Reference links:

Old Testament

Two thirds done with the Bible, and we finish Job today.

It is something of a let down. After God’s first speech, Job humbles himself. After that, we get what seems to be the core God’s speech:

Will you discredit my justice
and condemn me just to prove you are right?
Are you as strong as God?
Can you thunder with a voice like his?

That’s God’s answer? He’s powerful? That’s it? God’s reasoning seems to be that since God is so much more powerful than humans, humans do not have a right to question. They should live a life of passive acceptance. But if we accepted that attitude, we would still believe that God stores the snow and the rain in the storehouses of the heavens, keeps the sea inside its boundaries, and causes the light to appear and depart.

The bulk of the content in today’s section of God’s speech is God going on about how awesome Behemoth and Leviathan are. After this, Job humbles himself a bit more. God then decides to bless him. The rest of Job’s life is happy and prosperous. He even gets 10 new children to replace his old ones (because children are all equivalent, right?).

Before we leave Job, I want to highlight one more bit from the prose epilogue. After Job humbles himself, God says to Eliphaz,

I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has.

This could be referring to Job’s last two interjections where he humbles himself before God. However, Job did not really say anything in those two interjections. I think it is quite possible (and much more interesting) to understand this as saying that it was Job’s challenge that provoked God, not the content of his speeches. Under this interpretation, I take two messages away from Job.

First, reality cannot be denied. No matter how comforting an answer may be, if it does not conform to the data, then it is not the right answer. This may lead you to a place where the only answer you can give is, “I don’t know”, but that is better than an answer that is simple but wrong.

Second, humanity should not assume it is the center of God’s concern. The God of Job delights in the majesty of nature, both animate and inanimate. This is in despite the fact that this majesty may cause harm to humanity.

Earlier I said the theodicy of Job was ultimately unsatisfying. For some, this will be because of the stark picture it paint. I do not mind that. As an atheist, I already possess a world view which accepts the god-free equivalents of the themes above. What makes the theodicy unsatisfying for me is the implication that because the ultimate answer cannot be understood by humans, it is not worth questioning at all. Even if all of the knowledge humanity could acquire is but a speck compared to all the knowledge that exists, it is still worth striving for.

New Testament

Let’s start with the opening line of today’s reading. From context, it applies to Paul and his fellows. However, it sounds like the type of line that Christians often apply to themselves more generally (many of the bits from this section have that tone). Anywho, on to the line:

Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others.

From my point of view, this statement does not seem to apply for most nominal Christians. There are people who claim to really and truly believe that some of their loved ones are going to experience an eternity of torture. Yet they don’t seem to really mind. I find this bizarre. (And I’m not the only one.)

It the rest of today’s reading, Paul states what seem to be some pretty fundamental core beliefs for Christians, but as usual, he just asserts them and makes no attempt to form them into a logical argument. Not that I expect him to formulate his statements as a logical argument when he is writing to fellow believers. Still, for non-believers, it gets tiresome to read baseless assertion after baseless assertion.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing of note.

Reference links:

Old Testament

I am starting to get bored of Job. This happens every time I read it. It starts out super interesting and exciting, transitions to repetitive, and finishes off with me ready to move on. Fortunately, the end approaches quickly.

Elihu continues to drone on about how weather phenomena show God’s might. His concluding point seems to be that nature and God contain so much incomprehensible power that Job must be wrong.

After that God speaks. Sadly, the words that the author of Job attributes to God seem to continue on Elihu’s latest line of thought. God speaks of all the wonders of nature, asking if Job can equal them. Obviously, Job cannot, so God’s continues on and on just to brag, as far as I can tell.

We will see if God’s argument improves tomorrow, but so far, I am not buying it. Both the end of Elihu’s speech and God’s speech seem to imply that because God, as presented in nature, is so powerful, Job’s objections possess no value. However, this seems fundamentally wrong (even if you ignore that we have an understanding of nature these days which steal the impotence from these arguments).

Power alone does not justify ignoring the weak. Might does not make right. Yet that seems to be the crux of these arguments: in the face of God’s power, Job’s lamentations and questions are meaningless. Yet questions from those who are weak or outside the system can provide the catalyst for shifts in thought that increase understanding by leaps and bounds.

New Testament

Mostly about earthly and heavenly bodies, bodies dying and spirits being renewed.

Psalms and Proverbs

Fear of risk has always held people back:

The lazy person claims, “There’s a lion out there!
If I go outside, I might be killed!”

Reference links:

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.

Reference links:

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.

Reference links:

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.

Reference links:

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.

Reference links:

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.

Reference links:

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.