שמע ישראל ה 'הוא האלוהים שלנו הוא אחד
Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad
"Hear Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One"
"Hear Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One"
The Central Message of the Book of Job
Under Re-construction
The book of Job (Iyov in the Hebrew) is essential to understand and yet it is often overlooked or misunderstood.
Since learning to read this has been one of my favorite books. I have invested countless hours absorbed in its wisdom. Allow me to briefly (for me) share a portion of my love for this glorious Scripture.
In its first chapter, unbeknownst to Job (pronounced ee-yove in the Hebrew), The Adversary (Satan) is granted permission to confront Job. Much could be said of this topic but I'll refrain (for now).
From the first assault of this trial (the Sabeans stealing Job's livestock and murdering his servants) Job must deal with not only the physical events that are befalling him but more significantly with WHY HaShem is allowing them. This theme is partly why this book is so informative. Why do bad things happen? If God is love then why ... The question is answered in this book (and the answer is humbling!).
Like many people today Job had a strong ego and considered himself to be independent and self sufficient. He was convinced in his own righteousness, his own innate goodness as a person, in his own knowledge and wisdom -- AND he was man who deeply believed in God. A rare combination then as now!
At first Job doubtless viewed his mounting difficulties as things that "just happen" much as we tend to assume, but then came another messenger: "...The fire of God is fallen from heaven..." (1:16)
Job then realizes that HaShem's judgment was falling on him but he does not understand why. What had he done wrong? Nothing! he is convinced. Still he accepts that this is the divine anger being revealed -- even though seemingly undeserved -- but who is he to question God's judgments? And so:
1:20 Iyov got up, tore his coat ["rent his mantle": KJV], shaved his head, fell down on the ground and worshiped...Job repented. But things only got worse -- sound familiar? Where were the "Prosperity preachers!" Where were the "Name it and claim it" charlatans?
So... from the beginning Job did what was proper even though he was unclear what he was repenting of. Then for the next 30 plus chapters Job is being condemned by everyone (except Adonai). "Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die!" (Job 2:9). His family, his friends, his servants, the townsfolk, everyone turned against Job. They all assumed he was an evil man, a closet hypocrite, else these things would not be happening to him AND to them through his misfortunes (which relates to the cause of antisemitism). Job lost everything a person could lose...
He prayed, he sought God for a reason why and yet he received no reply... he looked into his heart, he repented. Job was utterly humbled and correctly evaluated his situation. He had nothing left. He was powerless... and yet he maintained his integrity -- that was key. That IS the key!
Iyov (Job) maintained his faith in God. He held firmly to his own sincerity and self respect. Humility is not becoming a door mat! Humility is not about self deprecation! No, its the honest appraisal of oneness as a servant of HaShem! Job was humbled and he realized that apart from God he was nothing. Knew nothing. Had nothing. This is the heart of biblical religion! Without such humility one can never please HaShem. In HaShem we live and move and have our being.
So this book of Job is possibly more instructive for our generation than for any other in history. Compare this humility with the Church's attitude revealed at Revelation 3:14-19!
We (as the human race) SEEM to be on the verge of either answering all of life's mysteries or of utterly destroying ourselves and yet humility is no where to be found!
We challenge everything. We question everything. We develop our own answers based on our own theories according to our knowledge based on our researches; we determine our own beliefs and we challenge God Himself (if we believe in such a being) to prove us wrong! ... or more truthfully... to justify Himself by the standards we have established!:
Foolish Bible believers! Virgins don't have babies! they taunt. People can't part the waters of the seas nor lead others across them on dry land simply by holding up their arms! Humans can't walk on the water nor raise the dead to life! There are no such things as prophets who foretell events thousands of years in advance! How naive! they chide us. Prove such ridiculous things to my satisfaction according to my sciences and my knowledge -- such people demand -- then maybe I'll believe!
And yet for all their knowledge such people do not understand...
Hebrews 11:6: ... without faith it is impossible to please God: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.And so we as a people are gradually moving farther and farther away from the Truth we claim to crave because of our own sciences so called (I Timothy 6:20). As Erich Fromm noted:
While we have created wonderful things, we have failed to make of ourselves beings for whom this tremendous effort would seem worthwhile. Ours is a life not of brotherliness, happiness, contentment but of spiritual chaos and bewilderment dangerously close to a state of madness - not the hysterical kind of madness which existed in the Middle Ages but a madness akin to schizophrenia in which the contact with inner reality is lost and thought is split from affect.Then after all the things that happen to Job -- to humanity for the past 5000 some odd years (if we accept the biblical time line) -- our Creator asks the questions listed in the last chapters of Job (see below) and Job (and we) are humbled if we are Believers and are intellectually honest.
If we are not Believers....
We still can not do those things HaShem challenges in these chapters. We do not understand how these things are even possible other than through vague philosophizing and frail human theorem.
We create nothing, we merely combine existing elements and manufacture something from what already exists.
HaShem creates the elements! We merely manipulate them like children building sand castles on a deserted and lonely beach before the endless expanse of the darkening sea.
We kill one another in name of our truths, our forms of government, our religions, our properties and possessions ... and then God challenges our assumptions:
Job 38:1 Then ADONAI answered Iyov out of the storm: 2 "Who is this, darkening my plans with his ignorant words?
3 Stand up like a man, and brace yourself; I will ask questions; and you, give the answers!
4 "Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. ...Oh vain humanity! For all of our vast learning and knowledge we are yet children, infants, fetuses only just!
We have begun to determine a few of the questions... maybe ... but in contrast with the Creator... we can't even make a contrast with Adonai who created us!
These chapters are calling humanity to humility and intellectual honesty, to the recognition of our actual places within the Creation as the created. But we are proud! We are the kings of all we survey!
We are but floating bits of star dust at best! Who are we to believe we hold the answers to mysteries we can't even begin to fathom? Who are we to judge the other bits of floating debris who arrive at different answers than ours based on their experiences?
And yet...
The biblical descriptions of our future, of the state of our beings once we are fully harmonized with the consciousness yet to be revealed in the kingdom of Mashiach in the restored Gan Eden in the Olam Haba (world to come) by the Will of HaShem, utterly transcends anything we might conceive (I Corinthians 2:9)!
We are the Sons and Daughters of HaShem!
We are called to Arise from our self-imposed ignorance and pomposity and embrace our true natures (Psalm 82)!
And yet we slumber on.
If we are intellectually honest we have to admit than despite our egos, our knowledge and certainties are minuscule, little more than dross floating in the river of endless time. We are as mortal beings gazing into darkened mirrors (I Corinthians 3:12). We see merely our own reflections and foolishly claim that within that shimmering mirage we see everything!
Job chapters 38-42 are among the most awesome in the entire Bible! They wondrously reveal the truth of human consciousness and existence prior to our restitution and they hint at our true yet ungrasped potential.
When we have an accurate, Torah based view of ourselves we will tend to be less critical of others and more patient with those with whom we disagree. \
We are all seeking the One Light.
Shalom my friends, Keep Seeking the Light of Echad Elohiym (the One God)
~ Yochanan ben Avraham
~ John of AllFaith
2 "Who is this, darkening my plans with his ignorant words?
3 Stand up like a man, and brace yourself; I will ask questions; and you, give the answers!
4 "Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you know so much.
5 Do you know who determined its dimensions or who stretched the measuring line across it?
6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, 7 when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 "Who shut up the sea behind closed doors when it gushed forth from the womb, 9 when I made the clouds its blanket and dense fog its swaddling cloth, 10 when I made the breakers its boundary set its gates and bars, 11 and said, 'You may come this far, but no farther; here your proud waves must stop'?
12 "Have you ever in your life called up the dawn and made the morning know its place, 13 so that it could take hold of the edges of the earth and shake the wicked out of it?
14 Then the earth is changed like clay under a seal, until its colors are fixed like those of a garment.
15 But from the wicked the light is withheld, and the arm raised [to strike] is broken.
16 "Have you gone down to the springs of the sea or explored the limits of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you, the gates of death-like darkness?
18 Have you surveyed the full extent of the earth? Say so, if you know it all!
19 "Which way leads to where light has its home? and darkness, where does it dwell?
20 If you knew, you could take each to its place and set it on its homeward path.
21 You know, of course, because you were born then; by now you must be very old!
22 "Have you gone into the storehouses for snow or seen the storehouses for hail, 23 which I save for times of trouble, for days of battle and war?
24 "By what path is light dispersed, or the east wind poured out on the land?
25 Who cut a channel for the downpours, or a way for the lightning and thunder, 26 causing it to rain where no one is, in a desert without anyone there, 27 drenching the waste and desolate [ground], till the tender grass sprouts?
28 Does the rain have a father? Who is the father of dewdrops?
29 From whose womb does ice come? Who gives birth to the frost of heaven, 30 when water becomes as hard as stone, and the surface of the deep freezes solid?
31 "Can you tie up the cords of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion?
32 Can you lead out the constellations of the zodiac in their season or guide the Great Bear and its cubs?
33 Do you know the laws of the sky? Can you determine how they affect the earth?
34 "Can you raise your voice to the clouds and make them cover you with a flood of rain?
35 Can you send lightning bolts on their way? Will they say to you, 'Here we are'?
36 "Who put wisdom in people's inner parts? Who gave understanding to the mind?
37 Who, by wisdom, can number the clouds? Who can tilt the water-skins of heaven, 38 so that the dust becomes a mass [of mud], and its clods stick together?
39 "Can you hunt prey for a lioness or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, 40 when they crouch in their dens or lie in ambush in their lairs?
41 Who provides food for the raven when his young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?
39:1 "Do you know when mountain goats give birth? Have you seen deer in labor?
2 Can you tell how many months they carry their young? Do you know when they give birth, 3 when they crouch down and bring forth their young, when they deliver their fawns?
4 Their young become strong, growing up in the open; they leave and never return.
5 "Who lets the wild donkey roam freely? Who sets the wild donkey loose from its shackles?
6 I made the 'Aravah its home, the salty desert its place to live.
7 It scorns the noise of the city and hears no driver's shouts.
8 It ranges over the hills for its pasture, searching for anything green.
9 "Would a wild ox be willing to serve you? Would it stay by your stall?
10 Could you tie a rope around its neck and make it plow furrows for you?
11 Would you trust its great strength enough to let it do your heavy work, 12 or rely on it to bring home your seed and gather the grain from your threshing-floor?
13 "An ostrich's wings beat wildly, although its pinions lack plumage.
14 It leaves its eggs on the ground and lets them be warmed by the sand, 15 forgetting that a foot may crush them or a wild animal trample on them.
16 It treats its chicks heartlessly, as if they were not its own; even if her labor is in vain, it really doesn't care; 17 because God has deprived it of wisdom and given it no share in understanding.
18 When the time comes, it flaps its wings, scorning both horse and rider.
19 "Did you give the horse its strength? Did you clothe its neck with a mane?
20 Did you make him able to leap like a locust? Its majestic snorting is frightening!
21 It paws with force and exults with vigor, then charges into the battle; 22 mocking at fear, unafraid, it does not shy away from the sword.
23 The [rider's] quiver rattles over it, [his] gleaming spear and javelin.
24 Frenzied and eager, it devours the ground, scarcely believing the shofar has sounded.
25 At the sound of the shofar it whinnies; as from afar it scents the battle, the roar of the chiefs and the shouting.
26 "Is it your wisdom that sets the hawk soaring, spreading its wings toward the south?
27 Does the eagle fly up when you say so, to build its nest in the heights?
28 It lives and spends its nights on the cliffs; a rocky crag is its fortress.
29 From there it spots its prey, its eyes see it far off.
30 Its young ones suck up blood; wherever the slain are, there it is."
40:1 Continuing to address Iyov, ADONAI said:
2 "Does the critic still want to dispute Shaddai? Let him who wants to correct God give an answer!"
3 Then Iyov replied to ADONAI:
4 "I am too ashamed; I have nothing to say. I lay my hand over my mouth.
5 Yes, I spoke once, but I won't answer more; all right, twice, but I won't go on."
6 ADONAI answered Iyov out of the storm:
7 "Stand up like a man, and brace yourself; I will ask questions; and you, give the answers!
8 "Are you impugning my justice? Putting me in the wrong to prove yourself right?
9 Do you have an arm like God's? Can you thunder with a voice like his?
10 Come on, deck yourself with majesty and dignity, robe yourself in glory and splendor.
11 Let loose your furious anger, look at all who are proud, and humble them.
12 Look at all who are proud, and bring them down; tread down the wicked where they stand.
13 Bury them in the ground together, bind their faces in the hidden world.
14 If you do this, then I will confess to you that your own power can save you.
15 "Now consider Behemot, whom I made along with you. He eats grass like an ox.
16 What strength he has in his loins! What power in his stomach muscles!
17 He can make his tail as stiff as a cedar, the muscles in his thighs are like cables, 18 his bones are like bronze pipes, his limbs like iron bars.
19 "He ranks first among God's works. Only his maker can approach him with his sword.
20 The mountains produce food for him there, where all the wild animals play.
21 He lies down under the thorny lotus bushes and is hidden by the reeds in the swamp; 22 the lotus bushes cover him with their shade, and the willows by the stream surround him.
23 If the river overflows, it doesn't worry him; he is confident even if the Yarden rushes by his mouth.
24 Can anyone catch him by his eyes or pierce his nose with a hook?
41:1 "And Livyatan! Can you catch him with a fishhook or hold his tongue down with a rope?
2 Can you put a ring in his nose or pierce his jaw with a barb?
3 Will he entreat you at length? Will he speak with you softly?
4 Will he agree with you to be your slave forever?
5 Will you play with him as you would with a bird or keep him on a string to amuse your little girls?
6 Will a group of fishermen turn him into a banquet? Will they divide him among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his skin with darts or his head with fish-spears?
8 If you lay your hand on him, you won't forget the fight, and you'll never do it again!
9 "Look, any hope [of capturing him] is futile -one would fall prostrate at the very sight of him.
10 No one is fierce enough to rouse him, so who can stand up to me?
11 Who has given me anything and made me pay it back? Everything belongs to me under all of heaven.
12 "I have more to say about his limbs, his strong talk, and his matchless strength.
13 Who can strip off his [scaly] garment? Who can enter his jaws?
14 Who can pry open the doors of his face, so close to his terrible teeth?
15 "His pride is his rows of scales, tightly sealed together - 16 one is so close to the next that no air can come between them; 17 they are stuck one to another, interlocked and impervious.
18 "When he sneezes, light flashes out; his eyes are like the shimmer of dawn.
19 From his mouth go fiery torches, and sparks come flying out.
20 His nostrils belch steam like a caldron boiling on the fire.
21 His breath sets coals ablaze; flames pour from his mouth.
22 "Strength resides in his neck, and dismay dances ahead of him [as he goes].
23 The layers of his flesh stick together; they are firm on him, immovable.
24 His heart is as hard as a stone, yes, hard as a lower millstone.
25 When he rears himself up, the gods are afraid, beside themselves in despair.
26 "If a sword touches him, it won't stick; neither will a spear, or a dart, or a lance.
27 He regards iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood.
28 An arrow can't make him flee; for him, slingstones are so much chaff.
29 Clubs count as hay, and he laughs at a quivering javelin.
30 His belly is as sharp as fragments of pottery, so he moves across the mud like a threshing-sledge.
31 "He makes the depths seethe like a pot, he makes the sea [boil] like a perfume kettle.
32 He leaves a shining wake behind him, making the deep seem to have white hair.
33 "On earth there is nothing like him, a creature without fear.
34 He looks straight at all high things. He is king over all proud beasts."
42:1 Then [at last,] Iyov gave ADONAI this answer:
2 "I know that you can do everything, that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 "[You asked,] 'Who is this, hiding counsel, without having knowledge?'Yes, I spoke, without understanding, of wonders far beyond me, which I didn't know.
4 "Please listen, and I will speak. [You said,] 'I will ask questions; and you, give me answers'-
5 I had heard about you with my ears, but now my eye sees you; 6 therefore I detest [myself] and repent in dust and ashes."
7 After ADONAI had spoken these words to Iyov, ADONAI said to Elifaz the Teimani, "My anger is blazing against you and your two friends, because, unlike my servant Iyov, you have not spoken rightly about me.
8 So now, get yourselves seven young bulls and seven rams, go to my servant Iyov, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering. My servant Iyov will pray for you - because him I will accept - so that I won't punish you as your boorishness deserves; because you have not spoken rightly about me, as my servant Iyov has."
9 So Elifaz the Teimani, Bildad the Shuchi and Tzofar the Na'amati went and did what ADONAI had ordered them to do, and ADONAI accepted Iyov['s prayer].
10 When Iyov prayed for his friends, ADONAI restored his fortunes; ADONAI gave Iyov twice as much as he had had before.
11 Then all his brothers and sisters came to him, also all who had known him before, and they ate a meal with him in his house. They consoled and comforted him for all the evils ADONAI had inflicted on him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.
12 ADONAI blessed Iyov's later situation even more than his earlier one - he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 pairs of oxen and 1,000 female donkeys.
13 He also had seven sons and three daughters.
14 The first he named Y'mimah; the second, K'tzi'ah; and the third, Keren-Hapukh.
15 Nowhere in the land could women be found as beautiful as Iyov's daughters; and their father gave them inheritances along with their brothers.
16 After this, Iyov lived 140 years, long enough to see his sons and grandsons, four generations.
17 Then, old and full of days, Iyov died.
The Noahide Nazarene Way Thus Say the Prophets Jewish Studies Christian Studies Thus Say the Prophets John of AllFaith's Main Blog AllFaith.com
