00:00:00:04 – 00:00:38:14
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us. You being with us as we move toward the end of job, moving here into the final chapter. Chapter 42. If you’ve not been with us. God has spent the last four chapters speaking to job in in large measure, maybe speaking at job, challenging job with the differences between God and Job. He has called job out and job has gotten what he wished for along the way.

00:00:38:14 – 00:01:12:28
Clint Loveall
In the book, job had said several times, if only God would show up and speak to me, I would plead my case before him. I’d show him my complaint. He would validate me, and he now gets that meeting that he had hoped for, though it doesn’t go as he had hoped that it would. And job is now maybe in some sense overwhelmed.

00:01:12:33 – 00:01:50:33
Clint Loveall
He is quieted. He is in. Or what job, or what job does or doesn’t learn from. All of this is a matter of speculation, but we can see in his response that he certainly approaches God now with a kind of. Quiet reverence not maybe fear, but certainly a deep, deep respect. So let me just read a few of these verses, and then we’ll we’ll try to make our way through them.

00:01:50:38 – 00:02:11:50
Clint Loveall
Then job answered the Lord, I know that you can do all things, that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I uttered what I did not understand things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Here. And I will speak. I will question you, and you declare to me, I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear.

00:02:11:55 – 00:02:49:55
Clint Loveall
But now my eyes see you. Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. There is. There is a lot of difficulty in this passage with translation. This is notoriously hard to sort out in Hebrew, but traditionally, historically, it’s been understood that what job is saying is largely what our English Bible has captured here. I said more than I should have.

00:02:49:55 – 00:03:07:24
Clint Loveall
I didn’t know what I was saying. I went off further than I should. Now you have silence to me now I understand something I didn’t before.

00:03:07:28 – 00:03:15:16
Clint Loveall
And he repeats God’s questions and then answers them.

00:03:15:21 – 00:03:38:19
Clint Loveall
I had heard of you. This is a wonderful verse. I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear. But now my eyes sees you. It seems to be the case. That job is indicating that this encounter with God maybe more so than than the arguments, more so than the words. But being in the presence of God has silenced him.

00:03:38:19 – 00:04:04:57
Clint Loveall
And and this great wrong that job thought had been done to him now doesn’t seem to matter. Or at least he does not seem to hold that over God’s head in a way that he hoped he would, as he’s been. I don’t know what the right word is, Michael, awestruck silence quieted. Could go on and on. Probably, yeah.

00:04:05:02 – 00:04:24:31
Michael Gewecke
So I think the translation piece is going to become part of this. I just think, you know, in very brief terms, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted is, interestingly, the point that jobs been making the entire book, that ultimately that God is the one who does have control.

00:04:24:31 – 00:04:46:43
Michael Gewecke
And so therefore, the suffering that’s been happening to him, he’s been arguing this whole time is unfair and unjust. So therefore, that was going to mount up the case that he was going to make when he could get an opportunity to see God. I think that there is a transformational note in this, while also allowing and holding open that jobs case.

00:04:46:43 – 00:05:11:50
Michael Gewecke
You could still read this as job making the same case, and I think that’s intentional, not an accident. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? I honored what I did not understand things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. I want to just. That sounds a lot like the friends, by the way, that sounds like the arguments that have been made at job that ultimately he does not have wise counsel, that he’s not he’s been off the path.

00:05:11:50 – 00:05:35:07
Michael Gewecke
He’s been in a place that he did not deserve to be. I think once again, this can be read from a couple different directions, and I don’t think that’s on accident. I think there’s some nuance in what’s being said here because ultimately in the encounter he’s on, he’s encountering something that is not, by definition, understandable, containable. Humans can’t get our hands fully around it.

00:05:35:09 – 00:06:00:19
Michael Gewecke
It’s divine. Therefore it is not going to be encapsulated by our ability to comprehend. And then ultimately this idea here I’ll speak. This is a in the ancient world where the majority of knowledge is passed on through the senses, through hearing, through speaking, not through reading. As we’re accustomed to this, this makes a lot of sense writes in the encounter with God.

00:06:00:21 – 00:06:19:40
Michael Gewecke
And I think translation wise, verse six is really important and we shouldn’t pass by. There is translation question here. It could be translated and is translated in our translation here and repent in dust and ashes. But your study Bible will tell you that could be also translated of dust and ashes. And there’s going to be debate on that.

00:06:19:40 – 00:06:58:48
Michael Gewecke
So job could on one hand be saying, I am repenting because of the the brokenness and the ways in which I was wrong. It could also be making a kind of pushback to say, you know, I’m repenting of the the cycle of the ashes, but not the point that I’m trying to make. There’s nuance in how you might be able to read that, that I think Clint is a really, really interesting way to connect with jobs very, very short response to a very, very long address.

00:06:58:48 – 00:07:25:21
Michael Gewecke
And I think the point of doing that is once God speaks, it’s not any longer jobs responsibility to have an answer. The point was the answer was in the encounter. And that is inherently, I think, as we’ve said, numerous days now, on the ground of unsatisfying, it can be unsatisfying. And yet there’s deep truth in it.

00:07:25:26 – 00:07:53:55
Clint Loveall
There is. And we don’t want to. We don’t want to bore people with details, but there’s an incredible amount of importance on verse six here in chapter 42, and it is incredibly difficult to translate. The word despise can mean reject. It can mean refuse. It can also mean to melt or to disappear. And the word repent can mean repent.

00:07:53:55 – 00:08:18:14
Clint Loveall
But it is also used often for things like sorry or pity or change mind. In fact, this is the same word in the book of Jonah, where it says that God changed his mind about the damage he was going to bring to Nineveh. The destruction. That’s this word. The other words are also difficult to translate. We have tended to read this.

00:08:18:14 – 00:08:43:55
Clint Loveall
That job now gets it. And he’s sorry for what he said, but that makes job agree with his friends. And we’re about to find out that in God’s eyes, his friends were were not right. They were in the wrong. So that’s it’s problematic the idea that he would repent some of that a phrase something like I reject and regret dust and ashes.

00:08:43:55 – 00:09:10:38
Clint Loveall
In other words, I’m sorry it came to this kind of thing. It is very important. But it is also somewhat unclear what job is saying in the aftermath of this. There are some who say that job is here, essentially saying, look, God, I get it. You are God and I am not. I’m still in the dust and ashes and I regret that.

00:09:10:38 – 00:09:35:43
Clint Loveall
And I don’t think it’s my fault that that even here job is pushing back a little bit. That does not come across in the translation we have here. I think historically we would have been uncomfortable with that. But there are some there are some Hebrew scholars with pretty significant accolades that say that there may be more to this than we know.

00:09:35:43 – 00:10:11:45
Clint Loveall
At the very least, what we see in this is a man who, when he lifts his eyes from his own situation and rests them on God, he sees something bigger than he had remembered. He sees a God who reminds him of the glory and majesty of the one that he is kind of taken for granted, and that he by virtue not not of his own fault, but by virtue of his suffering and of his struggles, had tried to drag God down with him.

00:10:11:45 – 00:10:36:26
Clint Loveall
And he now realizes that that can’t be done. Nothing in jobs, life, nothing in anyone’s life, nothing in creation can make God less than God. That is an impossibility. That job seems to now understand in a way that he did not before. And when it comes to the, you know, the big reveal in the book, I don’t know how satisfying that is.

00:10:36:28 – 00:11:07:07
Clint Loveall
I mean, 42 chapters in, you think, oh, this book is going to unlock the meaning of suffering and explain to me all the whys that I’ve asked in my life. It’s not. It’s not at the end. God is still God. Job is still job. God does not. God is not shackled by jobs complaint. God is not lessened by jobs complaint and job, though he has.

00:11:07:09 – 00:11:23:14
Clint Loveall
And we know he has a legitimate case, has forgotten that when you stand before God, you do not stand as equals. And in some way, I think that’s where the book has been headed all along.

00:11:23:19 – 00:11:53:00
Michael Gewecke
I think that this phrasing, this Worthing, the path that we’ve come here to at the end of this section, this dialog, Clint, is really important, and I think we just need to see it, see it as job is quoting what God has said and is sort of like in line replying, verse five, I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

00:11:53:00 – 00:12:01:14
Michael Gewecke
And therefore, because I despise myself, we don’t get hung up on despised in the world in which despise.

00:12:01:16 – 00:12:02:57
Clint Loveall
Consider myself.

00:12:03:02 – 00:12:03:36
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.

00:12:03:45 – 00:12:04:57
Clint Loveall
Yeah.

00:12:05:02 – 00:12:14:12
Michael Gewecke
We’ve got to be careful to not read too much into it. There is clear humility here. There’s clear right ordering in mind.

00:12:14:14 – 00:12:26:04
Clint Loveall
And Joel may understand that he’s he’s overstepped a line. But despise is a tough that’s. I wish we could clean that up.

00:12:26:07 – 00:12:59:12
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, sure. And I think here this idea though, there’s the information that comes by hearing and there’s the information that comes by seeing by encountering. And that distinction is central to this book, Clint. There’s just no way around that. There’s a bunch of friends coming and hashing out to gather in conversation about God. And then there’s what happens when God shows up and at the end of the day, the the banter back and forth job always had a ready response to the friends.

00:12:59:12 – 00:13:23:57
Michael Gewecke
He was always ready to point out the ways in which the argument missed, that it didn’t cover the whole situation, that they were. They were off base. But when God shows up and we’re not talking about God anymore, but we’re talking to God when God demands an answer, suddenly the things that we are so confident in can very, very quickly become right, differently ordered.

00:13:24:00 – 00:13:50:04
Michael Gewecke
And I think some of that is what makes this book so unsatisfying, is because we’ve all had some experience, not maybe with God, but we’ve all had the time when there were words that we wanted to say. And then when the situation came, we just it was clear that the words that we had been rehearsing in our head weren’t the words that were the right words for that situation or for that time, or for whatever the reason that we’ve all found ourselves, I think, in that circumstance.

00:13:50:07 – 00:14:12:48
Michael Gewecke
And here that’s to the ninth degree. I just think we see here job has been mounting this case. And then in the moment in which that case would have been made, he realized, oh, this case is for someone who’s like me and God’s not like me. And ultimately that doesn’t make it all come together. The formula doesn’t equal out.

00:14:12:48 – 00:14:28:26
Michael Gewecke
And now we understand it all completely without any questions. But what it does do is it reorders the conversation in such a way that we understand that this is not been in apples and apples argument the whole time, though these friends have framed it as if it is.

00:14:28:31 – 00:15:02:14
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And again, that may not be a compelling solution for some of us. The idea that job says to God, I know that I’m righteous and yet I’m suffering deeply, painfully. You owe me an explanation. His friends argue with him. He maintains his integrity. He gets what he wants, God before him, and God says, I’m God, job, I don’t owe you anything.

00:15:02:19 – 00:15:36:19
Clint Loveall
That’s not how this works. And job essentially says, yeah, I had forgotten that. I don’t have any answer I can give. I don’t have anything else to say. Now, if that sounds harsh, if that if that sounds like God has bullied job, I don’t think that’s the intention. I think that’s just a person writing this book who understands the finiteness of human understanding.

00:15:36:19 – 00:16:07:16
Clint Loveall
There are questions beyond us that we would love to have answered, but ultimately we can only live with the knowledge that God is God and we are not. And though we might wish for more, ultimately that has to be enough. And I again, it would be wonderful if the book of Job was giving us insight into something more than that.

00:16:07:16 – 00:16:12:19
Clint Loveall
But I think it’s telling us at some level what we kind of already know.

00:16:12:19 – 00:16:38:00
Michael Gewecke
So this is a bridge to the next conversation, but I think it deserves said here. You might end here. If we stopped here, you might say to yourself, job is getting the dressing down that he deserved because job did wrongly. Job was wrong or Joe missed. You could say, hey, look, now job is getting the humility and it’s all getting sorted out, much like what those friends said all along.

00:16:38:09 – 00:17:10:19
Michael Gewecke
I hope you will join us because as we continue on to the next section, that’s going to get troubled because in a way, the thing that makes this so much more layer than nuance, than what we might give it credit for, is job in the humility of being human, lives in the right ordering of created and creature. And in that moment, job is suddenly able to unlock the for us, the reader, to see that God has been on job side the entire time.

00:17:10:21 – 00:17:20:21
Michael Gewecke
And so you can’t just read by point that you can’t just read this section and not continue on reading, because it’s going to have an important part of interpreting what we’re seeing right here.

00:17:20:26 – 00:17:53:07
Clint Loveall
I suppose there is a temptation, Michael, to read this book through the lens of who has the best argument, job or the friends. And it turns out that’s that’s not what the book is about at all. We know of job. What we started with job is righteous. Job does the right thing. Job has integrity. And yet his argument has still paled before the creator of the universe.

00:17:53:21 – 00:18:21:21
Clint Loveall
His his carefully crafted complaint is still vapor. There’s nothing to it. When he lays it at the feet of God. It. However, that doesn’t mean job has been wrong. And that’s important. And that’s, I think if you can be with us tomorrow, the book really wants us to know that at the end.

00:18:21:31 – 00:18:32:19
Michael Gewecke
And we do too. So certainly hope you’ll join that. Subscribe to you miss studies like what will come tomorrow. Comment and like so that others can find this study in their own studies of job. Thanks for being with us today.

00:18:32:19 – 00:18:33:07
Clint Loveall
Thanks everybody.