Month: August 2010

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Old Testament

A whole day of Elihu. Goody goody gumdrops. But I will be strong and see if I can find anything of value from his repetitive and rather predictable speech.

For the most part, Elihu sticks to the standard line that God will punish the wicked and reward the righteous. Not in some abstract future but in ways that are observable in this life. At one point, he says something almost insightful,

“Why don’t people say to God, ‘I have sinned,
but I will sin no more’?
Or ‘I don’t know what evil I have done—tell me.
If I have done wrong, I will stop at once’?

Why does this only earn a label of “almost insightful”? Well, back in chapter 7, Job said,

If I have sinned, what have I done to you,
O watcher of all humanity?

And in chapter 10 he said,

I will say to God, ‘Don’t simply condemn me—
tell me the charge you are bringing against me.

And in chapter 13 he said,

Or let me speak to you, and you reply.
Tell me, what have I done wrong?

And I am sure there are more examples. Point being, Elihu obviously was not listening to what Job was saying (or he forgot since, admittedly, Job said a lot, but he made this point over and over again).

So let’s see if we can find something else to redeem Elihu’s speech. This part is pretty reasonable,

If you sin, how does that affect God?
Even if you sin again and again,
what effect will it have on him?
If you are good, is this some great gift to him?
What could you possibly give him?

No, your sins affect only people like yourself,
and your good deeds also affect only humans.

That’s pretty good, but Elihu does not seem to follow that train of thought very far. Instead, he just declares once again that eventually the good will be rewarded and the wicked punished.

Elihu ends on a particular unfortunate note. He gives examples of God’s greatness, but they are all examples of natural weather phenomena that are fairly well understood these days. Oops.

New Testament

Paul claims that if anyone rejects the gospel, it is because Satan has veiled them. I was under the impression that it was God who prevented some people from believing. Perhaps, as in Job, God and Satan are in cahoots again.

Paul also talks about the suffering of those who follow the way of Jesus. This presents an interesting contrast to our readings in Job. In Job, the obvious, common sense answer to the problem of suffering is that the wicked suffer and the righteous prosper. The purpose of Job is to refute this simplistic message.

In this passage, Paul makes it clear that suffering, at least the kind of suffering he is experiencing, is actually a consequence of being righteous. Thus, Paul comes to a different answer on the problem of suffering. Some people suffer because they are righteous but in a world of evil. However, Paul is clearly not trying to address all kinds of suffering in this passage.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s proverbs are not particularly interesting.

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Old Testament

Job continues on about what a blameless person he has been. It is getting somewhat tiresome. The interesting line in today’s reading is this:

If only someone would listen to me!
Look, I will sign my name to my defense.
Let the Almighty answer me.
Let my accuser write out the charges against me.

This, it seems to me, is Job’s fundamental inconsistency. He claims that God is all powerful. He  claims that man cannot demand justice from God since God is both prosecutor, judge, and jury. Yet he seems to think that he deserves a clear explanation. If God really is the powerful, cosmic God that Job implies, then expecting a reason is just as futile as expecting justice.

After Job finishes speaking, we get an interjection from Elihu. According to Harris in Understanding the Bible:

Between Job’s final challenge to God and God’s appearance in the whirlwind that logically follows it, redactors inserted a lengthy speech by Elihu, a character whom the text has not previously introduced. Perhaps scandalized by Job’s unorthodox theology, the writer of Elihu’s discourse attacks Job for refusing to make things easy by simply confessing his sins (perhaps including self-righteousness) and thereby restoring the comfortable view of God’s perfect justice. Rehashing the three friends’ arguments, Elihu adds little to the discussion, although he claims to resolve the problem that Job’s case presents.  … After six chapters of Elihu’s empty rhetoric, readers may well feel that the opening question in Yahweh’s first speech applies to him rather than to Job: “Who is this obscuring my designs with his empty-headed words?”

What we see of Elihu’s speech today support’s Harris’s analysis of it as redundant empty rhetoric, so I will not bother saying anything more about it.

New Testament

Paul calls the Corinthian church a living letter of recommendation on behalf of Paul. Paul then goes on to talk about how the new covenant, with Jesus, is so much more awesome than the old covenant. No one who wears the veil of the old covenant can understand the new covenant. None of this is particularly interesting to me.

Psalms and Proverbs

A nice proverb:

Blessed are those who are generous,
because they feed the poor.

Reference links:

Old Testament

Job is talking a lot today. In summary: People don’t know where to find wisdom. Wisdom is more valuable than anything else. Only God understands how to gain wisdom. Wisdom is fear of the Lord. Job’s life use to be really awesome. Now it’s not.

What is wisdom? What’s the definition? People always go on about how difficult it is to find wisdom and can only come from their source of preference, but I wonder how much of that is just a lack of a good definition.

New Testament

Shorter reading than usual today. Paul talks about his travels and preaching and about how his “Christ-like fragrance” is stinky to non-believers.

Psalms and Proverbs

Decent proverb,

Just as the rich rule the poor,
so the borrower is servant to the lender.

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Old Testament

Today’s reading is rather confusing, so I am going to go through it section by section.

First, Job declares his belief that if he could argue his case before God, he would be found innocent. But despite that, God will do what he will do; he controls Job’s destiny, both the good and the bad.

Next, Job asks why God does not punish the wicked or respond to the cries of the needly and poor. This is accompanied by many images of how the poor suffer at the hands of the wicked.

Next Job seems to present something of a reversal to his earlier position and declares that the wicked are punished. However, he seems to be arguing that that punishment is death rather than some earthly punishment.

This is followed by a super short response from Bildad. Bildad seems to just interject with a statement of how God is awesome and humans suck. It seems to add nothing to the text. Job then responds (with what I can only read as biting sarcasm). He seems to reinforce the theme of God’s power and majesty brought up by Bildad. However, his disagrees with Bildad in so far as Bildad seems to think that he can draw conclusions from the vastness of God’s majesty (humans are maggots) while Job concludes that God’s majesty is so great and incomprehensible that there are no conclusions that can be drawn from it.

Job then claims that he will never declare his companions to be right. This seems to be an extreme position. I think that both sides in this argument could learn a lot from each other if they were willing. He then goes on to make points that seem oddly similar to points made by those that he is disagreeing with. Very odd.

New Testament

Paul discusses why he changed his plans about a second visit to Corinth. He seems to want to emphasize that he does not waver in his word without good reason. In the midst of all this, he manages to make a point about how Jesus is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises.

Paul then alludes to some sort of recent trouble in the Corinthian church. As mentioned in yesterday’s introductory material, some scholars believe that the situation being referred to is what prompted the separate letter that is hypothesized to make up the later part of 2 Corinthians.

Whether or not that is the exact incident referred to, Paul here almost seems to be apologizing for the harsh words that he had for the Corinthian church. He wants them to know that the depth of his grief came from the depth of his love for them. Now that the trouble is over, he wants them to practice forgiveness.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing to say today.

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Old Testament

At this point, things are starting to get a little repetitive. Repetition is good for reinforcing a point, but it’s somewhat unfortunate when you have to blog about it every day. =)

Zophar once again declares the success and joys of the wicked temporary. He continues to acknowledge that the wicked do prosper and enjoy their lives. However, Zophar believes that they eventually will taste bitterness and ruin. All they have will be destroyed.

Job points out that this is false. The wicked live full lives without regret or punishment. They seem to receive all of the good fortune God has to give. External success cannot be taken as a sign of God’s pleasure or displeasure. It is as invalid to conclude that the wicked are actually righteous because they are successful as it is to conclude that the righteous are actually wicked because they experience misfortune.

One part of Job’s speech reminds me of how many people deal with the problem of evil and the problem of injustice:

Look, I know what you’re thinking.
I know the schemes you plot against me.
You will tell me of rich and wicked people
whose houses have vanished because of their sins.
But ask those who have been around,
and they will tell you the truth.
Evil people are spared in times of calamity
and are allowed to escape disaster.

Job points out that those who defend a simplistic view of God and his relationship to humanity can always find some examples to support their view. However, if they would fairly consider all of the data, they would see that their simplistic views just do not hold up to reality.

Eliphaz continues to be the most annoying of the three companions. He seems to be trying to throw out different accusations to Job to see which one makes Job flinch. He is fully convinced that Job must have sinned to deserve this punishment. He also brings up the always repulsive idea that the righteous will rejoice at the punishment of the wicked. To me, Eliphaz stands as an obvious example of the self-righteous person. He is so convinced that his world view is correct that he freely condemns others.

New Testament

We start Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians today. What does Understanding the Bible have to say about it:

A composite work consisting of several letters or letter fragments, 2 Corinthians shows Paul defending his apostolic authority (Chs. 10-13); the first nine chapters, apparently written after Chapters 10-13, describe Paul’s reconciliation with the church at Corinth. …

Many scholars believe that Chapters 10-13 represent the “painful letter” alluded to in 2 Corinthians 2:3-4, making this part necessary older than Chapters 1-9. Some authorities find as many as six or more remnants of different letters in 2 Corinthians

In short, things are probably going to seem a bit confusing and disjoint at times.

After greeting the members of the church in Corinth, Paul discusses the comfort that God provides to sufferers. Right near the beginning we have a verse that Job may have wished his three companions had known about,

[God] comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

 Paul then goes on to talk about how trouble has taught him to rely more fully on God’s help.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s third proverb seems to reflect the overly simplistic views that the book of Job warns us against:

True humility and fear of the Lord
lead to riches, honor, and long life.

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Old Testament

Job’s friends have a point when they accuse him of going on and on. Despite the good points he has to make, he is distinctly more verbose than his friends.

That said, both of Job’s speeches today bring up a key point. Despite the fact that Job’s friends may have some legitimate points, this is not the appropriate time for them. Mercy and sympathy need to come before advice and admonishment are appropriate. Job would not feel so bitter against his companions, I am guessing, if they had not started the conversation as Job’s persecutors.

Bildad’s response to Job shows the increasing distance between the two sides. Job is suffering and asking for sympathy, but all Bildad hears are the accusations against Job just as all Job hears now is the accusations against him.

Bildad does not make any new points in this speech. He continues to hold the position that the wicked will always be punished and are always waiting in fear of that punishment. The wicked will be forgotten with no descendants. Yet, that hopeless fate for the wicked holds no more similarity to reality than it did the first time around.

New Testament

We finish 1 Corinthians today. It’s a rather uninteresting listing of administrative instructions and greetings.

Psalms and Proverbs

A good proverb:

Choose a good reputation over great riches;
being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold.

Reference links:

Old Testament

Job’s response to the latest commentary from his friends is a lecture on God’s wisdom and power and against those who would presume to know the mind of God (laced with entertaining sarcasm). The most powerful statement comes near the middle of the reading:

Are you defending God with lies?
Do you make your dishonest arguments for his sake?
Will you slant your testimony in his favor?
Will you argue God’s case for him?
What will happen when he finds out what you are doing?
Can you fool him as easily as you fool people?
No, you will be in trouble with him
if you secretly slant your testimony in his favor.
Doesn’t his majesty terrify you?
Doesn’t your fear of him overwhelm you?
Your platitudes are as valuable as ashes.
Your defense is as fragile as a clay pot.

Job is saying that God does not need the defense of humans. Furthermore, God finds testimony that, by human terms, is in his favor to be just as indefensible as false testimony against him.

I like this passage. I have always been annoyed that the attitude that it is better to have a view of God that is naive, ignorant, and clearly ignores reality than it is to have what is, if there is a God, an equally wrong view of God that asserts that he does not exist. Is God so petty that would prefer someone who spreads hatred and intolerance in the names of God and Jesus rather than doing good with no belief in God? The opinion of the author of Job is that those who misrepresent God will be in trouble with God, whether that misrepresentation is positive or negative.

After Job finishes, Eliphaz responds a second time. He unfairly accuses Job of having no fear or reverence of God despite the fact that one of Job’s key points revolved around proper respect for God’s majesty. I think, perhaps, that Eliphaz is actually projecting his own feelings onto God. Eliphaz resents that Job is not accepting his opinion.

Eliphaz again tries to give the easy answers: God brings pain and ruin to the wicked. The wicked will constantly feel terror, will be ruined, will be cut down in the prime of life, will lose their homes. The problem with this feeble defense, as the author of Job clearly knows, is that none of this is true. Those who are not godly live long, successful, and probably often happy lives. There are truly bad people who are never brought to justice, who never even have their evil discovered. As before, Eliphaz’s easy answers are tempting, but ultimately the data does not support them.

New Testament

Discussion of the post-resurrection body. I don’t particularly care. The only interesting fragment is this verse which could be used in making a case that Paul believed that Jesus would return soon:

But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed!

Psalms and Proverbs

No human wisdom or understanding or plan
can stand against the Lord.

Seems appropriate given our reading in Job. I think that one could make a compelling Biblical case that, if there is a God, any human knowledge of him is incomplete and approximate, even knowledge gained from the Bible itself.

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Old Testament

Eliphaz gave the easy, tempting, and wrong answer to Job’s suffering. The answers of Job’s other friends get increasingly sophisticated. This is important because, although we know that Job is righteous and that, therefore, the reasoning of his friends has a faulty basis, ultimately Job and his friends are developing a theodicy together. As the friends respond, they make some legitimate points that push Job to develop his argument.

Bildad still thinks some wickedness must be to blame for Job’s suffering. He blames Job’s children. Instead of saying, like Eliphaz, that Job must redeem himself by confessing his sins, Bildad softens the position and says merely that Job must seek God’s favor. Eliphaz acknowledges that the wicked do flourish, but argue that ultimately their roots are shallow. Eliphaz argues for a God of ultimate justice, but grants that righteousness cannot be inferred from present fortune or misfortune.

Job responds that Eliphaz seems right in principle, but also points out that God who is prosecutor, judge, jury, and hangman has no obligation to administer what humans would consider justice. God performs miracles and marvels but some miracles and marvels, such as earthquakes and plagues, seem to disregard the interests of humanity. Job is claiming that God is so mighty and wise that there is no point in asking for justice; God, the clever prosecutor, could find some reason to declare Job guilty even if he had done no wrong. Thus, all Job can do is plead for mercy (and, to tie this to his early speech, the only mercy he could imagine for his suffering is death).

At one point, Job says of God’s responsibility for the evil in the world,

If he’s not the one who does it, who is?

For many people the answer would be demons or Satan. However, people who give such trite answers miss the fundamental nature of the problem of evil. Even if entities are causing this trouble, God ultimately created them as they are, so this is no more an answer. Job, therefore, arrives at the conclusion that ultimately all good and all bad rests with God.

Job then goes on to make his one request. He cannot ask for justice, but he can ask the fundamental question, “Why?” Job wants to know why he suffers. Why would God create a person, create humanity, if only to let them suffer? Why would God have taken the effort of creation if not to care for what he had created?

The third friend, Zophar, then responds. Zophar again assumes Job’s guilt, and in terms more harsh than Bildad. He, it almost seems sarcastically, accuses Job of trying to falsely establish his innocence. Zophar  falls back on the old idea that punishment is clearly the result of wrong doing. God has the greatest knowledges and knows all hearts and so cannot be wrong.

Despite falling back on that, he does address another aspect of the argument not yet addressed. Although Zophar assumes that the good will prosper and the wicked suffer, he does not assume that such prosperity and suffering will be external. Instead, those who open themselves to God will find internal strength and hope and happiness while those who do not will not.

We will see Job’s response tomorrow.

New Testament

Paul tries to use logic again. As usual, his reasoning seems suspect. Paul wants the Corinthians to know that Jesus really did die, rise again, and appear to many. (Side note: people often use this mention of Jesus appearing to 500 as 500 independent verifications of Jesus’ resurrection. That is wrong. We do not have 500 accounts of the resurrection here. We have Paul’s claim that 500 people saw Jesus.)

Here is the passage I find suspect:

But tell me this—since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either.

“What is wrong with this?” you may wonder. It seems like a perfectly valid argument of the form “for all X, not P(X), therefore, not P(Jesus). But P(Jesus), therefore not (for all X, not P(x))”. However, it seems likely to me that Paul is making a straw man of his opponents arguments. Just because some Corinthians may be arguing against general resurrection of the dead, it does not follow that they believe that there are not specific exceptional cases where the dead can be resurrected.

But even if we grant that Paul’s premise is valid. As mentioned above, the conclusion that Paul can legitimately draw is “not (for all X, not P(x))”. That is, “there exists an X such that P(x)”. But Paul wants to claim that since Jesus was raised from the dead everyone who belongs to Christ will be resurrected. This is not a valid argument.

It’s also worth noting that Psalm 8, which Paul quotes to establish Jesus’ authority, addresses the glory and authority God gave to humanity, not any particular individual. Perhaps Paul is arguing that Jesus, as the ultimate representative of humanity, is the ultimate vessel of this authority. If so, he is doing a bad job making that argument.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing we haven’t heard before. I do hope the proverbs are not redundant for the rest of the year.

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Old Testament

The key thing to remember while reading the speeches of Job and his friends is that the prologue has set Job up as righteous. It is something of a tradition to try to figure out what what Job had done wrong so as to justify his suffering, but that defeats the purpose and power of the book. The book of Job expounds upon the observation that suffering cannot always be seen as punishment (for even when suffering comes to one who is not completely righteous, it is often vastly disproportionate to what would seem to be a just punishment). Without the basis of Job’s righteousness, this becomes nothing more than yet another overly simplistic theology which does not align with real world data. With the basis of Job’s righteousness, it becomes a powerful (if, as we’ll see, ultimately unsatisfying) attempt to address the problem of evil and human suffering.

In today’s reading, Eliphaz the Temanite responds to Job’s despair. He accuses Job of not being strong in the face of adversity and of being guilty before God (and therefore deserving of punishment). Eliphaz focuses on the good that God does in language that is probably not unintentionally reminiscent of the  proverbs. Eliphaz argues that if only Job makes himself right with God, then all will be well again. Eliphaz’s argument is comforting, but does it account for reality where both the good and wicked suffer, both the good and wicked succeed?

Job’s response defends his right to complain. He does not accuse God of being unfair, but he does maintain that his complaints are no sin. He also points out that his despair is more than he can bear. This passage provides an interesting pairing with 1 Corinthians 10:13 which implies that the trials of believers are never more than they can bear.

There is one line of Job’s response that sheds light upon the response of Eliphaz:

You have seen my calamity, and you are afraid.

Eliphaz’s explanation is so temptingly comforting because no one wants to believe that they are a slight turn of events away from despair and misfortune. Eliphaz wants to believe that Job is quantitatively different from him. He wants to believe that he would not be like Job in a similar situation but, even more, Eliphaz wants to believe that he would never be in such a situation. This is human nature. People always assume that bad things will never happen to them. “Worse case” scenarios are never really worst case. Job acts as a direct affront to such deeply held beliefs.

New Testament

Paul continues on about how the gift of prophecy is more important than the gift of speaking in tongues. He then talks about particular rules for making sure that the worship sessions are orderly. As part of this he says the following:

Women should be silent during the church meetings. It is not proper for them to speak. They should be submissive, just as the law says. If they have any questions, they should ask their husbands at home, for it is improper for women to speak in church meetings.

Now, there is some controversy about which (if any) of the Corinthian passages about the proper behavior of women are genuinely Pauline. This passage makes it clear, to me at least, that one of this or 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 must be questionable. As much as there is to dislike in the earlier passage, it makes it pretty clear that women are allowed to prophecy and pray as part of public worship.

But a woman dishonors her head if she prays or prophesies without a covering on her head, for this is the same as shaving her head.

and

Is it right for a woman to pray to God in public without covering her head?

I cannot see how to reconcile that as consistent with the above passage from today’s reading. Either Paul is inconsistent and uncertain about his approach to women in the church (quite possible) or one both of these passages were inserted by later redactors.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing particularly interesting to me.

Reference links:

Old Testament

Book of Job! Let’s see what our references have to say about it. According to Understanding the Bible:

A bold challenge to traditional views of God, the Book of Job dramatizes the plight of an innocent man whose tragic sufferings inspire him to question the ethical nature of a deity who permits evil and the unmerited pain of sentient creatures. …

Although scholars do not agree on when Job was written, the general period of its composition can be inferred from the theological issues it confronts. … In its questioning of God’s right to prosecute a person of exemplary goodness without just cause, however, the book is far more than an edifying study of the hero’s fortitude and loyalty under sever testing. The Tanakh’s most fully developed theodicy … Job seems to express the deepest concerns of the postexilic era, when old assumptions about rewards for faithfulness and penalties for wrongdoing had lost much of their former authority.  …

After Babylon’s destruction of Judah, however, when thousands of Torah-abiding people permanently lost family, health, land, and possessions, confidence that righteous behavior could ensure a good life was less easy to entertain. Observing widespread injustice that turned the Deuteronomistic thesis on its head … the anonymous author of Job could accept neither Deuteronomy’s simplistic theories nor Ezekiel’s implication that human misery always drives from sin. Combining traditional reverence for Yahweh with an acutely critical intelligence and demand for moral logic, Job’s author protests comfortable but outmoded notions about the connection between good behavior and good fortune. … the writer … forcefully illustrates his conviction that old theological claims about the certainty of divine justice were woefully inadequate to explain the apparent random and arbitrary nature of human pain.

On to today’s reading!

Job starts with an introductory passage where the satan, God’s monitor of humanity responds to a challenge from God that Job is a truly righteous man. The satan posits that Job will not be so righteous if he experiences misfortune and God gives the satan leave to test Job.

In modern Christian thought, the satan has evolved into an individual, Satan. Satan, the individual, is seen as God’s enemy. Thus, this exchange between God and Satan often seems highly problematic. Even the traditional Jewish view that the satan is God’s servant charged with monitoring humanity is problematic to the popular view that God is all goodness and love. The book of Job shows that, in the mind of its author, God is the author of both good and misfortune. There is no separate entity responsible for that which humans consider bad, only God’s assistant who carry out his sometimes incomprehensible will. As we will see, this theme will be enlarged upon.

Job first loses his children and his wealth. Although this causes him great grief, he does not curse God. This causes the satan to go back to God and suggest that Job might not be so reconciled if he were to experience bodily harm. As a result, Job is afflicted with painful boils.

Job still refuses to curse God, but he suffers greatly and eventually speaks out, beginning the transition from the prose prologue to the poetic core of the book. Job curses the day he was born and comments upon the release from suffering of those who are dead. Essentially, Job is laying out poetically the problem of evil. Why would a just and good God allow unnecessary suffering? Why would God let people live lives that can only be improved by death?

This poem also gives interesting insights into the author’s beliefs about the afterlife. In general, the Old Testament presents the afterlife as nothing. There is no great reward for the good or eternal suffering for the wicked. There is only punishment and reward in this life and then an afterlife of neutral blankness. Popular conceptions of heaven and hell did not develop until the period between the Old and the New Testaments.

New Testament

After going on about how all of the spiritual gifts are important, Paul tells the people of Corinth to prefer the gift of prophecy over all others but love. That’s something of a mixed message.

Paul then goes on to describe why prophecy is to be preferred over speaking in tongues in a way that gives useful insight into communication generally:

Dear brothers and sisters, if I should come to you speaking in an unknown language, how would that help you? But if I bring you a revelation or some special knowledge or prophecy or teaching, that will be helpful. Even lifeless instruments like the flute or the harp must play the notes clearly, or no one will recognize the melody. And if the bugler doesn’t sound a clear call, how will the soldiers know they are being called to battle?

It’s the same for you. If you speak to people in words they don’t understand, how will they know what you are saying? You might as well be talking into empty space.

Psalms and Proverbs

The proverbs the last couple days have felt redundant with ones we have read before. Today’s proverbs continue that trend.