Well, four lessons they go by pretty quickly. This fourth and final lesson is going to tackle the rest of the book of Job, chapters 28 through 42. Not as much as last time. Last time was a lot of content here, which I hope you got the good gist of what's going on between the dialogues, the dialogues between Job and his friend, the back and forth.
It's pretty repetitive, but I think we got a really good grasp of what's happening there with the highlights. Now we're going to be moving into what we call some of the monologues here of Job and this character, Alihu, and then God of course himself in the Divine's Speech. So we have a lot of content here as well. Now I've entitled this lesson, God meets Job in court because that's exactly what Job is asking for.
Job wants a court date. God, we've seen in the dialogues and it's going to get very, very explicit here as well, especially in chapter 31. So that's what we're doing in this final lesson. God meets Job in court, I lost to say.
So let's just dive straight into chapter 28. We left off with Job's final response to his friends. And now we have what's called this interlude on wisdom. It's called a hymn of wisdom, a song of wisdom, different things.
But it's basically this idea of this incredibly beautiful chapter, praising wisdom, as the end all be all for life. Like, this is what we should truly desire. And it's really, really hard to find wisdom. So how do we find wisdom?
Where do we get it? So chapter 28 is going to talk about that. It's really the center of the book. It's separating the previous dialogues that we talked about in the last lesson from these monologues I just mentioned.
And it's focusing on the origin, the meaning, the purpose, the everything about wisdom. And this really is the subject of the dialogues. This is, there's a really good flow here because in the dialogues, it's, the Job and his friends are trying to find out why is he suffering. And his friends are older.
It seems like they're older than he is. That seems to be the case because remember at one point, they're like, we're older than you. Great hair is among you. Why do you think we're stupid?
So in any case, the Job's friends, it doesn't really seem like they have true wisdom at all. In fact, Job said as much in chapter 17 verse 10, he said, there's not a wise man among you. And so they're trying to give him wisdom and they're failing over and over and over again. And then here in the end of chapter 27, it's really interesting actually before I quote this chapter 27 verse 11 for you.
This interlude and the song on wisdom is beautiful as it is. People really debate, scholars debate, is Job speaking here or is this a little chapter that was put into the middle of the book in between the dialogues and the monologues by some later editor or reducter of some kind? We really don't know. There's arguments for and again, so I'm not exactly sure.
But I do like the idea that Job is speaking because in chapter 27 verse 11 in his final declaration of integrity in verse 11, he says, I'm going to teach you guys concerning the hand of God and what is with the Almighty, I will not conceal. So what is with the Almighty? What is it that he desires to reveal to them? Well, that's wisdom precisely.
So I do think that it makes a lot of sense that Job is continuing to speak to his friends. He's not a teacher concerning God. Well, this is what wisdom, what the chapter is all about because what is with God is wisdom. All right, so let's look here at chapter 28 verses 1 and following.
It's a very beautiful structure to this chapter. The first section is that man searching mankind, humanity is very industrious and very intelligent and searching for earthly wealth, right, for precious gold and precious metals of all different kinds. And there's really nothing stopping mankind for searching for these precious metals. So there's an analogy to be made here because wisdom is to be searched for as man searches for the most precious things of earth, right?
So let me just read some of this. Chapter 28 verse 1, he says, surely there is a mine for silver and a place for gold which they refine. Iron is taken out of the earth and copper is smelted from the ore. Men put an end to darkness and search out to the farthest bound, the orange loom and deep darkness.
The open shafts and a valley away from where men live, they are forgotten by travelers. They hang afar from men, they swing back and forth. As for the earth out of it comes bread, but underneath it is turned up as by fire. He stones at the place of sapphires and has the dust of gold.
Dust of gold, excuse me. Verse 7, that path, no bird of prey knows and the falcons eye has not seen it. The proud beasts have not trodden it, the lion has not passed over it. Man puts his hand at the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots.
He cuts out channels in the rocks and his eyes sees every precious thing. He binds up to streams that do not trickle dams and the thing that is hidden he brings forth to light. So a really great imagery right here on how man looks for every precious thing, silver, gold, iron, copper, even knowing how to make a bread come forth from the earth sapphires. So we are really good at seeking for material wealth, but are we seeking for wisdom in the same way?
Do we seek for that which is even greater than gold and silver and precious stones and metals? Or do we not? So it is a really great way to open up this chapter making this analogy of that which is most precious for us. So then it moves on here to chapter 12, or sorry to verse 12, which then says, but where is wisdom to be found?
So we are really good at finding everything under the earth, but where is wisdom to be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know the way to it and it is not found the land of the living. The deep says it is not in me, the sea says it is not with me.
So we cannot find wisdom. We cannot find wisdom on his own. Man cannot find wisdom on his own. In the earth speaks metaphorically.
If some wisdom is not with me, the deep, deep, deep oceans cannot say it's with her. The deepest recesses of the earth are in the middle of Timbuktu, nowhere. It's not there. So we don't know the way to wisdom, although we know the way to everything else.
Then in verse 15, you can't even buy it, right? So if you don't know where it is to find it yourself, you can't buy it. Verse 15, it cannot be gotten for gold and silver cannot be weighed as its price. It cannot be valued in the gold of offers, precious onyx and sapphire.
Gold and glass cannot equal it nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal. The price of wisdom is above pearls. The topazavithyopia cannot compare with it nor can it be valued in pure gold.
So it's so much more precious than anything that we could ever have on this earth. No amount of money on this earth is equal to wisdom and understanding. And that's very, very true. It's hard for people to see that, right?
Because we spend so much time in our careers and our lives trying to accumulate wealth and our portfolios and stuff in our houses and ice cars and maybe vacation homes or whatever. We spend so much time working on earth to gain material, precious things, but can't even compare to wisdom and understanding. So where are we going to get it, right? We can't buy it.
There's more precious than anything on earth. Where can we find it? Where? Well, it keeps going on.
In verse 20, where does it come from? Where is the place of understanding? It's hidden from the eyes of all the living and concealed from the birds of the air. Abaddon in death, so words for hell and the realm of the dead.
Abaddon in death say we have heard a rumor of it with our ears so they don't know. And here at Christian does in verse 23, God understands the way of it. That's a contrast with verse 13. In verse 13, man does not know the way to it, but in verse 23, God does understand the way to it.
He knows its place. For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. When he gave to the wind its weight and melted and meted out the waters by measure, when he made a decree for the rain and a wave for the lightning of the thunder, then he saw and declared it. He established it and searched it out.
So if you don't know where to find wisdom and you should be searching and seeking out for wisdom more than any other thing, not to say that of course gold and silver and iron, all these things are bad. They're not bad. That's not what this is saying. It's just that wisdom is more precious than all of that.
You can't find it on your own. You cannot purchase it. No matter how wealthy you are, richer than Elon Musk, it still doesn't matter. You've got to turn to God.
Then in verse 28, you should highlight this and memorize it as one of the biggest themes in all of the genre of wisdom, literature and the Old Emanu Testament. God says to man, behold, fear of the Lord, that is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding. That right there now, to the world will not understand this, that more precious than anything that you can imagine on earth, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and understanding. So if you have fear of the Lord, you have wisdom, you have understanding and you are more wealthy and you're better off than someone like Elon Musk or you know, throwing the blank, whatever rich person you want to put in there, right?
So God knows the way to it and it is the fear of the Lord and the fear of the Lord brings us to God. Right, because the fear of the Lord is always related to a moral life of righteousness. Now Job has this, this has been stated very, very clear in the prologue chapter 1 verse 8. God said to Satan, God consider my servant Job, he's righteous and he has the fear of the Lord.
He says the same thing and the second dialogue was Satan in chapter 2 verse 3. So Job has this fear of God. Now what is the fear of God? Now I said it's related to a moral life of righteousness.
Good commentary will point this out. But fear of the Lord is something specific. It's not, I mean, it can be distorted to be kind of a servile fear, a fear of being punished. That's not what we're talking about here.
So in fact, our Novar Bible has a really good little quote. I got some good quotes to share with you in this particular lesson here because there's so much good rich stuff here. So Novar Bible says on this point, man cannot attain wisdom by technical or business skill as we saw, but he can acquire it through piety. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
And it quotes Proverbs 1, 7 and Psalms 1, 11 verse 10. There's so many other places as well, but those are the famous ones. So it goes on, this does not mean servile fear, which paralyzes the person. The fear of the Lord moves man to draw closer to God, the only source of wisdom and to accept his plans and follow his ways.
It leads him above all to petition God for wisdom and humble sincere prayer. So this is what the scriptures is teaching us here in Job and in Psalms and in Proverbs and all of the wisdom literature and certainly the gospels and the New Testament, it's piety. Fear of the Lord is the fear that a child has of his parents, of his father in a loving relationship because so fear of the Lord is not servile, right? The servile fear of the Lord where a master kind of imposes his authority upon a servant or a slave.
So the slave is so afraid of getting punished and whipped and beaten or even worse killed by his master. He's definitely afraid to be in his master's presence. That's not what we're talking about here. That's not the kind of relationship that God has with his children.
The kind of relationship is out of the father with a child. And this is true in the normal world of parenting, right? Where hopefully if things are going really well, a child has so much awe and respect and love and admiration for his father or his mother as well, his parent, that he doesn't want to do anything wrong because he doesn't want to disappoint or hurt his parent, right? That's what we have with God the Father.
We love him and have awe and respect and piety for him that we just want to make him happy. We want to please him and the way to please him is to live a life according to his commandments, right? The 10 commandments first and foremost, right? And love of God and love of the neighbor, the two greatest commandments, wherein which all the 10 commandments are fulfilled.
So if we have this desire to please God, then that is the beginning of wisdom because then we're able to approach God. If we're living a life of unrighteousness and we're living a life of sinfulness, then we're estranged from God. And that's where true, like the servile fear or the anti-piety really comes in because if you're living a life of sinfulness, you don't want to be near God. You want to be as far away from God as possible in the darkness, which is another theme of scripture.
You don't want to be in the light. You want to be in the darkness. So unrighteousness and sinfulness brings you farther away from God. And if you are, contrary, if you love him and serve him and you live a life of holiness, you are drawing closer to him.
You're being brought deeper and are more and more into the light. If you're having greater understanding of the world, our understanding of our relationship with God, with each other, with the world as a whole. So this is really quite profound here. And this is why it's in the middle of all of these different dialogues and monologues because we're trying to understand why is it that Job is suffering.
His friends don't have good answers. He doesn't really have a good answer. And to be honest, I'll tell you right now, he never knows why. He never gets an answer to a suffering.
Like we, the reader, we know why he's suffering, but he never does. He never has an answer. So anyways, this is really, really beautiful. And when we study Proverbs and Psalms and other places, it's going to pop up more and more.
It's like the number, I certainly want to top three. The number one expression here for wisdom literature is to live a wise life, is to live a life of, to be a child of God, truly, to live a life of holiness and piety. So you begin to understand things and see things as God understands them and sees them. So very, very beautiful stuff.
All right. So that is our hinge. I could call it a hinge. It's a hinge between the dialogues and the monologues.
If piety, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Job has that. He knows that he loves God. He knows that he lives our life of righteousness.
So let's continue on here with some of the speeches. Now this next major section is chapters 29 through 31, where Job is speaking. It's a long monologue. It's the longest monologue of the book.
And Job has had some pretty long-winded responses to his friends, if you remember. This is far longer, three chapters. And I actually do like the idea that he's speaking to God himself, certainly in chapter 31, but generally speaking, he's not speaking to his friends, but he's speaking to God. This is a prayer and long-winded prayer, very well organized, very well-structured prayer to God, and it crescendos powerfully in chapter 31.
All right. So chapter 29 then, to begin, chapter 29 is when he's reflecting on his, the fortune, the happiness, the joy that he once had in his former days. When things were going really, really well, and his life was blessed, his life was happy, we had a good relationship with God, and he had all these different blessings. All right.
So chapter 29 verse 1. Job again, took up his discourse and said, Oh, that I were as in months of old as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light, I walked through darkness. I was in my autumn days, that expression, autumn days is beautiful because that echoes many commentators will say, the autumn days is a reference to the autumn harvest, right? So at the end of the summer months, when you're reaping all this beautiful produce from the land, there's a lot of festivity, there's a lot of joy, there's a lot of abundance.
So that's the illusion that he's given here, where everything was joyful and happy and abundant in his life. All right, let me go on. So I was in my autumn days when the friendship of God was upon my tent, when the Almighty was yet with me. So just these, this is actually really important.
His first verses where he's recalling his former glory days, the thing that has emphasized three times immediately before any other blessing is recalled is his friendship with God. Or so he says, I was happy when one God watched over me, when two, the friendship of God was upon my tent, and three, when the Almighty was with me. That's what he remembers first and foremost was this relationship with God that he had that now seems to be gone, right? That's really crucial.
Now it makes sense when it comes to the very end of the book, when he's restored to his fortunes and actually when he responds to God after the divine speeches. What really matters most to Job first and foremost was his relationship with the Almighty. All right, then after that, he's going to remember the blessings of his family, his wealth, social honor, and respect that he once had. So still in verse five, when the Almighty was with me, when my children were around about me, when my steps were washed with milk and the rock poured out from his streams of oil, when I went out to the gate of the city and I prepared my seat in the square, the young men saw me and withdrew out of respect.
The age rose and stood out of honor. The princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth. The voice of the nobles was hushed and their tongue cleaved to the root of their mouth. When they heard, when the ear heard, it called me blessed.
When the eyes saw it approved because I told, so this is the great section here, right five all the way down to 11. He has his children, he has his wealth described by the abundance of like milk and oil, right? He has this honor. Then he moves in verse 12 and following into his works of mercy, where he's stating that he was righteous.
He did everything appropriately and he did take care of the needy. Verse 12, I deliver the poor who cried and the fatherless who had none to help him. The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness and it clothed me.
My justice was like a robe and a turban. I was I used to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor. I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know.
I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth. It goes on. He is a great defender in his position of authority as a civic judge. If it's true that he was a king, then this makes a lot of sense as well.
Again, I said that in lesson one, we don't exactly know if he was an Edomite king. It's possible that it's one tradition. Certainly he definitely had authority in the community and he was clothed in righteousness and he brought that righteousness to everyone. Really quickly, that little expression of I put on righteousness, it clothed me like a robe and a turban.
There's a lot to that line here. You should really underline that. I can spend a lot of time talking about this, but let me just make a couple of connections. One specific connection where he's clothed like a righteousness like a robe and a turban.
That's certainly an echo to chapter three of the book of Genesis. Genesis three, Adam and Eve, they sin and they realize they're naked and they're ashamed. This shamelessness, this nakedness is not first and foremost physical nakedness. I mean, they hadn't seen anything from that particular angle.
That's shameful. That's not what it's talking about. First and foremost, it's a spiritual nakedness because after they sin, they lost their garment of righteousness and that's what makes them ashamed. From that loss of righteousness, everything flows.
Physical shame flows really out of a spiritual shame. Really, the whole gist and the arc of scripture is how do we get back to paradise? How do we get back to Eden? But really, how are we going to be re-clothed in righteousness?
Ultimately, that's going to be Jesus Christ. There's a lot to say about the sacrament of baptism where catechumens, when they're baptized, they're put a robe, a white garment is put upon them symbolizing that that righteousness closed them once again. And you're going to find this in a bunch of other different places in the Psalms and Isaiah and Ephesians 6. I have a whole bunch of references in my Bible right here, cross-referencing them.
But this is the idea that when you're in a good relationship with God, when you have a friendship with God, you have righteousness clothing, you once more. Adam and Eve lost it. And so we're trying to regain that, so we're not making it in a shame anymore, right? So the point here is that Job has it.
Righteousness is clothing him like a robe and a turban. So he's doing everything right. So I wanted to spend a little time explaining that connection right there. All right, so then moving on then, let's see here.
He is recounting all of his works of mercy as a community leader. That's the gist of chapter 29 right here. It goes on to describe this a little bit more detail, but I think he got the idea. So then chapter 30, Job is lamenting the reversal of his fortunes.
He's lamenting that he's lost God relationship with God, his family, his wealth, his social honor, and he's suffering tremendously now. So verse one, chapter 30 verse one, but now they make sport of me. Men who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdain to set with the dogs of my flock. What could I gain from the strength of their hands men whose vigor is gone?
Through want and hard hunger, they gnaw the dry and desolate ground. They pick marrow and the leaves of bushes and to warm themselves the roots of the broom. They are driven out from among men and they shout after them as after a thief. In the goalies of the torrents, they must dwell and hold the earth and the rocks, actually going down to verse nine.
And now I have become their song, I'm a bi-word to them. They abhor me. They keep me aloof, they keep aloof for me. They do not hesitate to spit at the side of me because God has loosened my cord and humbled me.
They have cast out the cast off restraint in my presence. So the social respect and honor that he once had, it's gone. Everyone is mocking him. The young mock him.
The young had this respect for him which is unheard of right in that ancient society, which should be unheard of in our society as well as a matter of fact. So everyone is mocking him. And then he addresses God directly in the middle of chapter 30. Let's go all the way down to verse 19.
God has cast me into the mire and I have become like Dustin ashes. There's another good reference to Genesis chapter three. I'm like Dustin ashes. I remember, it's for dusty water to dusty shall return.
He feels as if he were dead and he's just, he can't wait for death as we've seen before. Verse 20, I cried to you, God, and you do not answer me. I stand and you do not heed me. You have turned cruel to me.
With the might of your hand, you persecute me. You lift me up on the wind. You make me right on it. You toss me about in the roar of the storm.
Yes, I know that you will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all the living. So he feels very much abandoned by God. He once had friendship with God, God watched over him. He had friendship with God and he was with him like we saw at the beginning of chapter 29.
That's all gone now. He feels completely abandoned by God and mistreated by God. In fact, your Catholic study Bible will say, Job appears to think that God is not only unfair but less compassionate than he himself was during his days as a civic judge. So that's actually pretty important.
So in chapter 29, he gives all these examples of how fair and just and compassionate and considerate and charitable he was to everybody. Well, he doesn't feel like God has done that to him. He feels like God has done the exact reverse, the exact opposite to him. Okay, then he describes this constant pain a little bit here.
Verse 28, I go about black and but not by the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. I'm the brother of Jackals in the companion of ostriches. My skin turns black and falls from me.
My bones burn with heat. So pretty brutal skin disease and pretty brutal suffering. Remember, I described all the various little verses. So in lesson one, I'm describing his illness.
Actually, I think it would be less than two. I beg your pardon. In the opening accusations of assault to the devil. And Job is suffering from some kind of leprosy.
It's a very diverse, multi-faceted illness going on. So he has probably this massive fever, right? We're describing here, my bones are burning with heat. So he's got this horrible fever, probably this horrible dehydration headache.
His skin is all blackened from his sore, falling off his skin. It's just disgusting, right? So he feels abandoned by God and he's in constant pain. All right, now this brings us to chapter 31, where he's going to swear a solemn oath, even more solemn than previously.
We talked in chapter 27, verses 1 through 6. He declares his innocence and he had done this many times throughout the dialogues. Well, now the greatest oath ever is going to be sworn here. So not only is this his longest monologue or longest speech in the book, but this particular oath in chapter 31, I've learned to pick up along the way and haven't been able to fact check this, but this oath in chapter 31 is the longest oath sworn in ancient Near Eastern literature.
That's a pretty significant deal. And of course, I haven't fact checked that myself. I haven't been able to read all the literature or the ancient Near Eastern world, but if it's true, and it is very long, but if it's true, it is that's really significant here. So he has this huge long oath where he is meticulously examining his conscience in all matters of the moral life, matters that are small and interior, and also matters that are exterior, actual action.
So in thought indeed in word, he examines his conscience, and he has this six, the series of 16th, then statements. If I have done such and such, then made I be a curse. So he calls curses upon himself. If he's found guilty of anything small and large, that's how convinced he is of his righteousness.
And again, if we didn't have the prologue, we would think that he's full of it. Wouldn't you? Like that's we would like his friends, we'd be like, dude, really? You're that pure, you're that innocent, you're that righteous and all these matters, including matters of the heart and thoughts.
So we would think that he's totally full of it. He's not. He really truly is righteous. And so this oath formula, these 16th and statements are pretty amazing.
They're really amazing. Now they're not just amazing because he's righteous, but they're amazing because it really serves as an incredible examination of conscience for everybody, where we realize that when we examine our souls before the awesome holiness of God, that we need to be repentant of small things as well. So this particular chapter 31 is really beautiful and it's crucial in the entire Old Testament for realizing that morality is not just external behavior. Morality is also something that is interior as well.
There's a lot that can be said about, that will just come to my mind right now is our Bible study on First and Second Samuel, where you have this huge theme of the exterior qualifications versus interior qualifications. Saul looked the part, he looked like a great king, tall, dark, handsome, great pedigree, great family, but he didn't have the heart, right? Where David was a man after God's own heart. And so David was a great king.
Obviously he had his issues, we all know what those were, but his heart was pure and that's what we're striving for and that's what Job exemplifies. So on that point here, let me share with you a pretty long quote, but I liked it so much I had to share it with you from your Catholic introduction to the Old Testament. And this is what it says about the importance of this chapter. It says, the self-maladictory oath that Job utters is remarkable in all the Old Testament for the height and refinement of its moral sensibility.
Job recognizes as sin even the most subtle actions or failures to act, typically overlooked by religious persons in Job's day and in our own. Job recognizes that the sin of adultery can be committed by a glance, or in the heart. He recognizes the full human dignity and rights even of his male and female slaves. He recognizes many sins of omission, such as failure to provide for the poor, the widow, and the orphan.
Even interior matters of the heart, involving no exterior action, do not escape his notice, such as trusting in wealth, taking pride in riches, or experiencing joy over the downfall of enemies. Job's moral inventory goes far beyond the requirement of the Mosaic Law and will not be matched again in the canon of scripture until Jesus' exposition of the new law in the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 5 through 7 of Matthew. Indeed, many of Jesus' moral teachings in the sermon parallel Job's examination of conscience. In that amazing, that's a great overview of what's going on in this chapter, an incredible examination of conscience in all things, and it actually serves as Old Testament background for what Jesus teaches in the sermon.
Jesus does this in chapters 5, 6, and 7. He opens up by saying, look, I'm not coming to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. He has the new Moses, giving the new law, raising the law to a higher moral standard of not just the exterior, but the interior. For example, I really got to discipline myself and not get to Matthew here and stay on Job.
But one example is the six antithesis in chapter 6, where Jesus will say, you've heard that it was said, but I say to you, where he is going to raise the moral bar to that of the interior. Well, he has Job in his mind assuredly. Without any further ado, let's read some of this, and you'll see exactly what I have, or what this quote is saying, and what I'm trying to convey to you is Job truly is remarkable. If he's swearing this oath that he's not guilty of any of these things.
So let's read a few examples here. Let's go down to verse 5. If I have, so remember, there's always the it then. So if I have walked with falsehood and my foot is hastened to deceit, let me be weighed in a just balance and let God know man integrity.
So he says this parenthetically, because he's really swearing a courtroom oath as another part of this background here, like let him be weighed in a just balance. So he wants to come to court and he wants to be revealed to be innocent in all these things. So if my step is turned aside from the way and my heart has gone after my eyes, if any spot has clung to my hands, then let me sow in another eat and let what grows for me be rooted out. If my heart has been enticed to a woman and I have lain and wait at my neighbor's door, then let my wife grind for another and let others bow down upon her pretty graphic language.
If I have been, if my own heart has gone after another woman, then let my wife be sleeping and committed to hold her with others and let others sleep with her. Wow, that's really intense, Job. Verse 11, for that would be a heinous crime that would be an inequity to be punished by the judges and that would be a fire which consumes the abaddon or another word for the realm of the dead. Let's go on to verse 13.
If I have rejected the cause of my man's servant or my maid's servant when they brought a complaint against me, what then shall I do when God rises up? When he makes inquiry, what shall I answer him? Verse 15 is beautiful. Did not he who made me in the womb make him and did not one-fashioned us in the womb?
So in other words, I may be the master, I may be the king or the civic judge or whatever position of authority that he legitimately has in society. So he may be quote unquote superior in society to other people, but Job recognizes that they all share equal dignity with each other. The servant is just as much a creation and a beloved creation of God as Job is. That's really, really incredible here.
And keep in mind, I have to emphasize this really quickly, keep in mind that this is set in the patriarchal period. This in other words, this is an examination of one's conscience according to the moral law that is greater in many respects than the Mosaic law, because the Mosaic law, especially to the other, is filled with all kinds of concessions and compromises because Israel is a bunch of a nation of hard-hearted fools, hard-hearted, stiff-necked people who really do not love God as they should with their whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. So I find it incredible that this chapter 31, this examination of conscience in matters of the heart is long before the Mosaic law. That's amazing.
So every single person, Jew or Gentile, whether you're in Africa or you're in the tundra of Canada, we all have the ability to examine our consciences in the same way. We all should know that morality is something that we're called to. It's fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and we have the choice to accept it or to reject it. So that's why I geek out about this a little bit because we're called to great heights of sanctity.
And if we reject it, well, then that's not going to be good at all. All right. Well, he goes on and on on all of this stuff and it's very clear you get the idea that he's examining his conscience, but he concludes at the end of chapter 31 verse 35 saying, Oh, that I had one to hear me. Here is my signature.
Let the Almighty answer me. Oh, that I had the indictment written by my adversary. So this is courtroom language again. He's concluding the solemn oath formula saying I'm not guilty of any of these things.
If I am prove it and may I bring curses upon myself if I'm guilty and he's offering his signature of his oath of innocence to anybody who wants to defend him because he's employing for God to give him an answer. May God answer me. May the Almighty answer me. He said the same thing in many other passages of Job chapter 13 verse 3.
I have him here in your notes, 13, 3 and 13, 15, 15, 3, 23, 4, 3, 7, even chapter 17 as well. Very consistently in Job's responses to his friends, he's like, I want God to answer me. I want to say that God is straight up across the board unjust. I'll have more to say about that in a second, but he's at least demanding that God give him a courtroom hearing so he can defend himself.
And this is really going to be his big mistake. Hey, this is Doc Neck. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at Scripture and Tradition.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand however and whenever you want.
So thank you so much. God bless you and keep setting your Bible. .