Well lesson three is entitled seeking answers to suffering and that's what chapters three through 27 is really all about This is the section of Job that's called the dialogues that does open up with a little bit of one monologue of Job and chapter three We'll talk about right away But the rest of it is all dialogues between Job's three friends if you want to call him friends I kind of like to call them friend amies because although they're friends They're kind of his enemies as you're going to see they're not too nice They're downright harsh and mean and brutal and understanding and they don't trust him or believe him They're pretty bad so you're gonna see that as we go along But these dialogues are three cycles of dialogues and I'm gonna explain the main theme of those in just a second as well But that's a lot of content chapters three through 27 24 chapters. That's a lot to summarize in just one lesson I don't know how long I'm gonna talk here It's gonna be a while probably but I want to give you the main gist of what's going on here as we look at this debate back and forth and you know Arguments and rebuttal back and forth between Job and his three friends And it's honestly pretty straightforward This is poetry and so there's a lot of flowery language and it kind of grumbles on a little bit in a very beautiful way Obviously it's inspired scripture But I think that we're gonna have a really good understanding of what the main arguments are between Job's friends and Job And how it's gonna build up very very nicely for the next lesson Which is the monologues especially the divine speeches where God does listen to Job and comes and speaks to him It really speaks at him is probably a better way of describing it So let's just dive straight in here to chapter three last lesson was just focusing on chapters one and two We saw the scenes in heaven as the alternate honesty between heaven and earth as a Satan accuses Job and God of having a very selfish Relationship each in their own way and then he unleashes all these attacks and assaults on Job and Job is pretty much Just sitting there miserable as we saw at the end of chapter two and yet Job never cursed God That's what Satan said he would do take all he has strike his body make him feel miserable in every which way right Physically spiritually emotionally psychologically socially everything make him utterly dejected and miserable and then he was gonna curse you And of course Job didn't say that he has these incredibly beautiful very popular responses like naked I came from my mother's womb naked. I'll return the Lord give it the Lord take it away bless It'd be the name of the Lord Job very much still honors God However, he does utter some curses in chapter three and the irony here is that he doesn't curse God He curses himself and he curses his life and he curses the day that he was born the day of his birth in very interesting language here That pretty much every good commentary is gonna recognize as Decreation language So let's read this chapter three versus one through Let's go all the way to 13 and that would be sufficient for us to get an idea and you really feel for the guy like this is This is pretty tremendous stuff. So let's read it chapter three verse one and following So actually the segue honestly is that Job and his three friends have been sitting there quiet for seven days for a whole week Which is the traditional period of mourning the dead so Job's friends don't say anything for seven days kind of you know Morning with him is it because he's basically dead right?
I mean in all ways but he's barely breathing if you want to put it that way and that's very symbolic They think he's dead in a very symbolic way. He's not actually dead obviously But they don't speak first and that's kind of again really true There's a lot of great insights that this book has when you're with somebody and they're suffering What can you say to them? Like what can you possibly say when they're going through horrible horrible situations? You often have to wait for them to speak first as is often the case and that's exactly what happens here So they've been sitting there for a week saying nothing then Job opens his mouth in chapter three verse one That's really the link in the chain year So here we go chapter three verse one after this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth not God But himself and Job said let the day perish where and I was born and the night which said a man child is conceived Let that day be darkness may God above not seek it nor light shine upon it Let gloom and deep darkness claim it let clouds dwell upon it So with the blackness of the day terrify it that night let thick darkness seize it Let it not rejoice among the days of the year let it not come into the number of months Yes, let that night be barren let no joyful cry be heard in it Let those who curse it who curse the day who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan Let the stars of its dawn be dark and let it hope for light that have none nor see the eyelids of the morning Because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb nor high trouble for my eyes Why did I not die at birth come forth from the womb and expire?
Why did the knees receive me or why the breast that I should suck for then I should have laid down and been quiet I should have slept and then I should have been at rest. All right, we'll stop right there. So this this is pretty bad I just oh gosh. It's miserable.
So what you're gonna notice here is he's often saying let this happen Let this happen with the day be darkness let it be gloom Let it you know the night be barren etc. Well if you count all those those phrases those clauses There are really seven of them because this is a sevenfold curse on the day of his birth And that's very very symbolic here because seven is the number of the covenant and so you often have covenant to blessings Curses and basically he's saying he feels as he'll express many times throughout his dialogues and his final concluding monologue We'll talk about that in next lesson that he feels abandoned by God, right? He feels dejected he feels rejected by the Lord and so the I think it's very symbolic here You've got this sevenfold curse on the day of his birth But it's also significant because when we're talking about all this language here It's echoing creation in a whole bunch of different ways So the sevenfold curse echoes the seven days of creation and he's basically wishing that he will be uncreated right? And pretty much every good commentary will recognize this I have a whole bunch of references and footnote number one for you But here's a quote from your Catholic introduction you'll testament which says Job uses the language of creation from Genesis such as day light Darkness days months and above all rest in an inverted fashion in Genesis rest comes at the completion of creation Whereas for Job only death will bring the rest He desires in the face of tremendous suffering job desires and describes the uncreation of his personal universe beginning with today of his birth End quote and and that's very very clear right?
He wishes he was uncreated he never had come into creation So that's the super structure here of this curse Mentioning all of the little triggers not so much triggers but references to Genesis because he doesn't want to live anymore He feels dejected he feels like he's separated from God's covenant and that's why it's a sevenfold curse All right now, that's pretty clear. It's very beautiful in its in its own way obviously It's a very well-structured and then within within this distress within this curse You'll notice there in verse eight he mentions those who raise up or rouse up Leviathan And that's really interesting as well because back in the creation account after God creates the world in six days rests on the seventh day And we talked about all that and the Bible study on Genesis We'll go back and review it if you need to but right after God's creation of the world and Adam and Eve and a state of covenant So fidelity and friendship of course Satan enters tempts Eve and Adam who's standing right there and everything gets unraveled So it's very it's very fitting that Leviathan is mentioned because Leviathan here is just another name We'll talk a lot about this actually in the next lesson when we get to chapter 41 But life in is another mention to Satan right? So Satan is the accuser as we saw in the last lesson He's also called Leviathan because Leviathan is the sort of like this wild animal beast spiritual figure which will talk about next lesson Satan's also mentioned other names like Rahab not the person the little female Rahab from the book Joshua But you got all these mentions of Satan here And it's very it's very fitting that at the beginning of the dialogues here in chapter three and at the conclusion of all these back and forth dialogues and monologues back in chapter 41 Leviathan is mentioned again because that forms really a book-end and includes you as what we call that in literary devices this whole section of the of the poetry begins and ends mentioning Leviathan because it really reminds us that While Job and his friends are trying to find answers to the suffering that he's that he's enduring here really behind it all is Satan The accuser the Leviathan Rahab who is attacking him and trying to get him to curse God which luckily are not luckily But blessedly he never he never does throughout the entire book So we're gonna see more about Leviathan next time But don't forget while they're seeking answers to suffering Joe doesn't know why he's suffering like this It's Leviathan it's saying the accuser his friends don't understand in fact They fail miserably and trying to provide wisdom for him They don't understand that seems behind these attacks as well So that's very significant that Leviathan is mentioned here in the middle of his sevenfold curse Because again his kind of world is undone by Satan alright Well the rest of chapter three here it continues to lament his the day was birth that he never survived infancy It's really variations on the same theme here, right? And then at the end he says again.
I wish for quiet. I wish for rest. I wish for peace I wish for ease. Let's go down to verse 26 the last verse I am not at ease nor am I quiet.
I have no rest but trouble comes and it's all he desires is the rest the peace that he is the quiet Death now it's interesting the in some commentaries will point out this isn't your notes But I'll just say right now in various commentaries will point out that you know Of course God takes all of our emotions our desires our fears And then he he transforms them and brings great good out of the evil that we endure and that's even true of death itself So it's I kind of ironic how Job desires the peace and the quiet the rest of death and in order to like Just kind of disappear to a certain extent I have a lot more to say about that when we get to chapter 19 But in the New Testament Jesus will actually give us the covenantal rest the eternal rest the eternal peace that we truly desire by means of death Right? This is a very ironic foreshadowing that God will take death and through it give us eternal peace everlasting happiness that we really desire in Our deepest heart and our deepest soul. That's that's a really beautiful inversion The God does all the time you're always inverts expectations and he always brings great good out of the greatest evil the worst of which is death The greatest good will come from that which is everlasting life because Christ of course conquers death through the cross So this is chapter three. It's pretty dark.
It's pretty gloomy He's the one who speaks first when he's sitting there in dust and ashes while his friends look upon him and mourn him It's not so good And then now the three dialogues begin now there is a super structure to these three dialogues It goes back and forth and I did provide this in lesson one when we introduced the book of Job I gave you which most commentaries will provide as well the super structure of how these dialogues begin All right, you've got the three friends each beginning with Eliphaz they have a speech to oversponds and it goes all the way down the line Three different times all right now there within those three dialogues It's a very honest. I don't want to simply overly simplify this but it is pretty simple There is a clear argument and rebuttal right back and forth between the friends and Joe What they're arguing is pretty much the same thing every single time and then what Job responds is pretty much the same thing every single time So here I wanted to provide for you There's a lot of great books who give you the interpretive key for these three dialogues But I found that the this little paragraph not really so little it's a little bit long From your Catholic and actually Old Testament. It just do a such a wonderful job here Bergman Petrie So I wanted to reproduce it for you because this is going to be the foundation upon which we build our study on this lesson for these dialogues So here's what it says quote these the three friends adhere to a traditional principle of retrobucia retrobutive suffering Which I talked about in the first lesson right retrobutive suffering that suffering is the result of sin that's all that that means suffering is Result of sin you send you're gonna suffer to retribution It goes on the principle is true enough in many instances But the three friends overgeneralize to the point that all suffering is the result only of one's personal sin and as we discussed in lesson one That's not the case witnessing Job's sufferings They conclude that he must have sin and through the three cycles of dialogue They keep insisting with increasing the immense that Job should confess his hidden equity and admit that God was just in judging him and punishing Punishing him in this way job on the other hand continues to maintain his innocence He criticizes his friends advice as the empty mouthing of platitudes that he already knows and could reproduce himself Contrary to their claims he insists that the righteous do not always prosper nor are they we could always punished as one can plainly see By observing human society in general the dialogues become increasingly blunt and antagonistic as the cycles progress And I would that's end of the quote and I would also add the cycles become increasingly shorter and shorter right with this Is it right the friends say you obviously send really really bad And they accuse him of just incredibly horrendous crimes and sins and they say just repent or run over again They keep repent you're lying to yourself. Job you're lying to God you're lying to us if you don't repent You're gonna continue to suffer the God is merciful So repent and you will have some reprieve and respite from all of this It's gonna go a lot easier for you and he keeps saying to them in response No, I haven't sent he holds fast to his integrity and he's gonna seek answers to suffering from God He's gonna demand that God answer him and his questions here Alright, so we're gonna spend the most time honestly in the first cycle because we're gonna see this pattern very very clearly As we go through the three friends and we see how to respond and then we get to cycle two I'll spend a little bit more time But then cycle three is pretty short because it's just a truncated version of what we've seen before that sound good That's exactly what we're gonna do So let's look at the first cycle chapter four and chapters four through five It's Elifaz's first speech and I would like to point out here that a lot of commentaries and commentators and scholars will say that these three Friends and their speeches are probably organized according to the rank of age and experience So in other words, Elifaz is probably the oldest dude here, you know He's the most senior figure of the three friends and when you get down to Let's see your Elifaz and then Bill dad would be the next oldest in the the youngest would be so far Alright, but they're pretty old There's a little line I'm gonna share with you as we go through here that they're probably even older than Joe But at least that seems to be the case but that seems to be what's going on He's the oldest so he speaks first and when he begins to speak remember your Catholic introduction the Old Testament said these three dialogues Get increasingly blunt and antagonistic and that's true.
So the first dialogue here opens up pretty gentle for the most part Elifaz opens up gently. He's still pretty condescending and he's still very much insisting that he has the true key interpretation and he understands Why Job is suffering and jokes should listen to him, but then as we go along you're gonna see it's brutal now These friends are anything but friends so chapter four verse one Elifaz opens up his mouth and answers and says if one ventures a word with you Will you be offended who can keep from speaking? That's that's pretty soft, right? Hey, look I really don't want to say anything right now, but I can't help it like when one wants to speak with you How could one not help but to say something to you?
It's it's very gentle by the end of his by his third speech He's not gonna be gentle at all. All right So he's a bit condescending right who can keep from speaking and he's gonna go on to really complement Job's past virtue is wisdom His own fear of God which Job is professed to have back in chapters one and two God himself says that Job fears God And so the friends recognize it as well, but his point here is Job You're doing so well and you provide advice to so many people but now you're not following your own advice So let's keep going here verse three Behold you have instructed many and you have strengthened the weak hands your words have upheld him who is stumbling and you have made firm The feeble knees but now it has come to you and you are impatient it touches you and you are dismayed is not your fear of God your confidence and the integrity of your Ways your hope all right so in other words, Job You've been you've given great advice to so many people but now you're not following your own advice Right, you need to understand that the people suffer because they sin so now he's gonna open up in verse seven by essentially saying look This is the theory of divine retribution Retributive suffering here verse seven think now who that was innocent ever perished or where were the upright cutoff? You don't see that right the innocent do they perish? No, are they upright cutoff?
No? He says if I have as I have seen those who plow iniquity and so trouble they reap the same So if you're an evil man and you're and you are involved in iniquity and trouble You're gonna suffer the same thing and by the breath of God they perish and by the blast of his anger they are consumed So this is the theory that opens up all of the arguments It gets pretty tedious it gets pretty repetitive as you go through it in my personal opinion here But that's basically it like the innocent out suffer the upright aren't cut off It's those who plow iniquity and so trouble they're the ones that perish in the blast of his anger Then he goes on to say look everybody is really unrighteous before God no one is perfectly innocent before him verse 17 Can mortal man be righteous before God can a man be pure before his maker even in his servants? He puts no trust and as angels he charges with error that probably would be referenced to the fallen angel right there How much more those who dwell in houses of clay in other words men made of dust and in fact He's gonna say dust right now those who dwell in houses of clay whose foundation isn't dust that's humanity right made from dust in clay and slime Who are crushed before them off? So everybody is unrighteous nobody is pure not even the angels almost 30 the angels We know from other passages they even fell right so if everybody is unrighteous Well look he says in his if if if If Elephas was in Job's position well, he would repent he wouldn't be ashamed to confess because everybody is guilty right skip down to chapter 5 verse 8 As for me, I would seek God and to God I would commit my cause who does great things and unsearchable marvelous things without number He gives rain upon the earth and sends waters upon the fields.
He sets on high those who are lowly and those who mourn are lifted to safety He frustrates the devices of the crafty so that their hands achieve no success He takes the wives and their own craftiness and the schemes the wily are brought to a quick end actually Paul quotes that in 1st Corinthians chapter 3 There's a lot of echoes also in this beautiful passage This is actually true in many respects This is you're gonna see in the Magnificat in Luke chapter 1 the whole concept of the the lowly are raised up right and then the proud are brought down That's that's Hannah's song as well in 1st Samuel chapter 2 So by all in all it's pretty good stuff here right so he says look if I were in your shoes I would see God I would commit my cause my case to him because he is merciful right and so he's magnificent and wonderful And then he concludes in verse 17 saying look behold happy as the man whom God reputes reproves therefore despise not to chase any of the Almighty So you should be happy for your chasing right and you should in the verse 18 He wounds and binds up he strikes in his hands He'll so you should be happy that God is doing all this to you and you can confidently hope that God will heal you all right So not a very understanding friend here now what he's saying is not necessarily wrong So here's a quote from another commentary of Catholic study Bible Which says that sometimes suffering is a corrective action of God and responds to sin that is true divine discipline aims to promote moral and spiritual maturity Just as parental discipline aims at forming children and proper behavior And then it quotes do it on in the eight Proverbs three I would throw in their Hebrews 12 as well or this is true God does discipline his children as a perfectly loving father All right, it goes on verse not sorry not verse the quote goes on excuse me when we accept the Lord's reproof He's always ready to heal and to restore us in saying this Eliphoth an unseen is a true principle yet He wrongly applies it to Job who is engulfing and suffering despite his consistent efforts to turn away from sin And as we know from the prologue chapter 1 verse 1 and 8 and 22 chapter 2 verse 10 that prologue is essential for us to understand that Job is righteous. He does fear God He does offer sacrifice for any small fault of his own and his family members So without that prologue We would think that Eliphoth is actually telling the truth and we would think that Job is just being stubborn and he's lying and And in denial and refusing to admit his fault, but the prologue tells us otherwise All right, so what Eliphoth is saying here in chapter 5 is true in some cases not in Job's case and not in all cases, right? All right, so then he goes on in verse 19 He says if you repent if you repent God will protect you from six nay seven evils verse 19 He will deliver you from six troubles and seven there shall no evil there shall be no evil that touches you This is interesting is very proverbial right when you study the book of Proverbs you have these numerical proverbs, right? Three things that I thought know for that I thought or six things that I thought or seven right?
It's very it's called a numerical proverb and that's kind of what you have right here Which is very typical in wisdom literature, but it is interesting Right if you repent six troubles nay seven will touch you and that is also very significant because as your introduction or your Catholic So everybody says seven evils have actually touched him So it says notice that Job has already suffered seven specific hardships death of oxen that's one then donkeys two camels three death of sheep Four loss of servants five loss of children six and then affliction with sores seven So he actually has suffered seven specific hardships and his friend is saying Bell of Eliphoth is saying look You know just repent and he'll deliver you from all these things now I do think this is and there's an echo here also to a sevenfold curse he curses himself seven times echoing the undoing of his World right the undoing of creation that we talked about but also on top of that there may be a connection here where the sevenfold curse echoes the seven Evils that he isn't he's enduring here as well and that could totally be the case So he concludes and says in verse 27 here now and know that this is for your own good right very condescending very patronizing He opens up very softly. Hey look man. I love to say a few things to you I can't help it and he gives his own little wisdom here about how hey God punishes the wicked and if you're not wicked if you're Righteous you won't be punished and clearly you're suffering so you've got to be unrighteous in a center And we're all sinners and if I were in your case I would repent to and God will heal you and look man I'm just telling you all this truth here and you should listen to me All right, that's a great I spent a little extra time on this because it's essentially the argument for all of them And they have variations on that same thing. Okay, so how does Job respond to Eliphaz in chapters six through seven?
Well, he first says I wish I were dead right basically all the chapter six is pretty much that whole idea right there I wish I were dead let me just read it come on top around a little bit here Let me read a chapter seven verse seven through ten and there's this whole point I wish I were in debt I were dead I wish I were in shay all the realm of the dead and I would have peace I'd have rest echoing chapter three his self curse So chapter seven verse seven remember that my life is but a breath my eye will never again see good the eye of him who sees me will be Hold me no more while your eyes are upon me I shall be gone as the cloud phase and vanishes so he who goes down to shay all does not come back up He returns no more to his house nor does his place know him anymore So he just basically wants to be forgotten like he kind of enunciates this old testament idea that when you die You go down to the realm of the dead called shale and Hebrew Hades and Greek and you're not gonna come back up again Right now I'm gonna talk about this later on in chapter 19 Because he's really not denying the power of God to work miracles among the dead This is gonna be talked about this whole bunch in the Bible study on Psalms, right? Even in the deepest darkest songs like Psalm 88 the Psalm of the pit There's these open-ended questions about can God's power be manifested in the realm of the dead? Well other Psalms answer that question if to say yes God can do this same kind of ideas going on here in Job You'll test them it provides these questions like look you go down to the realm of the dead You know is there any hope is there any peace you come back from it or not? Well, Joe will answer his own question with his faith down in chapter 19 So hang tight we're gonna see that pretty clearly here So he's so on that point let me share with you another quote It says Job is not denying God the power to raise the dead to new life Some commentators hold that Job expresses hope in some form of resurrection in chapter 19 Which I was just saying right we'll talk about that soon whether or not this is so Which it is so the doctrine of bodily resurrection was revealed only gradually in the biblical period beginning in Old Testament times quoting Isaiah 26 Daniel 12 second Back of the seven and so on it reflects the conviction that not even death can withstand the power of God end quote So that's the way I look at all the way I look at all these passages for example the song of the pit Which is Psalm 88 you got lines like this right here in Job chapter 7 and other places You've got all of these questions open-ended questions wondering can God's power be manifested?
Even in death or not and you have a number of passages that say basically Yes, if then the new testament comes along with Jesus Christ Answering the question definitively through his pastel mysteries So that's the whole big picture I think of scripture is answering the question which are deepest hearts desire is their life after death is there hoping on the grave? I think that there is the Old Testament says I believe that there is and then the answer is yes There definitively is in Jesus Christ. Okay, so his response is basically this I just want to die I want to die being sure forever then he will go on to repeat how look life is but a breath my life is but a breath And he's gonna limit to God saying how long you gonna test me how long will you keep punishing me like this? Let's go down to chapter 7 verse 16.
I loathe my life I would not live forever let me alone for my days are but a breath now That's gonna when he says this a couple different times that my life is but a breath That's gonna be a really wonderful segue to the book of Ecclesiastes, right? Vanity of the entities all his man the life is but a breath It's all level is the word it's all like smoking vapor and just kind of it's there But it passes away. That's a great connection with Ecclesiastes But he goes on verse 17 What does man did you make so much of him that you set your mind upon him another wonderful hook with Psalm 144 there? This you visit him every morning and test him every moment How long will you not look away from me nor let me alone till I swallow my spill if I sin what do I do you you?
You watch her of men. Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you? So it's really at this point at this point in his response really praying to God not so much answering to Eliphah's anymore But addressing God directly saying how long is this gonna go on and throughout this first response multiple times I'm gonna share these verses with you.
He maintains his innocence and even asks how have I sinned what have I done wrong? So for example, I'll go back to chapter 6 verse 10 He says I have not denied the holy words of the holy one or not denied the words of the holy one excuse me It in verse 24 he says teach me and I will be silent make me understand how I've erred It then again in verse 30 is there any wrong on my tongue? Okay, then in chapter 7 verse 20 We just read actually right now if I sin if I sin what do I do to you? You watch her men Why have you made me your mark because he thinks he knows he is innocent here?
So he this is again very Very clearly his response almost every single time. He says to his friends. I'm not guilty I'm a righteous man I don't know how I've sinned if I have show me if he'll address God and say God how long and why is this going on? Okay, so that is a good example of the very first speech now.
Let's unpack rather I should say this is only the first friend of the first cycle I'm just going to the first speech in the first cycle now. Let's look at Bill Dad's first speech still here in the first cycle chapter 8 Hey, this is doc Nick 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 calm 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