Now Job gets fascinating. He wrote anywhere between 3-4,000 years ago, long before science could validate his insights. He had no scientific instruments. Astronomy was in its infancy.
Yet, in asking the question, “how does this help me?”, he launches a diatribe that silences his detractors for 6 chapters. It reveals an astute understanding of his world.
Job reveals his intellectual grasp of the world
- In 26:7 He speaks of the spreading out of the northern skies over empty space. The term “spreading” as it applies to astronomy is used elsewhere in the bible, and is consistent with say the Big Bang theory, an expansionary event that grew from a singularity to spread out across the void of space. ‘Bang’ is a misnomer. Job agrees, for his description is of an expanding phenomenon, not a chaotic event.
- He understood the concept of North, South and so on.
- He refers to a void. There is indeed a vast, super-void above the north pole, called the Bootes Void. Since 1981, it has intensely researched beyond anything Job could have done and has since been accepted as a super-void.
- In 26:8 he observes what only modern meteorological science could prove, that the clouds carry water without bursting from the weight thereof. It is in a gaseous state, but how did Job know any of that?
- 26:9 is an anomaly. The NIV says that God covers the face of the full moon with clouds. We know that is not so. The KJV rephrases that as God’s throne is obscured by clouds. There are dust clouds in the heavens and many are spawning grounds of stars and super novae, so maybe heaven is obscured behind such clouds.
- He certainly understood the horizon well enough, considering how many after his time thought it marked the edge of the earth.
- In vs 13 he confirms how the wind clear the skies of clouds.
- As if that is not enough, he confesses that he is just skimming the surface.
Given that and all that has gone before, Job digs in his heels
He refuses to bend to the views of men who deserved to be shown the door. Instead he declares: “I will never admit you are right. Till I die I will not deny my integrity”.
It’s a bit of an overreach as anyone who has read to the end of the book knows. He will be corrected, but not because they are right. Indeed, for they are all wrong.
That is such a lesson in dealing with God. He cannot and will not be contextualized. He will not explain Himself. Moses, who actually saw God, albeit His back, offered the best ever articulation of God’s mystique, with the words: “I am, who I am”.
Chapter 27 provides his personal exegesis on the wicked, and therein lies the basis for his protest, namely that he is not wicked as we understand wicked, nor is his end theirs.
A miner in search of wisdom
A mining engineer once told me that Chapter 28 perfectly describes modern deep-cast mining. Job refers to shafts where men dangle and sway as they attack rock faces, tunnels that course through the darkness, and seams that expose precious gems and gold bearing ores.
Job describes the heat far down there, yet only surface mining was practiced in those days and it was so right up to the Roman era. The Romans used their water technology on surface-cast mines until declining yields led them underground.
The analogy though relates to the pursuit of wisdom, which has to be mined, until hidden things come to light. That leads him into a discourse on wisdom and its priceless value to our humanity.
Now wisdom is that subtlety, that discernment between truth and not quite truth that characterizes Job’e entire thesis. He reveals a life that has done a lot of deep soul searching.
I love, in the context of the mining metaphors above, how Job describes God as a lamp on his head (29:3). How he could visualize such a modern idea is a mystery to me.
Methinks you over-generalize the term, “wicked”
In the rest of chapter 29, he reminds his audience of his standing in the community and the respect that he commanded because of his deep inquiry into the mysteries of God. They never saw him as a mystic, nor does he advocate that. They saw him as wise.
He was also compassionate, far from the wickedness that he is accused of. He rescued the poor (12), comforted widows (13), upheld justice (14), was the eyes of the blind and the feet of the lame (15), a friend to strangers (16), a terror to the wicked (17), and so on.
Yet those who deemed his countenance so precious, behaved with the predictable whim of men, by mocking him, kicking him when he was down. He is discerning there too, describing them humorously as men that he would not even let sleep with his sheep dogs.
It is a sarcastic sleight on his doubtful friends and he sees the current mockers as “sons” of the mountain men and brutes that he once despised, emboldened by his crisis. How well he describes the breach through which they entered in targeting his vulnerability.
He closes his case
His greatest sadness is that, having once prayed for the downtrodden he now knows no mercy from the God he refused to deprecate.
The narrative that flows is so rich, but the most striking for me was “if I have followed another woman or lurked at my neighbor’s door, then let my wife grind another man’s grain”. It sums up his defense so well. He really does not know why his troubles have come.
(c) Peter Missing @ Bethelstone.com
