though his eyes are on their ways. Clint, the case I want to make here and I think I’m I’m kind of way out here, so I just want to name I’m way out on this. But it reminds me of when we take things and say things as if they’re true.

00:16:46:33 – 00:17:07:44
Michael Gewecke
Like Jobe in this, friends, always did the wicked get their justice, so the wicked get what’s coming to them. It’s the same way that we say Mother Nature is a beautiful place, but Mother Nature is full of creatures being killed all the time. It’s a very violent place. We call it mother. We. We have, like, we paint these children’s pictures of beautiful nature scapes and all these scenes.

00:17:07:53 – 00:17:29:38
Michael Gewecke
When in reality is it is. And simultaneously, it’s a horrendous. Yeah, very violent, dangerous place. Right. And there’s a reason why humans have been trying to build houses and fortifications our entire lives. And I think Jobe here, because of his suffering, he can look at it and say, well, we’ve always said the wicked get what they have coming for them and enduring his suffering.

00:17:29:38 – 00:17:49:07
Michael Gewecke
He says, well, hold on now. That’s not always true. In fact, when I take a look at from this perspective, those wicked people have it way better. And so I think I’m building on your comment there, but it’s just to say he does have a vantage now that his friends and I would argue he before his suffering didn’t have.

00:17:49:12 – 00:18:02:12
Michael Gewecke
And he’s able to see. Well hold on now that Emperor is not fully clothed, that this thing we’ve always stated as a fact to be true, it’s actually more complicated than that. And I think Jobe is seeing that now.

00:18:02:16 – 00:18:25:01
Clint Loveall
Yeah. I don’t know to what extent that’s intended in the book, but I think it’s certainly a good insight. Michael, if we focus only on the good in the world, who will lack awareness and compassion, and if we focus only on the bad in the world, we’ll lose hope and will lose, you know, the idea of making things better.

00:18:25:01 – 00:18:57:32
Clint Loveall
And so, both silos in some sense, are equally dangerous. Jobe is clearly in one of them and struggling to see much of any bright spot tomorrow. Very short follow up speech by Bill, dad. And then we begin to embark on a much longer, much longer, monologue essentially by Jobe that we’ll begin to take a look at.

00:18:57:32 – 00:19:22:00
Clint Loveall
So, hope you can join us. I do think that, the next couple of chapters, as we begin to transition out of the cycle of speeches, there’s some fascinating things that happened, some difficult things, some challenging texts and some very deep waters that we’ll get to navigate. So hopefully we’ll be able to do that. Well, we’d love to have you with us on the trip.

00:19:22:04 – 00:19:29:28
Michael Gewecke
If you’re traveling along on this journey, read a couple chapters ahead. Definitely join us tomorrow. We look forward to seeing you then. Until then, be blessed. Thanks everybody.