Job 23-27
23 Job confided to his friends.
2 Job: So once again you are telling me my complaint amounts to rebellion,
that the heavy hand I feel upon me is smothering my groans?
3 Would that I knew where to find Him.
I would appear before Him.
4 I would lay my case out before Him;
I would fill up my mouth with arguments.
5 And then I would finally learn how He would answer me,
and I would understand what He tells me.
6 Would He oppose me merely with His great power? Surely not!
Surely He would show me the respect of listening to my argument.
7 There, in that courtroom, a moral man might hope to reason with Him,
and I would escape my Judge forever.
8 Alas, wherever I go, ahead or behind,
He is not there;
I am unable to find Him.
9 When He works on either side of me, I still cannot see Him.
I catch no glimpse of Him.
10 But He knows the course I have traveled.
And I believe that were He to prove me,
I would come out purer than gold from the fire.
11 My foot has been securely set in His tracks;
I have kept to His course of life without swerving;
12 I have not departed from the commands of His lips;
I have valued everything He says more than all else.
13 He alone is one True God; who can alter Him?
Whatever He desires within Himself, He does.
14 For He will carry out exactly what He has planned for me,
and in the future there are more plans to come.
15 Therefore, I am deeply troubled before Him;
when I ponder it at any length, I am terrified of Him.
16 Yes, God has melted my courage,
and the Highest One has overwhelmed me with His terror.
17 He could have turned me aside when the darkness came,
but He did not cut me off.
Nor does He hide my face from the gloom that has now overtaken me.
24 Job: Why are there not judgment times for the wicked before the Highest One?[a]
Why do those who know Him not see His judgment days?
2 After all it’s the wicked who seize land that belongs to others,
capture flocks and let them graze for themselves,
3 Drive off orphans’ donkeys,
take as collateral widows’ oxen,
4 Drive the needy off the road,
and force the poor into hiding together.
5 Look at how the poor are forced to live!
Like wild donkeys in the desert,
They spend all their energy scrounging for food,
hoping the desert provides enough to feed their children!
6 They forage for scraps out in the open
and glean what they can from the already-harvested vineyards of the wicked.
7 They settle down night after night, naked since pawning their cloaks,
and have nothing to protect them from the cold.
8 The hard mountain rains soak them
as they press themselves against rocks in the absence of real shelter;
9 The fatherless child is torn away from the breast;
the suckling babe is seized as collateral from the poor.
10 They force the poor to wander naked, no clothing to be had,
carrying the very bundles of grain they long to eat.
11 They are stationed among the terraces[b]
pressing oil from the olive that calls to their hunger;
they trample in winepresses, extracting the juice for which they thirst.
12 At the outskirts of the city, the oppressed groan,
wounded souls crying for help,
but God fails to charge the guilty who have brought them such pain.
13 They were among those who rebel against the light.
They don’t want to know what makes it shine,
nor do they live their lives in its paths.
14 It is not the poor and the victim who rebel.
It is the murderer who rises before first light
And kills the poor and the needy.
And in the dark of night, he becomes the thief.
15 And the eye of the adulterer waits for the onset of dusk;
he thinks, “No one will see me,” because he disguises his face.
16 And others break into homes in the dark.
However, by day they shut themselves up inside
because they do not know the light.
17 For all of these criminals,
the morning arrives arm in arm with the threat of being found out.
It is as the shadow of death to them,
for they are at ease with the terrors of the night.
This passage is challenging to translate because it appears to have Job arguing against his previous convictions by claiming the wicked do suffer, which fits better with Zophar’s philosophy. But that textual difficulty offers two possible explanations of Job’s apparent dual arguments. First, it is possible to read these verses as if Job is quoting his friends; he is not adopting this theology, but mocking his friends who do. Second, Job may be cursing the wicked, wishing these evil things would happen to them. The Greek version of the text, called the Septuagint, provides the second translation of this passage. Regardless of who said it and how, this passage describes the possible pitfalls of evil actions.
18 Job: The wicked may sit lightly on the surface of the waters,
but their bit of land, the parcel on which they live, is accursed;
In fact, they don’t even turn down the road to their vineyards
because they don’t produce.
19 Just as summer’s heat and drought melt and carry off the winter snow,
the land of the dead digests and carries away sinners.
20 The very wombs whence they came forget them;
the worms will feast on them until no one remembers they existed;
the skeletons of wickedness dry up and snap like twigs.
21 They deliberately prey on women with no children to protect them
and don’t care to lend a hand to widows!
22 By His power, God drags off the high and mighty with the ropes of a hunter,
and though they may rise to the top, they have no assurance of true life.
23 God may provide for them, and they may feel secure,
but His eyes are always on their ways.
24 They may make their mark—to be sure—in a brief moment of glory,
but then just as quickly the wicked are gone, like the rest of humanity,
like heads of grain cut off and dried up.
25 Now, if this is not the truth, then call me a liar
and count all this talk for nothing.
25 Then Bildad the Shuhite responded.
2 Bildad: God rules over all things;
dread is His domain,
God—who makes peace and order on His own heights.
3 As for His armies, can they even be counted?
As for His light, is anyone not illuminated?
4 Then tell me how can a person be right with God?
How can someone born of a woman in blood be pure?
5 If even the moon is not bright enough
and the light of the stars is not pure in His estimation,
6 How much less so a human,
who is a mere worm—
The offspring of humanity,
who is a maggot!
26 Job explained.
2 Job (sarcastically): What a great help you are to the powerless!
How you have held up the arm that is feeble and weak!
Thanks to commonly known Greek and Roman mythologies, it is not difficult to imagine what “the land of the dead” or sheol may be. But what is this place of “destruction,” known in Hebrew as abaddon? The Hebrew word comes from a verb that means “to become lost,” and abaddon is usually mentioned in the Old Testament in conjunction with the land of the dead, the grave, or death itself—places lost to the living world. In the New Testament Book of Revelation, abaddon is personified as the “messenger of the abyss” (9:11) who rules the locusts—horrible creatures that torture any living thing. Based on these clues, abaddon may be thought of as a place for the dead (like here in Job) or as death personified (like in Revelation) that decimates everything around it or commands the destruction of everything it sees, a primitive creature living in its own chaos where no one would ever want to visit and wreaking havoc wherever it goes outside its home.
3 What sage counsel you have given to me, the unwise!
And what immeasurable insight you have put on display for us!
4 Whom did you say these words to?
Where did you get such profound inspiration?
5 The departed quiver below,
down deep beneath the seas
and all that is within them,
6 The land of the dead is exposed before God,
and the place where destruction lies is uncovered in His presence.
7 He stretches out the northern sky over vast reaches of emptiness;
He hangs the earth itself on nothing.
8 He binds up the waters into His clouds,
but the cloud does not burst from the strain.
9 He conceals the sight of His throne
and spreads His clouds over it to hide it from view.
10 He has encircled the waters with a horizon-boundary:
the line between day and night, light and darkness.
11 The very pillars that hold up the sky quake
and are astounded by His reprisals.
12 By His power, He stilled the sea, quelling the chaos;
by His wisdom, He pierced Rahab, evil of the sea;
13 By His breath, the heavens are made beautifully clear;
by His hand that ancient serpent—even as it attempted escape—is pierced through.
14 And all of this, all of these are the mere edges of His capabilities.
We are privy to only a whisper of His power.
Who then dares to claim understanding of His thunderous might?
27 Job continued.
2 Job: By God—who lives and has deprived me of justice,
the Highest One[c] who has also embittered my soul—
3 I make this proclamation:
that, while there is life in me,
While the breath of that selfsame God is in my nostrils,
4 My lips will not let lies escape them,
and my tongue will not form deceit.
5 So I will never concede that you three are right.
Until the day I die, I will not abandon my integrity just to appease you.
6 On the contrary, I’ll assert my innocence and never let it go;
my heart will not mock my past or my future.
7 May my enemy be counted as the wicked
and my adversary as the unjust.
8 For what hope does he who is sullied and impure have
once God lops him off from life and requires his soul?
9 Will God listen to his cry
when he is overtaken by distress?
10 Will he have made the Highest One his pleasure after the fact?
Will he have marked the seasons with his calls to God once it is too late?
11 Let me show you what I have learned of God’s power.
I assure you I will not cover over the true nature of the Highest One’s ways.
12 Look, you have all seen it—seen the same things I have seen here.
Why then all this vain nonsense?
13 Indeed, Zophar, listen closely, for what the wicked of humanity will inherit from God.
This is the heritage the Highest One bequeaths to those who oppress:
14 If the children of the wicked multiply,
they meet their end at the blade of the sword.
And even if they are fat with surplus,
the descendants of the wicked will be starved for bread.
15 Those who survive will fall to disease and be buried;
many of their widows will not mourn their deaths.
16 Though he pile up money as if it were common dirt
and clothing in heaps like mounds of clay,
17 What he may prepare, the righteous will wear;
the silver he sets aside, the innocent will divide.
18 He builds his house doomed to impermanence—
like the moth’s cocoon,
like the field watchman’s lean-to that is dismantled after the harvest.
19 He lies down to sleep a wealthy man,
but never again,
For when he opens his eyes to morning,
all is gone.
20 Terrors overtake him as if they were floodwaters;
the tempest snatches him away in the dead of night.
21 Indeed, the sultry east wind lifts him up and away.
He is gone, swept off the place he knew as his own.
22 It will have blown against him pitilessly,
and he tries to flee from its fast-closing hand.
23 As a final humiliation, it claps its hands against him as a man would—
sneering, hissing at him as he leaves.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
2 Corinthians 1:12-2:11
Some believe that prosperity and comfort are the markers of a faithful Christian; in order to believe that, you have to ignore completely the life and writings of Paul, the emissary. It is only when you suffer that you can meet God as your comforter. In these letters, and often in our own lives, it is when we seem to have come to the end of ourselves that we see and experience the fullness of God in entirely new ways. This is not to say that any of us should or would seek out the kind of suffering Paul experienced; we do not long to be imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked, or hunted by authorities. But when our dark days come, we should be ready to learn, grow, and experience the fullness of God in the midst of our troubles.
12 We are proud of the fact that we have lived before the world and especially before you with clear consciences, living holy lives mixed with genuine sincerity before God. We have not relied on any human wisdom but on the grace and favor of God. 13 We are not writing to you in anything resembling codes or riddles; we only write those lessons you are ready to read and understand. I hope you will study them, value them, and truly understand them until the end. 14 You have already begun to grasp what we mean in part; but on the day when our Lord Jesus returns, we will be as proud of you as you are of us.
15-16 In this spirit of trust and confidence, I was intending to come your way first on my current journey. So that you might have a double dose of this grace and assurance, my plan was to visit you on my way to Macedonia and return to you again on the journey back so that you could assist me on the trip to Judea. 17 But since this didn’t happen, was I just being indecisive? Were my plans made in the flesh rather than by God’s Spirit? How can I say “yes” and “no” in the same breath? 18 Because our God is always faithful to His promises, our word to you was not both “yes” and “no”—“Yes, I’ll come,” and then, “No, I’ve changed my mind.” 19 For the Son of God—Jesus the Anointed whom we (Silvanus,[a] Timothy, and I) have preached to you—was not both “yes” and then “no.” With Him the answer is always “yes.” 20 In Jesus we hear a resounding “yes” to all of God’s many promises. This is the reason we say “Amen” to and through Jesus when giving glory to God. 21 Remember that God has established our relationship with you in the Anointed One, and He has anointed and commissioned us for this special mission. 22 He has marked us with His seal and placed His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee, a down payment of the things to come.
23 If I were in court today, I’d call God as a witness to my soul. Here’s the truth: I decided not to come back to Corinth in order to spare you further pain and sorrow. 24 It’s not that we want to coerce you in any matter of faith; we are coworkers called to increase your joy because you have stood firm in faith.
The believers in Corinth are exhausting Paul and one another with their negativity and criticism. Nothing destroys the beauty of Christian community more aggressively than these kinds of patterns.
2 I finally determined that I would not come to you again for yet another agonizing visit. 2 If my visits create such pain and sorrow for you, who can cheer me up except for those I’ve caused such grief? 3 This is exactly what I was writing to you about earlier so that when we are face-to-face I will not have to wallow in sadness in the presence of friends who should bring me the utmost joy. For I felt sure that my delight would also become your delight. 4 My last letter to you was covered with tears, composed with great difficulty, and frankly, a broken heart. It wasn’t my intention to depress you or cause you pain; rather, I had hoped you would see it for what it was—a demonstration of the overwhelming love I have for all of you.
Interpersonal relationships are often filled with disagreements and tensions. It’s common to hear someone long for the “good old days” of the New Testament when things were simpler and people were holier. But Paul’s ministry proves the first-century churches were no different. They were just as full of fights, tensions, and power plays as modern churches are. We should seek to be loving but also firm when the situation demands it. We should be quick to offer forgiveness to and seek reconciliation with those who turn back from their divisive actions. That’s what Paul did.
5 But if anyone has caused harm, he has not so much harmed me as he has—and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here—harmed all of you. 6 In my view, the majority of you have punished him well enough. 7 So instead of continuing to ostracize him, I encourage you to offer him the grace of forgiveness and the comfort of your acceptance. Otherwise, if he finds no welcome back to the community, I’m afraid he will be overwhelmed with extreme sorrow and lose all hope. 8 So I urge you to demonstrate your love for him once again. 9 I wrote these things to you with a clear purpose in mind: to test whether you are willing to live and abide by all my counsel. 10 If you forgive anyone, I forgive that one as well. Have no doubt, anything that I have forgiven—when I do forgive—is done ultimately for you in the presence of the Anointed One. 11 It’s my duty to make sure that Satan does not win even a small victory over us, for we don’t want to be naïve and then fall prey to his schemes.
Footnotes:
- 1:19 Silvanus is better known in Acts as Silas.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
Psalm 41
Psalm 41
For the worship leader. A song of David.
The first four books of Psalms end with a variation of the doxology found in verse 13: “Blessed is the Eternal, the True God of Israel. Always and Eternal. Amen and Amen.” This declaration not only provides a natural break—a seam—between the five books, but it also summarizes an essential theme of the psalms. You see, the Book of Psalms is primarily a book of praise to God for His creation, mercy, and salvation. Even when life is hard, our enemies strong, and our health poor, God can be praised for life itself and the ultimate victory to come for those who trust Him.
1 Blessed are those who consider the helpless.
The Eternal will stay near them, leading them to safety in times of bitter struggle.
2 The Eternal defends them and preserves them,
and His blessing will find them in the land He gave them.
He moves ahead to frustrate their enemies’ plans.
3 When sickness comes, the Eternal is beside them—
to comfort them on their sickbeds and restore them to health.
4 And me? I cry out to Him,
“Heal my soul, O Eternal One, and show mercy
because I have sinned against You!”
5 My enemies are talking about me even now:
“When will death come for him and his name be forgotten?”
6 As they sit with me under my roof, their well wishes are empty lies.
They listen to my story
and then turn it around to tell their own version on the street.
7 Across the city, crowds whisper lies about me.
Their hate is strong, and they search for ways to harm me.
8 Some are saying: “Some vile disease has gotten hold of him.
The bed he lies in will be his deathbed.”
9 Even my best friend, my confidant
who has eaten my bread will stab me in the back.[a]
10 But You, Eternal One, show mercy to me.
Extend Your gracious hand, and help me up.
I need to pay them back for what they’ve done to me.
11 I realize now that Your favor has come to me,
for my enemies have yet to declare victory over me.
12 You know and uphold me—a man of honor.
You grant me strength and life forever in Your presence.
13 Blessed is the Eternal, the True God of Israel.
Always and Eternal. Amen and Amen.
Footnotes:
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
Proverbs 22:5-6
5 Thorny branches and traps lie ahead for those who follow perverse paths;
those who want to preserve themselves will steer clear of them.
6 Teach a child how to follow the right way;
even when he is old, he will stay on course.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.