A Glimpse of Jesus's Teachings in Job

Continuing a Bible study of Job, Job is still speaking in chapter 31:

(Job 31:1) "I made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"

Once again Job reflects back on his life to declare how he has lived righteously. So far was he from the wickedness of adultery, that he had vowed not to even let his eyes look upon a young woman.

(2) "For what portion of God is there from above, and what inheritance of the Almighty from on high? (3) Is it not destruction to the wicked, and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity? (4) Does He not see my ways, and count all my steps?"

For what reward is there from God for the wicked? Only destruction and misfortune. The KJV translators added the word "punishment". The original text shows only "strange". It meant something strange and unexpected, a calamity, misfortune, or disaster. God sees his ways, so of course, Job would choose only to live righteously.

(5) "If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot has hastened to deceit, (6) Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know my integrity."

If Job has been lying, false, or deceitful, then let his life and his heart be weighed in a just balance by God. Judged by God, Job is confident he will be shown to be righteous, even if men err in their judgment.

(7) "If my step has turned from the way, and my heart walked after my eyes, and if any blot has cleaved to my hands, (8) Then let me sow, and let another eat; yes, let my offspring be rooted out."

Job says if he has chosen a path outside the path of righteousness, if he has coveted what his eyes beheld, and if his hands were not pure, then let whatever he plants or does be uprooted.

(9) "If my heart has been deceived by a woman, or if I have lurked at my neighbor's door, (10) Then let my wife grind for another, and let others bow down upon her."

If Job's heart has been enticed by another woman, waiting for an opportunity to be with her at his neighbor's door, then let his wife be another man's wife.

(11) "For this is a heinous crime; yes, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges. (12) For it is a fire that consumes to destruction, and would root out all my increase."

Job understands that adultery is an abominable act, a crime punishable by law. Also lust destroys the soul and ruins a man.

(13) "If I despised the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant when they contended with me, (14) What then shall I do when God rises up, and when He visits, what shall I answer Him?"

I think perhaps because Job used his own servants as an example rather than anyone in the public square, the sense is that if Job treated even his own servants unjustly, he would still have to answer to God.

(15) "Did not He who made me in the womb make him? And did not the same One fashion us in the womb?"

Job refers to him, his manservant. Job understands that God created all people.

(16) "If I have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail, (17) Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless has not eaten of it, (18) (For from my youth he was brought up with me, as with a father, and I have guided her from my mother's womb);"

If Job has dealt wrongly, frustrating hopes, and not sharing with the poor, widows, and orphans, will not the Creator of them all judge Job? Verse 18 is a little difficult to understand exactly, but as it is a parenthetical phrase to the verses before it, the sense is that Job has cared for the poor, widows, and/or orphans, since his youth. I say "and/or" because Job may have only been talking about his most recent mention, the fatherless, with that parenthetical thought.

(19) "If I have seen any perish for want of clothing, or any poor without covering; (20) If his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep;"

With his continuation of "if"'s, Job makes it clear that he always provided for the poor and needy. The loins that were once cold and shivering, now covered by Job's fleece, were a blessing to him, either because Job himself felt blessed by helping the "least of these", or because the poor man offered a blessing in gratitude.

(21) "If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate; (22) Then let my arm fall from my shoulder blade, and my arm be broken from the bone."

If Job ever oppressed the fatherless, even when as a judge at the gate it could have been within his power to do so, then let the arm that refused to help be torn from its socket. Once again, Job gives us a glimpse into something Jesus would later say, "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee..."

(23) "For destruction from God was a terror to me, and because of His highness I could not endure."

The meaning is clear; Job feared the Lord.

(24) "If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, 'You are my confidence'; (25) If I rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gotten much;"

Once again the "if"'s mean that Job did not put his faith in riches, nor did he rejoice and boast in his achievements of wealth and prosperity. Job did not serve mammon!

(26) "If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon moving in brightness, (27) And my heart has been secretly enticed, or my mouth has kissed my hand; (28) This also would be an iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I would have denied the God who is above."

This passage refers to sun and moon worship. If Job's heart was enticed to this form of worship, and his hands and mouth were moved to active idolatry, it would be a sin against God, punishable by the judges.

(29) "If I rejoiced at the destruction of him who hated me, or lifted myself up when evil found him, (30) Neither have I allowed my mouth to sin by wishing a curse to his soul;"

Job did not take pleasure in the misery of even those who hated him, and never cursed them.

(31) "If the men of my tent have not said, 'Oh, that we had of his flesh! We cannot be satisfied.'"

Even though the double negative seems to negate the thought, my initial thought was that the sense is that no one within Job's tent was ever unsatisfied; they always had their fill. This seemed logical as verse 32 continues with hospitality. I thought "flesh" meant "meat" or "food", but it also means "the flesh of man" and "mankind", the sense being that Job always gave of himself. However, there is another school of thought obtained from some of the old commentaries that says that verse 31 refers to the passage before, to the man who hated Job. The sense is that his servants were so upset by the ill treatment of their master that they wished to avenge him with the flesh of his enemy. Actually, the so-called "double negative" makes more sense this way, and doesn't negate the thought.

(32) "The stranger did not lodge in the street; I opened my doors to the traveler. (33) If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding my iniquity in my bosom; (34) Did I fear a great multitude, or did the contempt of families terrify me, that I kept silence, and did not go out of the door?"

If it appears that Job is falsely self-righteous and thinks he is perfect, verse 33 proves that he knows he sinned and on more than one occasion. He tells us he did not attempt to hide his transgressions as Adam had done when he hid in the garden, and he was not silent about confessing them.

(35) "Oh, that one would hear me! Behold, my desire is that the Almighty would answer me, and that my adversary had written a book. (36) Surely I would carry it on my shoulder, and bind it on me like a crown; (37) I would declare to him the number of my steps; like a prince I would approach him."

Job wishes to have a full and just hearing, and wishes God to answer him. I believe the sense of 35b and verse 36 is that Job wishes to know exactly what it is he has done to warrant his afflictions. He would openly confess to any charges of which he was guilty. The NKJV capitalizes "him" in verse 37 as if Job were talking about God, but I see no reason why it must be, and evidently the early commentaries did not suggest it, either. Verse 37 continues the same thought that Job would openly approach his adversary or a judge (anyone who would hear him) and discuss any charges.

(38) "If my land cries against me, or that its furrows complain; (39) If I have eaten its fruits without money, or have caused its owners to lose their lives; (40) Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley." The words of Job are ended.

If Job had gotten his land by fraud or violence, then let the land be cursed with thistles and cockles and no good grain. Job ends his chapters-long discourse by saying that he was innocent; he had not broken the law and his land could not cry out against him.

Job Sings the Blues

Continuing a Bible study of Job, Job is still speaking in chapter 30:

(Job 30:1) "But now they who are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock."

Now those same young men who hid themselves out of respect for Job, whom he spoke of in the last chapter, now laugh at him. Men, whose fathers were not respectable enough to be put in charge of the care of the dogs of his flocks, now mocked him.

(2) "Indeed, how might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom old age was perished?"

This scripture is a little difficult, but I think the sense is that those same unrespectable fathers were of no use to Job when they were young and strong, and certainly not now at the end of their lives. Perhaps "old age perished" means that they lived so that they never even reached old age; therefore why would they ever have been of profit to Job?

(3) "For want and famine they were solitary, fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste, (4) Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their food."

By hunger and poverty, they were loners and outcasts of society, wandering the desert. Job is illustrating to what depths he has sunk in public estimation that the sons of the most wretched in society treat him with contempt.

(5) "They were driven out from among men, they cried after them as after a thief, (6) To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth and the rocks. (7) Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they gathered together. (8) Children of fools, yes, children of base men; they were driven out of the land."

KJV Job 30:8b says "they were viler than the earth". In this case NIV may give a better sense of the meaning. The word "naka" means "strike, scourge, smite". The little word "min" translated as "than" can also mean "from" or "out of". "Viler than the earth" may have been a way of saying "unfit for the land".

(9) "And now I am their song; yes, I am their byword."

Paraphrased, "Now I am just an object of their joking and made up mocking songs".

(10) "They abhor me, they flee far from me, and do not hesitate to spit in my face. (11) Because He has loosened my cord, and afflicted me, they have also let loose the bridle before me."

In verse 11, "He" (although not capitalized in KJV, as it never is, but I do as a show of respect) must refer to God. The sense is, like an archer with a bow, God has so relaxed the string of his bow, that he has been left defenseless and without strength. Letting loose the bridle is like throwing off all restraints; like unrestrained headstrong horses, the young men let loose all sorts of disrespect and contempt.

There are some interesting notes on verse 11 by some of the early commentators that read it slightly differently. Because I have limited access to the early manuscripts, I can only take their words on this, and will quote from the writing of Albert Barnes: "But instead of the usual reading in the Hebrew text, 'yithriy', 'my nerve', another reading, 'yithriv', 'his nerve', is found in the qeri (margin). This reading has been adopted in the text by Jahn, and is regarded as genuine by Rosenmuller, Umbreit, and Noyes." According to that interpretation, the young men have so afflicted Job with their constant derision, that he has been rendered defenseless, as an archer with a slackened bow string; and therefore the flood gates are now opened, so to speak, and he is constantly hit with a flood of disrespect and contempt.

I think either interpretation works here. I don't think Job means any disrespect if he is declaring that God is the one who allowed this to happen to him, because after all, nothing can happen outside of God's will.

(12) "Upon my right rise the youth; they push away my feet, and they raise up against me the ways of their destruction. (13) They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no helper."

The fact that Job continues to place the blame on the young men for all his calamity, seems to suggest that the possibilty of the Albert Barnes interpretation above is a good one. "They have no helper" may mean simply that they need no one to help them, or it may mean that there is no one there to help them or counsel them with a better way.

(14) "They came as a wide breaking in of waters; in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me."

Again, their derision comes upon Job as a flood.

(15) "Terrors are turned upon me; they pursue my soul as the wind, and my welfare passes away as a cloud. (16) And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me. (17) My bones are pierced in me in the night, and my sinews take no rest."

As in Psalms 42:4, "I pour out my soul in me", verse 16a is a way of saying Job is dissolved in grief. Job has been pierced to the bone, and his tendons or muscles also have no rest. The original word translated as "sinews" is "araq", and it also means "gnaw", "chew", "eat", or "pain". Some of the old commentators suggest that the word means "gnawers" and Albert Barnes said that it might refer to the teeth. Therefore verse 17b might mean that his teeth grind continually and take no rest, or that gnawing pains, in general, never cease. Anyway you look at it, Job says he is a man in constant pain and sorrow!

(18) "By the great force of my disease is my garment changed; it binds me about as the collar of my coat."

The original word translated as "changed" is "chaphas" and means more than just "changed". More completely, it means "concealed", "masked", "disguised", "hidden", or it can mean "to be searched out" or "exposed". I believe the sense is that because the disease has changed him so much, his clothing now binds tightly or maybe sticks to his skin because of sores. Perhaps Job now disguises himself because of his hideous disease. Maybe Job metaphorically refers to his leprous skin as a new kind of covering that binds him tightly and one that he cannot easily cast off.

(19) "He has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes."

Job speaks of God doing this to him or at least bringing calamity on him so that he has become regarded as worthless. "A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments" by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, beautifully points out that in reality, "God is poetically said to do that which the mourner had done to himself". In Job 2:8, the verse reads, "And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself; and he sat down among the ashes." Job obviously means that God had brought him to the state where he did this, but isn't it interesting to think how many times we want to blame God for things we do to ourselves?

(20) "I cry unto You, and You do not hear me; I stand up, and You regard me (not)."

Job now speaks directly to God. The KJV translators added the word "not" at the end of the verse because they thought it carried over from the first part of the verse. However, it's not necessary to the meaning to add "not", as the sense may be that Job cries out to the Lord and He doesn't seem to hear, or at least doesn't respond; Job stands up and God considers whether to answer Job or not.

(21) "You have become cruel to me; with Your strong hand You oppose Yourself against me."

My first thought was "Whoa, Job! You've gone too far now!" But then I have to think about how many times we ask today, "Why me? Why are You doing this to me?" We certainly aren't asking why God is doing good things to us! So the sense is the same. The word translated as "cruel" comes from a root word meaning to "act harshly" and the word also means "fierce". Perhaps rather than accusing God of being cruel to him, Job is merely stating what he thinks as fact, that the Lord has acted in a strong harsh way against him.

(22) "You lift me up to the wind; You cause me to ride upon it, and dissolve my substance."

The image is that Job is tossed to and fro like a limp rag doll in the wind.

(23) "For I know You will bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living."

The grave is the house appointed to all when they die.

(24) "However He will not stretch out His hand to the grave, though they cry in His destruction."

Job knows God will bring him to the grave, but He will not pursue him beyond that. Although men cry in despair while they are dying or for those who are dying, the grave is the ultimate rest for the weary.

(25) "Did I not weep for him who was in trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the poor? (26) When I looked for good, then evil came; and when I waited for light, there came darkness."

Job appears to be reflecting back on his life to point out that he was always compassionate, so perhaps expecting life to be good for him in return, but instead it was evil and dark with adversity and affliction.

(27) "All within me boiled, and rested not; the days of affliction confronted me."

Looking at the original words' meanings, I have transcribed this verse for my study purposes to what I believe is the best sense. The KJV says, "My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me." "Meeh", the word translated as "bowels" can refer to a lot of different internal body parts, and "qadam", the word translated as "prevented", actually paints more a picture of projecting oneself, to meet, or confront.

(28) "I went mourning without the sun; I stood up and I cried in the congregation."

The word translated as "mourning" is "qadar", and it means "ashy" or "dark-colored", which can imply mourning, but in this instance I believe it just means dark, as he repeats this in verse 30. Job's skin is dark even without the sun burning it.

(29) "I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls."

Interestingly, the word translated as "dragons" can also mean "jackals". The word translated as "owls" was actually two words that looks like "daughters of owls", or "daughters of howling", which has been suggested by some of the old commentaries to be understood as ostriches. Perhaps the sense is that Job is like those animals known for their mournful wailing in the night.

(30) "My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat. (31) My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them who weep."

Job only sings the blues now!