Alright, with our time consecrated in prayer, let's begin lesson two. It's titled Satan's Accusations and Assaults. There's going to be two rounds actually of accusations and assaults, and it's brutal stuff. It's chapters one through two.
Only going to do two chapters here in this lesson. We'll probably go well over an hour or so. Just buckle up. It's all such great stuff here, challenging stuff, interesting stuff.
And there's a lot of commentary that I have selected to share with you as we try to understand exactly what's going on here. Chapters one and two are very famous. Most people, if you know about the Book of Job, you certainly know about chapters one through two when Satan accuses Job, assaults Job, and he suffers tremendously, loses everything. But there's a lot of really great stuff here that we want to dive a little deeper and see some things.
So I have a lot of great quotations for you from the Church Fathers and from the selected commentaries. Now we're going to begin with a prologue. The chapters one through two is called the prologue, and we're going to have alternating scenes between heaven and earth. And this prologue is extremely, extremely important.
So that's why I decided to spend just an entire hour just on these two chapters, because it's essential for the story. Without the prologue, you have no idea really why Job suffers, obviously. And this is very important for the reader to understand, because when we get into the various dialogues and the monologues and the rest of this book, there's always this debate back and forth between Job and his friends, and his friends are not being very friendly at all. And Job just kind of yells at them all the time saying, you're a terrible friend.
You don't understand anything. You think you're wise, but you're not. And the reason he establishes his innocence in all of this, and you don't know, like without the prologue, you don't really know why he's suffering. His friends say he's suffering for his own sin, and he's saying, I'm not a sinner, and back and forth it goes.
So you really do need to understand this prologue very, very well. This is a prose. It's a prose genre, and the rest of the book, he recites the epilogue, is in poetry. So we talk a little bit about that as we introduce the book in lesson one.
So here's a little quotation to open up this lesson from your Catholic study bible. It says the prose prologue, it just says prologue, it consists of five scenes that alternate between heaven and earth. And by this technique, the author communicates to the reader, vital information of which Job is unaware, namely that a suffering will be a test of loyalty and faith that was pre-arranged in heaven. So this is important to Job, really, even at the end of the book, even after the epilogue, even after God appears to him and asks him the whole slew of rhetorical questions to teach Job some humility, he never knows why he actually suffered.
And I think that's important too, because, well, we sometimes will never know this side of heaven, why we suffer, and why we're going through a difficult chapter in our lives. And that's, I think, a very important key point there. So this prologue gives us this vital information to understand why he's suffering. Job never knows, even at the end of the book.
And we, as the readers, and the students of scripture, have the opportunity to really dive in. And you kind of want to, if you ever watch a movie, maybe you're one of these people, if you watch a movie, you're yelling at the characters on screen, like, don't go into that house. That's stupid. And hey, you know, stop doing this.
That's the other thing. Maybe I don't like watching movies with people like that. You kind of feel the same way when you're reading this book, you want to yell at Job, hang in there, buddy. This is the reason why you're suffering.
It's not your fault. Your friends are stupid. Stick to your integrity and so on and so forth. And I'm going to give this insights for all of that.
All right. Well, without any further delay, let's look here at scene one. So like this quote from the commentary says, you got these five scenes that alternate back and forth. That's exactly how it organized the notes here.
So Roman numeral one is scene one where you're on earth and we're going to be introduced to Job's family life, his person. Remember, he is a historical person. I argued all this in the first lesson. He is a historical person.
This actually did happen to this character. And it is described, however, with certain divine insights inspired by God. There's a lot of poetry and description of what's going on here. And that's, of course, applies for the rest of the book as well.
So remember also that Job, his name means enmity or enmity or hated one. As I explained in the first lesson, that's probably a literary name, which is very important too. So it's kind of universal, right? Anybody who suffers and they don't know why they're suffering, they kind of feel like they're hated, right?
They kind of feel like they're at enmity with God in the world and everybody. So the name Job could be historical as I'm going to explain here in just a second, but it's probably also literary or it's a derivation from historical and because it's so well applied as a universal standalone name or stand in name for anybody who suffers. So let's read verses one through five here and I'll just keep going on with this with the notes. There was a man in the name, sorry, excuse me, there was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job.
And that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yokevoxom, five hundred sheed on keys and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people in the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in each, in the house of each of them on his day, probably his birthday.
So celebrate your birthdays, that's biblical there. And they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them and he would rise early in the morning and offer burn offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.
Thus Job did continually. What a great depiction of a very righteous man as we're going to see here. So all right, we talked about his name again, his mommy didn't name him in an enemy or an enemy, or hated one that's probably literary, but he's from the land of Uz here. And as I explained in the introduction, the land of Uz is most likely associated with the territory of Edom, the Edomites.
And remember, just recap here, it's always great to refresh our memories. That Edom is the nickname for the character Esau, the brother of Jacob, the son of Isaac. It's called Edom, really quickly here for two reasons, because he was born a hairy, little baby, like a little e-walker Elno. So he's called Red for that reason, but he's also called Red because he sold his birthright for this pot of Red lentils or porridge, whatever it was.
So the Edomites are descended from Esau, and therefore they are the cousins of the Israelites. So they're distant relatives. Okay. All right, so a couple of little things here about the land of Uz related to the territory of Edom.
If you go pretty much every Bible has maps in the back of it, so if you open up the back of your Bible, you're going to see the territory of Edom is pretty much the south east area of the Holy Land. So from the scriptures itself that these two territories, Uz and Edom are related to each other from places like Lamentations 4, 21, which I believe I mentioned in the last lesson, but that's okay, I'll refresh it now. In Lamentations 4, verse 21, it says, Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, O dweller in the land of Uz, right? So Edom Uz makes pretty good sense there.
They're related to each other. All right. Now, of the Edomites, if you go back to Genesis 36 verses really verse 31 and following, it talks about the kings in the territory of Edom, and I definitely remember mentioning this last lesson. It says, these are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, chapter 36 verse 31 of the Genesis, and it mentions a couple of kings here, but in verse 33 it says, there's this character, Jobab, who is the son of Zorrah, he reigned as well.
So one interpretation, one interpretive tradition, your commentary says, which is preserved in the Greek Old Testament is that Job is this king, Jobab of Edom, right? So we don't know if that's a fact, it's just one tradition there. And in fact, your commentary says the historical value of this remark is unknown, but it floats around out there. It could be the case that Jobab is the Saint Jobes, so Job is a derivative of Jobab and he's the king of Edom from the land of Uz, right?
Then all that checks out pretty nicely. So Job opens up describing him in four very powerful ways as being very, very righteous. It says one, he's blameless, two, he's upright, three, he fears God, that's really important in the wisdom literature, to fear God as the beginning of wisdom. I'll talk about that pretty soon here.
And he turned away from evil. So these four descriptive characteristics of how just righteous he really, really was to be blameless and upright. In fact, that's what God called Abraham to be blameless and upright. He's Noah was blameless and upright, we're going to talk about Noah in just a second here.
So right away, chapter one, verse one clearly makes it just indisputable that he's an awesome character, right? He is through and through a righteous character, he's innocent. So actually, this description in verse one tells us two things, which is really, really crucial for the rest of the book. Number one, that Job is not suffering his punishment for sin.
That is the traditional theory of divine retribution. I introduced this in the key themes in lesson one. His friends accuse him of this, like every single time there are these three cycles of dialogues and back and forth, all of his friends, one after another, keep accusing him of being truly wicked. And if he would just repent of his sins, then God would heal him because God is merciful and Job keeps saying this to the second point, I'm innocent.
He's always maintaining his innocence. He's aware of small faults, right? No one, no man is truly righteous before God, through and through. Of course, he would say the blessed of Richard Mary is the only exception to that, as far as human beings are concerned.
But he's not suffering his punishment for sin, and he maintains his innocence in very descriptive terms. I'm looking forward to the next lesson to share all that with you. And that's really, really crucial coming straight from this very first verse. So we should have no confusion whatsoever as to what's going on.
So he is an Edomite. He's a Gentile. He is not an Israelite. I made this very clear introducing the book last time that the majority of the Bible is all about Israel, right?
Except for the book of Job. I mean, that's pretty incredible how one of the most famous books of all of the Old Testament that's has tons of commentaries from every era of the church, even before the church, right? You've got a lot of rabbinic commentary as well. This guy is not Israelite.
He's a Gentile. I guess you could say, of course, he's related to Israelites because Esau and Jacob are the fathers of these two peoples here. But that's really, really crucial here that even Gentiles can be faithful to God. They follow what we call the natural moral law, which is perfectly revealed through the Ten Commandments back in Exodus.
And he can be righteous and follow his conscience formed by natural law and being faithful to natural law based on the covenant with Adam. And then of course, as it's reset with Noah. Now, I read for you already the Catechism paragraph 58, which talked about this, like Noah is, he's called blameless as well. By the way, if you go back to Genesis chapter 6 verse 9, so too is Job blameless.
So again, Job is kind of like a new Adam figure as we're going to see actually here just a little bit. He's a new Adam figure. He's kind of a know-of-figure as well to a certain extent, a smaller way. But your commentary, your Catholic introduction, you'll test him.
It says on that point, like how he's a righteous, Gentile, and non-Israelite being faithful to the law, it says this quote, in the canonical chronology of human history, Job appears to be a contemporary of the patriarchs. And by the way, I explained all the evidence for that in the last lesson, who unlike them is not a recipient of the Abrahamic Covenant, but operates only under the Covenant with Adam that was renewed after the flood in damage form with Noah and encompasses all of Noah's descendants. All right. So the world is reset in the deluge, right?
So Noah is certainly a new Adam figure. You've got the Covenant that God has with humanity renewed through Noah as a new Adam. And you have all of Noah's descendants who are called to be faithful to the natural moral law. Well, Job is such a character, right?
And the reason why I think this is so important because although Revelation comes in its fullness through God's people Israel and the fullness of Jesus Christ, everybody, if they're faithful to natural law, they'll be able to receive that divine revelation that comes through the Hebrew Scriptures and of course, the Christian Scriptures. In other words, nobody has an excuse, right? Nobody has an excuse not to know that there's one true God in heaven above, that you're not to worship any other gods but him. You know, keep the Sabbath holy and sanctified and don't keep on your life, father, mother, don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat, don't come, don't commit adultery and all the rest of our everybody has the ability to do this.
And Job is a perfect, I would call him like the patron saint of the pagans, like the patron saint of the holy pagan to the old Covenant, you know, and maybe even of the new, right? Where they're called to profess faith in Jesus Christ, after Jesus came. So you can't overemphasize how beautiful a character this is in his righteousness, his holiness, his fidelity to natural law. And he really wants to make sure his family is holy as well.
Now one quick other point here in the description is that it says he feared God. That fear of the Lord is the mark of wisdom. The more you study wisdom literature, the more and more you're going to see over and over and over again, repeated that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It's even here in the book of Job in the very center of the book, chapter 28 verse 28, it's easy to remember, it's 28, 28.
It says the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom to the part from evil, that is understanding. Well, that's Job, right? So Job says right here in verse 1, chapter 1 verse 1, he feared God and turned away from evil. And so chapter 28 verse 28 clarifies that's wisdom, that is wisdom, that is understanding.
And then you can go as well to many other passages in the wisdom literature, the Psalms, Proverbs, all of them really to a certain extent, we're going to talk about this key point here, the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Well, Job has that in spades and so that makes him a very righteous man, but also a very wise man and you're going to see that very evidence in his various dialogues with his friends, his monologue here and also just in the way he responds to the Lord after God's great Theophany. All right, so keep going on here with his biography. He has a super large Catholic family with his seven sons and his three daughters and thousands of animals and many possessions.
He's a very wealthy man. So that's why it says here in verse 3, he was the absolute greatest of all the people in the east. Well, the Eenemites are in the east and if he is a king, if it's true that he is Jobab, the king of Eden, well, that makes just total sense. He's just another one of those pieces of evidence that rings true here.
If he is the king of the Eenemites, he's the greatest of all the people in the east. He's righteous and holy following essentially the faith of his great, great, great grandfather, Abraham there and being faithful to Abraham's covenant as well as Noah's and Adams. That's pretty awesome stuff there. So he's the greatest in the east.
He has all these possessions and these possessions and blessings and material wealth that he has is very patriarchal right? All these different animals as I argued in the last lesson here. Patriarchs had their wealth described in terms of animals and servants. So too does he.
But really have to understand that in the old covenant, it's very, very common to see that your moral fidelity is going to result in material blessings. You can go to Deuteronomy, chapter 28 for a line on that. You can go to Proverbs 10, Psalm 127, I have these references in your notes here. They're really all over the place.
There's all over the place. There's very much a kind of a cause and effect, a formula there where if you're faithful to the covenant, if you're faithful to God, if you live an upright life, you'll be blessed. If you disobeyed God, you're going to be cursed. Now that is a broad stroke teaching there.
And that even in the Old Testament is going to be evident that that's not always the case, right? Generally speaking, if you do mind your peers and cues and if you're faithful to God, you'll be blessed. If you're unfaithful, you'll be cursed. If you're not faithful to the case every single time.
And this book is going to completely overturn that formula on its head. And the New Testament effect is going to even go further to describe that covenant fidelity with God. No matter what material blessings you may or may not have on earth, you will guarantee 100% be blessed spiritually. So the blessings are heavenly and spiritual and eternal for your covenant fidelity.
No matter what happens to you on earth. And if you are unfaithful to the covenant of Jesus Christ, then those blessings are, or I should say those curses are also eternal and will hellish, I guess you could say, right? So the New Testament is going to flip us on the head and really teach us what we really need to be storing up for ourselves as treasures on earth or obedience. And in the Old Testament, you've got clear teachings that cause and effect.
Fidelity is good, you have blessings, but not always. That's what Job is going to teach in other places as well. So this little quote here from the Navar Bible is getting across that very point. It says, the teaching that comes from the historical books and from the traditional wisdom as recounted in Proverbs and Psalms is basically that prosperity is a reward for upright living.
So if someone shuns evil and fears the Lord, he will be blessed with wealth and with heirs, which is completely the case with Job here. But again, we're going to have to see how that all comes crumbling down here as a theory. All right, so let's talk about his children. Now, 10 children, that's a lot.
It's very Catholic, right? Big, large Catholic family there in the Old Testament, seven sons and three daughters. And so he's blessed with a large household because up to this point, and even after this point, he is faithful to God. He does fear him and does turn away from evil.
But in light of what I was just telling you in terms of how these blessings and curses, depending on your obedience and disobedience to God, is turned upside down in the New Testament and how we're to focus on these heavenly spiritual blessings and eternal blessings versus the curses. Saint Gregory the Great has an awesome quote. I've always loved the quote as he applies some typological interpretation to be 10 children. So Saint Gregory the Great says, and this is quoted in your Catholic study Bible, seven sons are born to us when the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit well up within us.
These three have three sisters faith, hope and love that must be involved in all that we do if perfection signified by the number 10 is to be attained. Isn't that an awesome quote? I just love how the fathers just interpret scripture so beautifully with typology and spiritual application is awesome, right? So the seven sons represent in the new covenant here, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the three sisters are the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love.
And by them, we become spiritually perfect. So 10 is consistently in scripture of the number of perfection, completion, totality. Remember that seven is covenant. I always have to kind of reframe this in people's minds and students minds.
Seven is not perfection. 10 is seven is the covenant because covenant is actually rooted in the Hebrew word for seven. So anyways, that's another conversation for another time. But how beautiful is this quote of Saint Gregory?
If you want spiritual perfection and spiritual blessings that last for eternity, well, then you will have you need the seven gifts of spirit and the three theological virtues that come through the sacraments with open charity in order to be perfected. And so that job is kind of a type and then of the spiritually perfect person of the new covenant. That's pretty awesome. All right, let's keep talking about job here.
So he, as we read in these opening verses, performs priestly services and sacrifices, and that's totally normal in the patriarchal period. He is the father of his tribe. He's the chief of his tribe. So as the chief was always the priest, right?
So he's interceding for his family. Later on, he's going to intercede for his friends at the end of the book. He wants to atone for any of their sins, even sins and their heart, right? Unspoken sins that they may have committed.
And especially he wants to make sure that just in case they curse God in their hearts, he wants to atone for it. And that's going to be very important because he is 100% morally aware. Like he is upright towards God and he is upright towards his neighbor and his family. So whether you want to look at it and the vertical element or the horizontal element, his upright ness and righteousness is going to be pure for God and for others, the people that he intercedes within his family.
So he is a priest, interceding for his family members. And I just want to clarify that again, this is very, very common in the patriarchal period. Abraham was doing the same thing, Isaac, Jacob. The patriarchs would make altars wherever they went and offer sacrifices wherever they went because it was the fathers who served as priests and then firstborn sons after them.
It was only at Exodus 32 where in the occasion or the context of Israel after they worshipped the golden calf that priesthood of the firstborn sons and fathers was lost. Because of their disobedience with the golden calf, they broke the covenant. They lost the priesthood of the whole nation, which was an absolute tragedy. And then the Levites were given the priesthood.
So it's only after Exodus 32 when Levites became the priests of Israel. But in other nations, you're still going to have the practice of the patriarch or the chief, the father of the firstborn son who's going to serve as priests. That's going to be very consistent here with Job's life here. So on that point, another quick quote to share with you, Job is a patriarchal priest who ministers on behalf of his family.
His commitment to sacrifice reveals an awareness of sin as well as the need to make a tome it for it. And this is what's so important here. So it goes on. This information that he's aware of sin and need to make a tome it for it, that information lays the groundwork for later chapters of the book showing that Job is sensitive to the danger that sin poses to man's relationship to God.
He gets it, right? He understands that sin will separate you from God and under repentance sin will bring about punishment from God in order to wake you up. He understands this. He's remembered he doesn't want his own sons to curse God.
And then this is going to become the underlying moral awareness for his dialogues and his monologues that he knows that sin is bad. He is upright. He's never committed any grave sin. And he wants to make sure his family doesn't either.
So why is he suffering? He asked this question over and over again. Why? Why are these bad things happening to him if he's so upright?
Okay. And then we're going to look at the verses of this character. And again, he is stellar, super amazing character, righteous before God, before his family, serving and sacrificing for his family. And now we open up to the second scene in Heaven where Satan's going to have his first rounds of accusations.
And then of course, the assault will come right afterwards. Hey, this is Dr. Nick. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample.
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