Read
Job Continues
Why Doesn't God Set a Time?
1Why doesn't God
set a time for court?
Why don't his people know
where he can be found?
2Sinners remove boundary markers
and take care of sheep
they have stolen.
3They cheat orphans and widows
by taking their donkeys
and oxen.
4The poor are trampled
and forced to hide
5in the desert,
where they and their children
must live like wild donkeys
and search for food.
6If they want grain or grapes,
they must go to the property
of these sinners.
7They sleep naked in the cold,
because they have no cover,
8and during a storm
their only shelters are caves
among the rocky cliffs.
9Children whose fathers have died
are taken from their mothers
as payment for a debt.
10Then they are forced to work
naked in the grain fields
because they have no clothes,
and they go hungry.
11They crush olives to make oil
and grapes to make wine—
but still they go thirsty.
12And along the city streets,
the wounded and dying cry out,
yet God does nothing.
Some Reject the Light
13Some rebel and refuse
to follow the light.
14Soon after sunset they murder
the poor and the needy,
and at night they steal.
15Others wait for the dark,
thinking they won't be seen
if they sleep with the wife
or husband of someone else.
16Robbers hide during the day,
then break in after dark
because they reject the light.
17They prefer night to day,
since the terrors of the night
are their friends.
Sinners Are Filthy Foam
18Those sinners are filthy foam
on the surface of the water.
And so, their fields and vineyards
will fall under a curse
and won't produce.
19Just as the heat of summer
swallows the snow,
the world of the dead
swallows those who sin.
20Forgotten here on earth,
and with their power broken,
they taste sweet to worms.
21Sinners take advantage of widows
and other helpless women.
22But God's mighty strength
destroys those in power.
Even if they seem successful,
they are doomed to fail.
23God may let them feel secure,
but they are never
out of his sight.
24Great for a while; gone forever!
Sinners are mowed down
like weeds,
then they wither and die.
25If I haven't spoken the truth,
then prove me wrong.
Bildad's Third Speech
God Is the One To Fear
1Bildad from Shuah said:
2God is the one to fear,
because God is in control
and rules the heavens.
3Who can count his army of stars?
Isn't God the source of light?
4How can anyone be innocent
in the sight of God?
5To him, not even the light
of the moon and stars
can ever be pure.
6So how can we humans,
when we are merely worms?
Reflect
Faced with all this, Job asks the question we have all asked at some time. Why doesn’t God do something? Why does he let injustice go on and on? Job’s list of crimes is perhaps a conventional one. We can come up with a contemporary list, and ours is more extensive. TV coverage makes us aware, night by night, of the immeasurable evil all over the world. To the sins of individuals in Job’s list we can add the wars taking place, government corruption, atrocities in countries like the Congo, terrorism, genocide . . .
Why doesn’t God DO something? When we ask this question today we need to be more nuanced than Job could be in his context. We know enough now, with the whole of the Old Testament and the revelation that Jesus brought us, to reflect that if God did “do something” we ourselves would not be left unscathed. It’s all too easy to see sin, like the list of crimes in this passage, as bad things that other people do. Jesus had something to say about “motes” and “beams” (Matthew 7:5, KJV).
But that’s to skip ahead a thousand years. Bildad had a response to Job in his own time. Some of it’s even true. But Bildad misunderstands God in one very serious way. His thinking about God is just what we might think if God had not shown us otherwise. We are not like worms or maggots. He created us and he loves us and treasures us. Even Jews in the Old Testament grasped this (e.g. Deuteronomy 7:6-8, Psalm 8). Even Job knew that he mattered to God.
Read on tomorrow to see what Job thought of Bildad’s final shot.
Respond
Father, Thank you for loving me and caring for me, even though I don’t deserve it. Thank you for sending Jesus who showed us what you are like, and who died on the cross for our sin. Thank you that you continually help us to grow more like you.
Annabel Robinson
Annabel was born in Kew, near London, England. She committed her life to Jesus Christ at a Scripture Union camp when she was 16, and immediately found joy and peace. At Oxford she was active in the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, where she met her husband, Reid. They emigrated to Canada in 1965, where she taught Classics at the University of Regina until 2007. She has two children, Heather in Oslo and Alasdair in Calgary.