00:00:00:43 – 00:00:27:04
Clint Loveall
Hey everybody. Happy Monday. Thanks for joining us. As we tackle the the very last part here, the book of job. It’s been a while. If you’ve been with us through most of it we’re grateful. Hope there’s been something of interest in it. The ending is of interest to a lot of people. It’s, I don’t know, Michael. It’s not controversial, but it’s not beloved.

00:00:27:07 – 00:01:05:43
Clint Loveall
There are a lot of job scholars that think two schools of thought on this. One is that it seems like, or it is thought to have perhaps been added later. I don’t know that there is incontrovertible evidence to that, but there are those who suggest that it’s a little out of tone with the rest of the book. And then there are also those that think, and I might lean this direction a little bit, that the happy ending negates some of the other landscape of this book.

00:01:05:45 – 00:01:27:04
Clint Loveall
And we’ll come back to that conversation here. But let me, let me read it through and then we’ll, we’ll have some conversation. And the Lord restored the fortunes of job when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters, all who had known him before.

00:01:27:04 – 00:01:49:04
Clint Loveall
And they ate bread with him in his house. They showed him sympathy, and comforted him for all the evil the Lord had brought upon him, and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. The Lord blessed the latter days of job more than the beginning, and he had 14,000 sheep, 6000 camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys.

00:01:49:09 – 00:02:21:45
Clint Loveall
He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first gymnasia, the second Keziah, and the third canopic in all the land. There were no women so beautiful as jobs. Daughters and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this job lived 140 years and saw his children and his children’s children for generations. And job died old and full of days.

00:02:21:50 – 00:02:30:36
Clint Loveall
What you make of this ending is difficult.

00:02:30:40 – 00:02:52:48
Clint Loveall
The most likely conclusion you could jump to is that this is a kind of reward of some sort that God mentioned. He was pleased with job, and that as a kind of.

00:02:52:52 – 00:03:25:48
Clint Loveall
As a way of complementing job, he now blesses him. I suppose the other option would be that feeling bad that he put job through so much, the Lord decides to make it right. Both of those approaches have some serious problems in the theology of the book and the rest of the text. Both of them stand at odds, and I mentioned a lot of people don’t love this conclusion.

00:03:25:48 – 00:03:42:19
Clint Loveall
And I think, Michael, that’s probably probably part of it. It’s just there’s a sense in which any way you interpret this conclusion, it’s out of step with some of the rest of the book, and it’s hard to know exactly what to make of that.

00:03:42:21 – 00:04:08:24
Michael Gewecke
So when you finish books, you often need to return back to the beginning to get a sense for the arc that’s been played out between the two. And I think that here we have to interrogate and ask ourselves a little bit of the preconceptions that we brought to Joe, because this book in the the meaty Middle, has dealt with the issue of human suffering.

00:04:08:24 – 00:04:28:52
Michael Gewecke
It’s been weighty. It’s been hard. There’s been a lot of wrestling with God. How can you be involved in this equation that doesn’t seem to measure out? And all of that might lead us to believe that the purpose of job was to solve that equation and to tell us exactly how God fits into the human equation of suffering.

00:04:28:55 – 00:04:57:14
Michael Gewecke
And if that’s the case, then the friends have been mounting jobs. Friends that have come to him have been mounting a sustained and I think, to their credit, a pretty consistent case, that good righteousness produces good outcome, bad sinfulness, pride, all of these cursing God, all of these things would ultimately lead to devastation. It would lead to pain.

00:04:57:14 – 00:05:35:31
Michael Gewecke
It would lead to all of this bad being brought upon oneself. If the outcome of job is to be measured as the ability for the book to solve that puzzle, then I think one could make a case that this section of the book proves the friends point, right? If that’s all it is. And I think that’s one of the reasons why scholars are going to push against this, because so much of this book has been framed both in terms of the literature and the writing, but also even in terms of what we just had, where God scolds these friends for getting it wrong.

00:05:35:31 – 00:06:17:36
Michael Gewecke
God praises Jobe for having got it right. Job has clearly passed the test that has been laid out before him. So in other words, the numbers don’t add up. The formula doesn’t balance. The friends are not right. And yet this ending seems to suggest that the writer is giving us a conclusion that they were. And I think that maybe there’s a messy middle where we, as the reader, are encountering what job encountered in that God that speaks from the whirlwind to say things are more mysterious and messy in the world of suffering than what we like to think that real evil happens.

00:06:17:38 – 00:06:33:12
Michael Gewecke
A real harm comes into our lives. We don’t have the answers as to why that is. And yet, sometimes God’s faithfulness looks like restoration. It looks like new chapters and new seasons, and that cycle is somehow all built into this story.

00:06:33:14 – 00:06:59:36
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And the other, the problem on the other side, Michael, is if we try to say that God owes job something, and there are those who have said that, in fact, the reference to twice as much as before has sometimes been footnoted with a verse in Exodus where if anyone has wronged someone, they owe them twice for what they took from them.

00:06:59:38 – 00:07:27:38
Clint Loveall
And if you. But if you go that way, you’re at odds with the last part of the book where God tells job, I don’t. I don’t owe you anything, job. I don’t know you an explanation. I don’t owe you an appearance. You sit there and I will question you. And so the the idea that God has a debt to pay and was himself the one in the wrong, is also not a clear lesson that the book has shown us.

00:07:27:38 – 00:07:50:57
Clint Loveall
In fact, I would say that the book has tried pretty hard to show us something else. And so yes, what this means ultimately, I think, is a mystery. And and therein, Michael. And I’ll get to this in a minute. I want to point out a couple of interesting things. Very late in the book, we find out that job has brothers and sisters who care about him, and they come to help.

00:07:50:57 – 00:07:58:04
Clint Loveall
And you think, well, where were they earlier? Not really a real question of the text, but an interesting.

00:07:58:07 – 00:08:00:21
Michael Gewecke
Interesting timing. Yeah.

00:08:00:26 – 00:08:36:00
Clint Loveall
And then a very strange thing near the end of the book here, the very end of our passage, job daughters are named, but his sons are not, which is unusual in the Old Testament that we’re not given the names of the sons. And then even stranger. Yet job gives them an inheritance along with their brothers, which is his prerogative, but is very unusual and and very out of tone with his time and the customs of that day.

00:08:36:07 – 00:09:05:40
Clint Loveall
Now, does that tell us something? Does job now have a sympathy and a sensitivity for those who have less? Does job now resonate with those who, by really no fault of their own? Aren’t included in the goodness of the offerings for others, it does job think it’s unfair that the daughters wouldn’t get what the sons get. Is he more attuned to that kind of inequity?

00:09:05:43 – 00:09:31:28
Clint Loveall
I this is all speculation. I’m not saying that’s what the text tells us, but this the details provided to us in this last little section here are very strange. It’s kind of take us off in a lot of directions and and ultimately they may mean nothing. But it’s interesting to ask the question whether the author of job is trying to say something to us through them.

00:09:31:31 – 00:10:00:26
Michael Gewecke
I think there’s a really interesting balance that we have to try to walk here because this text is celebrated. It celebrates the restoration of the fortunes of job. The Lord gave job twice as much as he had before. He’s returned these physical possessions. So in that way, there’s a positivity of this text. But Clint, verse 13, I think is rather haunting to me.

00:10:00:28 – 00:10:23:57
Michael Gewecke
Seven sons, three daughters. Any parent who’s lost children knows you can’t read that text as a literal kind of. And then the children were replaced. That’s a horrific oversight. And I’m not saying to suggest that that’s what the book means, but it is to say people have read it that way, that that in some way, yeah, job lost some things.

00:10:23:57 – 00:10:38:04
Michael Gewecke
But like an investment, God gave all those things back. And the truth is, job was living the end of his life. And clearly in a celebrated.

00:10:38:09 – 00:11:09:36
Michael Gewecke
Blessed way. And yet that’s a new chapter. And it doesn’t erase the chapters of suffering and and the real loss of the children that came before. And we would make a significant mistake if we somehow tried to gloss other way as if it didn’t happen. I think the only way that this ending can make sense is if you recognize that, yes, maybe those blessings returned, but that they didn’t return without that pain still being maybe those wounds healed well, but those wounds were still there.

00:11:09:50 – 00:11:21:33
Michael Gewecke
This happened to Jobe, happened to those who Jobe loved. And I just think we should be careful ourselves to not flatten a text like this, to say things that I don’t think it’s fair for the text to mean.

00:11:21:36 – 00:11:54:26
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think anybody, Michael, who has dealt with some grief and some loss, knows that while time does have a way of blunting the edge a little, that stays that that is always there, and certainly the kind of woundedness that job endured is not erased by just some good fortune later in life. Those two things live together, and I think that’s one of the complexities of the book.

00:11:54:26 – 00:12:29:52
Clint Loveall
Job is job is undoubtedly changed. We don’t get much of an after action report, but job is undoubtedly a different person than he was before that loss, that suffering, even now that there are good things in his life they don’t erase, nor do they ultimately replace what he has lost. And I think it would be very short sighted to try and read this as a sort of only happy ending.

00:12:29:57 – 00:12:41:31
Clint Loveall
There’s happiness in this ending, but the pain on the way to it is is not negated by the good things later.

00:12:41:36 – 00:13:07:24
Michael Gewecke
I think that we also just need to remember how we got to this, because I think the bridge matters. And so really briefly, just remember this restoration comes on the heels in verse nine of the Lord accepting jobs, prayer for his friends, the ones who gave him counsel that God said was clearly not correct, that that job had spoken rightly.

00:13:07:24 – 00:13:34:55
Michael Gewecke
And it’s upon that prayer. And here we have it in verse ten, when he had prayed for his friends, then the Lord gave. There’s a way in which the relational reconciliation, there’s a way in which job being called to do something not for him, but for others. It seems striking to me that job was making sacrifices for his children in the beginning of this book, for the sins that they may have committed against God.

00:13:34:57 – 00:14:13:12
Michael Gewecke
Here it is that other looking request which is framed as the thing that makes possible the restoration, that job experiences. I don’t think that’s an accident, Clint, though I’m not going to pretend to understand the depths of what it means, but surely the way in which the ending of these friends stories have been written into job goes through jobs, faithfulness, and regardless of what they said that was right or wrong, and what proportion of it was on either side of that fence, job is going to be the one here at the end whose prayer and reconciliation, and he’s going to be the gateway where God is going to make things right.

00:14:13:14 – 00:14:43:43
Clint Loveall
I think it’s fascinating, Michael. It’s amazing that if you read from, say, verse seven on, God tells the friends they aren’t going to be restored and till job prays for him them. And then we are told that after job prays for them, he is restored. And I think you’re exactly right. In fact, I think it’s even more evident than as we move into verse 11.

00:14:43:43 – 00:15:12:43
Clint Loveall
Not only is there some reconciliation and restoration with the friends, then his entire community lifts him up and supports him. And again, we can sort of flippantly laugh. Where were they in the. But but here job is not just reconnected to these three men he’s argued with. He’s reconnected to his family, to his community. They have bread with him in his home.

00:15:12:45 – 00:15:50:14
Clint Loveall
He he is a host now for them in this new role that he has. And ultimately he then is restored even to his station in life and his possessions and his his family life, which I think is an interesting sequence of events. Again, what are we supposed to take from it? Like so much of this book, I think we have guesses, but we may not have complete sureness of what that is.

00:15:50:19 – 00:16:17:50
Clint Loveall
It’s an interesting flow of details. The place I would stop Michael and I think this will come up again tomorrow. So if we look at this ending and we say, well, it doesn’t seem right that God is saying, I’m sorry and he owes job something. Also, it maybe isn’t entirely satisfying that because job did well, in the end, he gets paid back extra and that’s supposed to make up for it.

00:16:17:55 – 00:16:52:19
Clint Loveall
So then the question is what does this ending mean? And again, we certainly aren’t claiming to know the answer. But in a book that seems to be interested in presenting us a picture of a God that is free to act as he pleases, maybe what we see in the end isn’t that God has to make things right for job, or that job has earned these things.

00:16:52:24 – 00:17:22:00
Clint Loveall
Maybe, as is always a good idea in Scripture, when we focus on God, we simply see another example that God is not bound by our shoulds and have tos and deserves, and that God just simply at the end, as he chose to make God’s life harder in the beginning, he chooses to make God’s life better in the end.

00:17:22:02 – 00:17:22:52
Michael Gewecke
Jobs, life.

00:17:23:00 – 00:17:46:38
Clint Loveall
I’m sorry, jobs life better in the end. And God is free to do so and like it understands it or not, God is God and you aren’t. And maybe, maybe in some ways that’s the big takeaway. I, I don’t know, I just.

00:17:46:43 – 00:18:02:40
Clint Loveall
We can have more of this conversation tomorrow. Job is a difficult book to walk out of, feeling like you have it figured out. In fact, I I’d say it’s nearly an impossible book to leave with the confidence that you you nailed it.

00:18:02:43 – 00:18:29:28
Michael Gewecke
Especially on a close reading. Absolutely. And this is I’m stepping away here just to kind of make a point about this last section that we see ending in verse 17 of job 42. Clint, in a devotional way, in a this isn’t what the text is saying, but as a word, we’ve had people who’ve gone along with us who suffering is not in this moment an idea.

00:18:29:28 – 00:18:59:43
Michael Gewecke
It’s not a philosophy, it’s not a thought. You’re experiencing it. This is a thing that is your every day. Your heart is broken, crying out to God. This isn’t fair. And I think a word. It’s not the word, but a word that comes to us here in verse 17. And really, this last chapter is to say the midst, the seasons and the moments of life where we are broken and and bowed down, and the moments where it’s all crashing down, the round us.

00:18:59:43 – 00:19:25:50
Michael Gewecke
In those moments, it is by definition impossible to see sunlight. It’s impossible to see the path that wins. And yet, Joel, a book in the Bible that I think stands as one of the most powerful, sustained treatments of suffering and pain is at the end of it, able to still say, and yet God was able to make new chapters happen.

00:19:25:52 – 00:19:51:26
Michael Gewecke
The pictures that right now bring nothing but tears and shooting pain in your heart as you grieve those pictures can, with grace and time, someday bring smiles that may be even a long way out. But it can happen. It does happen. Job finds a new chapter in the new season is given to him in life, and that can happen in the worst of circumstances.

00:19:51:26 – 00:20:14:45
Michael Gewecke
And so hopefully there’s some hope for those for whom suffering is not an idea that God does make a way, and how we’re supposed to exactly understand. This chapter fits into these dialogs and everything that’s been in. We can’t neatly tie that up, but I still think that matters for someone who is going through suffering.

00:20:14:50 – 00:21:00:43
Clint Loveall
Yes, ultimately jobs, life. We remember jobs life for an intense period of suffering and a faith crisis and all of the difficulties that go with that. But as job would look back on his life and as we look back with him from the very last verse of the text, he died old and full of days, both jobs life pre this book and post this book are full of blessings and wonderful moments and good, good things, joy and relationship and connection.

00:21:00:45 – 00:21:20:16
Clint Loveall
Now none of that means that job suffering doesn’t matter, but it does mean when you dial out and see the bigger picture, neither does that suffering define jobs entire life. There’s more to it than that. There’s there’s both. And and life generally always is both.

00:21:20:21 – 00:21:35:14
Michael Gewecke
We will do more to talk about this book in summary form. So I hope that you will join us for that conversation like so others can find this study for themselves. Subscribe so you don’t miss studies that are to come for yourself. We will see you all next video.

00:21:35:16 – 00:21:35:55
Clint Loveall
Thanks everybody.