00:00:01:06 – 00:00:41:12
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Happy Monday. Happy Easter Monday. Thanks for joining us as we continue through, Jobe. Today we are in the fourth chapter. We’ll get through a couple of chapters, but we we look at now the cycle of speeches and the way that they typically work, though there are some differences later in the book. But generally you have one of the characters who makes a speech, and then Jobe will respond, though interestingly enough, often Jobe doesn’t seem to be responding to them directly, but sometimes either praying or apparently at times just talking.

00:00:41:16 – 00:01:16:19
Clint Loveall
And I will say about the the speech sections, they kind of ramp down. They start relatively cordial. And then as we progress, things get a little more heated and the responses get a little sharper. So today we jump in at chapter four. And this is the first speech that we hear from this man Eliphaz. And.

00:01:16:24 – 00:01:53:25
Clint Loveall
It again Eliphaz begins with some respect here. So it starts off the first couple verses here. If one ventures a word with you, would you be offended? But who could keep from speaking? You have instructed many. You have strengthened weak hands. Your words have supported those who were stumbling, and you have made firm, feeble knees. And so, there is a recognition here of job’s status as a person of wisdom.

00:01:53:25 – 00:02:26:40
Clint Loveall
That job has helped other people. There is a permission that’s ask, would you be offended? Can I say something? And that characterizes most of, I would argue, this first speech and they’re going to get easier, I think in some ways to interpret again this this first one is there’s some insinuation in it, but it’s not very blatant.

00:02:26:45 – 00:03:03:09
Clint Loveall
So he says, verse five, but now it has come to you and you are impatient. It touches you and you are dismayed. Is not your fear of God your confidence and the integrity of your ways, your hope? Think now who that was innocent? Ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity, and so trouble reap the same by the breath of God they perish.

00:03:03:14 – 00:03:52:16
Clint Loveall
Now what Eliphaz seems to be saying here is remember, Jobe, we understand how God works. Those who do good. Those who are righteous, they are blessed. Those who get off track. They are corrected. They are admonished and they suffer. Don’t forget this. Now it. I think Michael would generally say as we read this Eliphaz is not being, outspoken here in accusing Jobe of having done wrong or, quote unquote, deserving his suffering, though many of his comments are going to essentially point that direction.

00:03:52:21 – 00:04:15:48
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. Key statement, I think the turn in this, which, as you said, is not maybe as explicit as what we’re going to have as we get further into the speeches. But is verse seven saying, now who that was innocent, ever perished or where were the upright cut off that is the essential thrust of a very respectful speech.

00:04:15:48 – 00:04:39:52
Michael Gewecke
Right. So if the implication is, hey, Joe, think with me for a second. When’s the last time you saw a really righteous person have iniquity brought upon them? And the implication is, you know, I can’t think of that. And if you’re a Christian, we’re particularly attuned to the idea that grace and hope is an external source that comes to us.

00:04:39:52 – 00:05:06:52
Michael Gewecke
I really want to point out verse six that the integrity of your ways, your hope, it exposes this baseline belief, which is really the, the, the, the basic thing on trial here in the text is are we at the core responsible for our hope? Is it our action? Is it our righteousness? Is it as it said in verse five, is it our innocence?

00:05:06:52 – 00:05:34:16
Michael Gewecke
Because if so, then the fact that job is suffering so severely is a demonstration of the severity of his brokenness. In other words, if he’s lacking hope in this instance, it has something to do with the integrity of his ways. And I think, Clint, that Eliphaz is not saying this as explicitly as we’re going to see this charge leveled against Jobe and Jobe.

00:05:34:21 – 00:05:57:10
Michael Gewecke
I think in many ways, he very quickly ramps the argument in response to the accusation against his character. Because this idea listen, you’ve taught other people this, Jobe. You have been the one who’ve taught people this. Let me just remind you, right, if you have integrity, then you have some reason to hope. And Jobe is making the case.

00:05:57:12 – 00:06:01:44
Michael Gewecke
Whoa whoa whoa whoa. I have integrity, and I’ve been unfairly afflicted. Yeah, I.

00:06:01:44 – 00:06:36:04
Clint Loveall
Think Eliphaz here is taking the thousand yard view, right? He’s not specifically talking at job yet. He’s. He’s laying out, in general terms, what he thinks. Jobe agrees with verse 17. Can mortals be righteous before God? Can human beings, be pure before their maker? Then he goes on to say in, in verse eight of chapter five, as for me, I would seek God, and to God I would commit my cause.

00:06:36:09 – 00:06:59:44
Clint Loveall
And we’ve told you that we won’t be able to go word for word through the sections, but we’re trying to give you a sense of what is being said here. Verse 12, he continues, he frustrates the devices of the crafty. So their hands achieve no success and then kind of culminates 17 and 18 here. How happy is the one God reprove.

00:06:59:49 – 00:07:34:53
Clint Loveall
Therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty, for he wounds, but he binds up. He strikes, but his hands heal. And then he finishes his argument. There at the last verse 27. See, we have searched this out. It is true here and know for yourself. So what is the general case? He seems to be making, that when we suffer, we can understand and even be grateful that it is a correction that God provides against our unrighteousness.

00:07:35:07 – 00:08:13:25
Clint Loveall
When we have gotten off track, God will use, the pain of life or the pain that that causes us, maybe even chastising us himself to get us back on on track and that sounds relatively benign, except when your job, when you’re sitting under a mountain of suffering and now you have a friend telling you, well, don’t forget when you suffer, there’s a that’s a lesson that you need to do better.

00:08:13:30 – 00:08:34:36
Clint Loveall
Don’t forget, when you suffer, God is trying to make sure you understand where you got off track and help you get back on track where eliphaz is. Maybe that’s a a message with some comfort in it. It is not for job, and I think we’ll see that pretty quickly. And job’s response.

00:08:34:40 – 00:09:00:09
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, absolutely. I just think one quick word here is earlier in that verse, 26, hear, you shall come to your grave and ripe old age as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor in its season. What you’re going to see in job’s response in just a minute is, very clearly job’s comment is, you know, the best thing that will happen to me is for God to let me die.

00:09:00:19 – 00:09:25:13
Michael Gewecke
I mean, he he makes it abundantly clear this isn’t about me getting it all back. It’s not all about all of this being justified and made right again. No. Let’s get let me be straight with you. I’ve been unjustly attacked, and ultimately it’s not about this working out in the end. It’s the fact that if this could be done as quickly as possible, that would be just that would be things coming out into account.

00:09:25:13 – 00:09:55:24
Michael Gewecke
I think the different ways that these characters imagine a proper outcome flows out of this assumption that they’re making about what the problem is. And I think what’s interesting about Eliphaz is and maybe you disagree with this, but I think he’s a character that may very well represent what Jobe thought before this happened. You can imagine that this, this council of friends comes and these are conversations they had over coffee before.

00:09:55:26 – 00:10:18:49
Michael Gewecke
These are thoughts that they had had this idea. We have searched it out. It’s true here and know it. There’s almost this sense in which, you know, we’ve always thought this Jobe and now Jobe, under the crucible of affliction and suffering and pain, Jobe can no longer find that a compelling argument that no longer makes sense in light of the experience he’s had.

00:10:18:54 – 00:10:37:18
Michael Gewecke
And. And yet his friends are still. I do think they’re nearing to him specifically. We’re going to see that as it continues. But his friends are still looking at suffering from the platitudes that they could do safely from a distance. And Jobe no longer finds that, a viable path.

00:10:37:22 – 00:11:17:17
Clint Loveall
I don’t want to modernize this conversation too much, though. I think there are a couple of things that may be helpful, and I think Belfast gets off track in two places. The first is that he underestimates, or at least he undervalues, job’s suffering. So Jobe, with this incredible depth of pain that he’s been subject to losing family, health, wealth.

00:11:17:22 – 00:11:49:17
Clint Loveall
To approach him with a kind of pat answer or, you know, everybody knows. Imagine that. Somebody had the imagine that an athlete had been hurt and lost the ability to do what they love, or a musician or and and then to be told, well, this will make you stronger. And yes, that that may be true in some general sense, but it’s not a word that can be heard from the ash pile.

00:11:49:17 – 00:12:22:00
Clint Loveall
It is not a helpful word because it it doesn’t meet the person where they are. And so I think that’s where one of the places Eliphaz gets off track. The other is that he takes a and maybe this is, to some extent a reflection of the same thing. He takes a personal issue for job and begins to make it philosophical or theological or theoretical.

00:12:22:04 – 00:12:52:32
Clint Loveall
And so these things that he says to job I, I’m sure sound fine to him, but they ring very hollow in job’s ears. He assumes that job agrees with him. We saw that job. You know these things. Well, job doesn’t know what Alpha’s know. They have a very different experience. And and they get to a very different place.

00:12:52:37 – 00:13:24:52
Clint Loveall
That’s very, I think, evident, Michael, when we jump into job’s response here, chapter six, job says, verse four, the arrows of the Almighty are in me. My spirit drinks their poison. The terrors of God are arrayed against me. I don’t know how fast if he would have been comfortable with that language. Verse eight, that I might have my request, and God would grant my desire that it would please God to crush me, that he would let lose his hand and cut me off.

00:13:24:52 – 00:13:53:13
Clint Loveall
In other words, let me die. Let me leave the earth. Let me be done with my suffering. What is my strength that I should wait? And what is my end? That I should be patient and then, this is where I think Joe begins to push back. If we look at verse 14, those who withhold kindness from a friend forsake the fear of the Almighty.

00:13:53:13 – 00:14:24:09
Clint Loveall
My companions are treacherous, like a torrent bed, like, like I don’t know this, like fresh. It’s. Do we know what a fresh it is, Michael? I’m not sure I know that translation that pass away. Something to do with eyes, obviously, that run dark with the ice, turbid with melting snow. In time of heat. They disappear. Now, that verse 20, they are disappointed because they were confident.

00:14:24:14 – 00:14:30:02
Clint Loveall
They come here and are confounded.

00:14:30:07 – 00:15:00:45
Clint Loveall
Such you have now become to me, you see my calamity, and are afraid. So, pretty, pretty serious. Clap back at Eliphaz. This is wisdom, you know, to, my friends show up and they don’t know anything. They’re afraid they have to stand on their answers. They’re like ice that melts. They withhold kindness, they’re treacherous. They’re afraid.

00:15:00:50 – 00:15:21:20
Clint Loveall
And, you know, it doesn’t take job long to be offended. Now, his his tolerance and patience are probably ground to nothing but, as as polite as it appears, Eliphaz tried to be. Job sees right through it.

00:15:21:25 – 00:15:26:43
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. Isn’t that often the case? Sure. Right. I believe that word that we’re looking for is streams.

00:15:26:51 – 00:15:28:03
Clint Loveall
Thank you. I was just going.

00:15:28:04 – 00:15:43:26
Michael Gewecke
The NIV, so I was just going to find it. We’ve said this before, by the way. There’s a difficult book for translators to translate, and I think you’re going to see that there are many different translations doing different things in this book than what we might be used to another books for the translations.

00:15:43:26 – 00:15:55:21
Clint Loveall
If Google can be trusted afresh, it is a sudden rise or overflow of a stream or river by rapid snowmelt or heavy rain. It’s also a flooded stream. Learn something today. Sorry, we didn’t already know that.

00:15:55:21 – 00:16:31:57
Michael Gewecke
To get back to the core here though, what I think is maybe among the most challenging components of this, Clint, is specifically that argument that Joe wants to make, that God should let him go, that God should no longer keep his hands on him, and then the suffering would be over. The most disturbing aspect of that is Joe doesn’t know this whole story, obsessively, about the accuser coming to God and God saying, you know, now you can have anything that’s not him.

00:16:32:02 – 00:17:00:48
Michael Gewecke
Now you can have anything except his actual life. What’s so disturbing is job is the author is making clear giving, actually making a very incisive, a very revealing argument about what’s actually happening to him. And I think where we ended here and your comment, that fundamentally, you come to me and you’re afraid is a connection to that first principle.

00:17:00:54 – 00:17:24:39
Michael Gewecke
In other words, it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying that God is not just the one you know, in the imagination protecting, but what Jobe is suggesting is that the hands that were the protecting hands have now become the restraining hands that that the God who had blessed and done all these good things that we thought were connected to the integrity of character.

00:17:24:39 – 00:17:48:10
Michael Gewecke
In other words, we deserve them. Jobe is making the argument. I don’t deserve the fact that now I’m being held in a position of suffering and and that is God holding me there, that God should let me go. No wonder why the friends are responding in the way they are. That that is, we’re beginning to see the heat of this argument begin to flare.

00:17:48:10 – 00:18:17:04
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think twofold, Michael. We saw job early in the story. Say, would we only accept good from God’s hand and not the bad? So it it may be that job is in fact not complaining that he’s suffered, but he is now complaining that God seems to be extending it, that God will not release him and the and the potential terror in that for Eliphaz we’ll we’ll see.

00:18:17:04 – 00:18:48:05
Clint Loveall
This, I think, more clearly later is that quote unquote, God forbid, job is right. Eliphaz is whole way of seeing the world doesn’t work anymore. Yeah. If if job does not deserve the suffering he has experience right then elevates his worldview is crushed right and that may be the reference here to being afraid. That would be very interesting.

00:18:48:05 – 00:19:19:39
Clint Loveall
Joe goes on to essentially say in in late chapter six, teach me to show me how I’ve gone wrong. I’m telling you the truth. Is is there any wrong on my tongue? Cannot my taste discern calamity? In other words, you weren’t listening to me. And then Joe goes on to just sort of, Express his grief.

00:19:19:44 – 00:19:51:47
Clint Loveall
My life is a breath my I will never again see. Good. The night is long. I’m full of tossing until the morning. My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt. And then we make a turn here in verse 11. Therefore I will not restrain my mouth. I will speak the anguish of my spirit. I will complain from the bitterness of my soul.

00:19:51:52 – 00:20:15:51
Clint Loveall
Verse 16 I loathed my life. I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath. What are human beings that you make so much of them that you set your mind on them? That you visit them and test them? Will you not look away from me for a while? Leave me alone until I saw swallow my spittle.

00:20:15:55 – 00:20:50:40
Clint Loveall
If I sin, what do I do to you, watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? And so here he is. I think our first glimpse. We have had uncomfortable content already in this book. Certainly the idea of the book is troubling, but here we get, I think, difficult language.

00:20:50:45 – 00:21:23:18
Clint Loveall
As Joe begins to voice his discontent in the form of a prayer. Why won’t you leave me alone? Why do you make me suffer? Why am I your target? Why are you against me? And and why is the word that undergirds so much of job’s discourse from this part of the book out and it is the natural question in the face of suffering.

00:21:23:33 – 00:21:58:45
Clint Loveall
I think one of the difficulties when people suffer a great deal, Michael, is that we often, if we’re on the outside of that suffering, we are often struck by the the emotional, even ferocity of it, the anger that’s in it, the pain that’s in it, the, I don’t want to say inappropriate, but but often in the midst of that place, we give voice to our darkest thoughts in our in our deepest struggles.

00:21:58:49 – 00:22:23:41
Clint Loveall
And it is intimidating. I think often people don’t know what to do with that if they’re in the midst of deep, deep grief of someone else and they’re not sure how to handle that. And I think the author here has done an incredible job of sharing some of that discomfort with us through some of the things Joe was beginning to say.

00:22:23:46 – 00:22:58:42
Michael Gewecke
I think my final word in this section, is there is a thread woven throughout this regarding the question of the importance of telling the truth about honesty. And I think we see that, right here, verse 28 of chapter six. But now be pleased to look at me, for I will not lie to your face. I want to suggest to you, this is an interpretive key to help us know that Jobe is experiencing the previous speech to demand him to lie, to profess the thing that he does not believe.

00:22:58:57 – 00:23:32:52
Michael Gewecke
And then when you move forward here, therefore, this is chapter 711. I will not restrain my mouth. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Why, he’s going to tell the truth, I will not restrain. I think Clint, part of the subtext of this first round is that Jobe is experiencing this as an argument that, well, we know that this is true, Jobe, so you just need to admit it.

00:23:32:52 – 00:23:57:16
Michael Gewecke
And Jobe is forcibly responding and say, I have had integrity of character. I’m not going to lie. Now, hey, I have been in the right. I’m not going to be in the wrong because I know that that is a false statement. I know it to be true. And so therefore I will speak these things and then I we don’t have time to really process it deeply.

00:23:57:16 – 00:24:44:36
Michael Gewecke
But I think this subtle turn into the prayer is masterfully done. I think it’s incredibly challenging for us because immediately when Jobe is honest, it’s, amazingly effective. Pointed invective against God. And I mean, it’s going to become more pointed, but I think just the way that it so seamlessly transitions in the text is, it’s much like that experience when when the current comes up and that feeling of iniquity, that that feeling of unrighteousness, that, that, that we’ve been not done, right by comes up, I think we just find ourselves swept away with it.

00:24:44:36 – 00:25:03:52
Michael Gewecke
And while these friends of ours in this case, is trying to make this well-reasoned, we all know it platitude kind of argument, Jobe refuses to give in to a think he does not believe to be true. And when he addresses God in the midst of that, it’s going to lead to uncomfortable language.

00:25:03:57 – 00:25:36:24
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think so. And one of the incredible mechanisms that, again, that the author or authors of this book have left for us is that it? It’s like we are going down a set of stairs. And so today we’ve taken a step. Tomorrow we’ll take another significant step as the rhetoric begins to ramp up and the author.

00:25:36:28 – 00:26:13:24
Clint Loveall
Relatively quickly, but not immediately, begins to remove the niceties and some of the discussion gets very personal very quickly. And it it’s fascinating the way that takes us from. A general theology of what do we make of suffering to the experience of job and resonating or even being uncomfortable by the expression of pain and questioning that comes from him.

00:26:13:24 – 00:26:37:23
Clint Loveall
It we are we are near the top of a much deeper journey that we’re going to take. And so I hope you can be with us. Tomorrow, I think we see a pretty big step in that direction as some of the kid gloves come off and things, things ramp up.

00:26:37:28 – 00:26:42:25
Michael Gewecke
Thanks for being with us today. Like, subscribe. So you don’t miss studies like this. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

00:26:42:27 – 00:26:42:50
Clint Loveall
Thanks, all.