Day 312: Job 1-3 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebaldapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) - Family, welcome to date 312 here at the Bible Department. We are in a brand new book of the Bible. We're in the book of Job. I think that most people are familiar with the book of Job. However, you're probably only familiar with like the first two chapters, maybe three chapters and probably like the last couple of chapters. Most people think they're familiar with the book of Job but really they're only familiar with the introduction and then the conclusion of Job. Or as we like to say it here, like or in more academic settings, the prologue of Job in the epilogue of Job. But over the next 12 days, we are gonna be deep diving into the book of Job, just like we do every single book of the Bible. And not only are you gonna get the setup for the book, which is a conversation between Yahweh and the Satan, not to be confused with Satan, but the Satan will get into a little bit more on that later in the episode. But we're also gonna get the dialogue which takes up most of the book of Job, which is found in the middle.

And that dialogue is between Job and his three friends, which eventually grows into four friends and then the dialogue between Yahweh and Job. So we're not as gonna look at the prologue and the epilogue. We're gonna look at the entire book. And so we got almost two full weeks in the book of Job. It's gonna be amazing buckle up and let's dive in. Hey, if you have not done the reading for the day, if you have not read Job chapters one, two, and three, this is a great place to stop the video, pause the audio, go get the reading done, I would say, in terms of just comparing content, this is the easiest part of the book of Job, okay? Once we hit tomorrow, it's gonna get crazy just 'cause it's a ton of poetry. So the reason that most people have read the beginning of Job and the end of Job is 'cause those sections of the book are narrative, okay? What's in the middle is dense Hebrew poetry. So anyway, if you have another reading, go do the reading. For everyone that's done the reading, like every day, I'm gonna give you context clues, I'm gonna give you as many nerdy nuggets as I can. And then we're going to leave off the episode with a timeless truth. So let's dive into context clues. All right, chapter one, verse one starts like this in the land of us. There lived a man whose name was Job, okay? So verse one, in our context, just sounds like

a historical story, okay? Historical narrative. However, this exact phrasing in the land of us, there lived a man whose name was Job. In the cultural context in which this is written, would kind of be like you or I saying, what's upon a time in a land far, far away, okay? There's a little bit of a hint that the history isn't the point here, okay? Actually in Hebrew, the exact wording, I've got it written down in my notebook would be, a man there was in the land of us, a man there was in the land of us. Now, there are two other moments in the Hebrew Bible that kind of, the story starts that way. And I'm gonna read both of them to you and we can kind of see what they have in common. The first moment where we get that Hebrew pattern, a second Samuel chapter 12, verse one. Now, this is the parable that Nathan tells David about the stolen lamb. Remember to bring the king back to repentance, to get him to confess that he had killed Uriah, okay, and taken Uriah's wife. The second moment where we get that Hebrew pattern, okay? A man there was in the land of us, like that template, is in second Kings chapter 14, verse nine. And this is the fable that Joash tells Amaziah of Judah. So the only other two examples of this beginning are a parable and a fable.

No exaggeration, Job essentially begins, like chapter one, verse one, with the Hebrew equivalent or the ancient equivalent of once upon a time. Now, I'm not saying that Job wasn't a true historical character or that this isn't actual historical narrative. What I am saying is that there's a literary device being used here to help the reader understand that actually matters here. Like the age of Job, like the relationship that Job has with these kids, like that's not the thing that matters. The point here, like a parable, like a fable, is the truth that's buried within the story. Now, one other kind of context clue or literary clue, okay, is that the entire book of Job is a chiasm. That's right, we love a good chiasm. So the prologue is chapters one and two. Job's complaint is chapter three. And then from chapters four to 27, are three dialogues, okay? And those dialogues are intricately designed. They actually go Elephas, Job, Bill Dad, Job, Zofar, Job. Okay, that's Job's three friends, okay? I'll say it again. Elephas, Elephas is gonna speak, Job is gonna speak. Bill Dad is gonna speak, Job is gonna speak. Zofar is gonna speak, Job is gonna speak. Okay, so from chapter four to 27, you are gonna get three dialogues. And then chapter 28, you're gonna get an interlude.

And in that interlude, you're gonna get a wisdom psalm. This is the center of the chiasm. And then what's gonna be mirrored with those three dialogues are three monologues from chapters 29 to chapters 41. And then instead of Job's complaint, which is gonna be in chapter three, what's mirrored with Job's complaint is chapters 40, chapter 42, verses one through six. That's Job's confession. And then we're gonna get an epilogue. Chapter 42, verses seven to 17. Like I said, most people have read chapters one, chapter two, and probably chapter 42. But we are actually gonna dive into the meat of the book, which is all the stuff in the middle, all right? So for context, let's wrap up our context for the day. We don't get history, we don't get an author, we don't get an audience. But the context is so important because this is a literary genre that's really, really, really, really important. Also, I'll say this, that this kind of like theodicy or the question about where is God in the middle of suffering? I'd say most people know about the book of Job because it's a famous story. It's like a guy who loses everything. He loses children, he loses his wealth, he loses everything, refuses to curse God, but has a lot of questions about God's character.

Like everyone knows this story because I think most of us are probably wondering why do bad things happen to good people? And I'm gonna steal my thunder here with our Thomas Truth. And I want us to all know, like when bad things happen, when like unthinkable things happen, especially to good people, to people like Job who are blameless, upright, commendable, full of character, godly people. It's easy to go, ah, didn't Proverbs just teach us? That God rewards wise people with like blessing and he punishes wicked people with like the consequences of their actions. Isn't that what Proverbs just told us? And what Job is doing is it's balancing that perspective, that Proverbs is teaching us. And what you're gonna realize is that Job's three friends, they have a perspective rooted in the book of Proverbs. And what Job is designed to do is to actually create some nuance and some gray because Proverbs is gonna communicate very black and white. Hey, if you train up a child in the way they should go, when they're old, they won't depart from it. Okay, but what happens when you do train up a child in the way that they should go and they get old and they do depart, what happens then? And so, Job's friends can't handle the curveball because for them, if you're blessed, that means God's rewarding you for being wise. Well, Job is wise, Job's blameless, he's righteous,

he's godly, full of character. But he's getting the consequences of the wicked. How's that? That's a mismatch in their worldview. And so, Job is designed to help us to grapple with or to understand or wrap our minds around the nuance of life. Sometimes life isn't as tidy as tidy and neat, I could work out. Neat and tidy as we would want it to be. So, in the middle of asking the question, why do bad things happen to good people? I actually wanna challenge us with a better question. Why did the worst thing happen to the best person? The question isn't why do bad things happen to good people? But why did the worst thing, the cross, the crucifixion? Why did the worst thing happen to the perfect person, the only perfect person? Jesus Christ of Nazareth. suffering and why do evil things happen to good godly people, really that conversation is a conversation that's really centered around the character and nature of God. And so, this theodicy, as we explore evil, which is what the book of Job is trying to do, is actually way more about theology than many of us even realize. Sambi, the weight is over. My brand new book, "Crushing Chaos," is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes & Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So, you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & Noble or you can go to a book's a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy if you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective.

If you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book and if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode because Job and his friends are in an argument, okay? And this is our main nerdy nugget for the day. They're in an argument and Job's perspective is this, I'm innocent and since I'm innocent and God's just, I don't understand how a just God who rules the world by justice would let an unjust thing happen to me. The friends, their only natural conclusion is God is just. God does rule the world with justice and since God is just and he rules the world with justice, you must have done something to deserve this because God's just and it would be unjust for him to do this to you if you're really righteous, like if you're actually blameless. And so there's a lot of things that the characters don't know and that's active with the prologue is supposed to set us up for. There are two big things that the characters do not know, okay? Number one, Job's friends don't know that he's actually blameless. We know that and the text is going to go out of its way to let us as the audience know that even though the characters in the action don't know that. There's a second thing that we as the audience knows that the narrator has told us that Job and his friends don't know that the actors in the action don't know and that's that there's been this whole scene with the Satan. That's right. Not Satan, but the Satan, which in Hebrew means the accuser or the prosecutor. By the way, here's a little side note. When people are accusing the brethren, like when we are accusing church or like accusing church leaders, we want to be careful because that's literally what the Satan does.

Remember, Satan is not a name, thus Satan is actually a title. It'll be like saying, you know, the editor or like the coach, okay? Not a name, but a title, a role, thus Satan, it's like the accuser, the prosecutor. So there's this courtroom scene where God is judge, judge of all the earth and he's talking to his staff and is a prosecutor who's like, "Hey, people only worship you because you bless them." Like they actually don't love you, they love themselves. Like worshiping you is a cheat code to life. These people don't love you, they're gold diggers. So of course, Yahweh is like, all right, you're wrong, okay? So take everything away. Let's test Job. So what we as the audience know is that there's this entire scene between God and the Satan that Job is not aware of and Job can't be aware of it. If God is found giving Job the answers to the test, then that would be cheating. So Job can't know and this really gets into the heart of the book because remember, the friends are like God's just and he rules the world with justice, therefore his actions toward you, homie, are just. Job is saying, "Well, maybe God isn't just because I promise you, I'm just, I'm righteous. I'm blameless. I did nothing. I don't know why this is happening to me." And you know what? Somebody let me talk to God because this isn't just now. What is necessary in order to know what's just and what's just. I'll tell you what's necessary. Full knowledge of everything. That's right, omniscience. And so what the prologue is doing is it's letting us know that we know something that the characters don't know.

The prologue is setting us up to find this conclusion, to discover this conclusion. The characters don't know everything. Neither Job or his friends are omniscient, which is exactly what's gonna happen when God finally talks to Job. He's not gonna answer his question about evil or suffering or justice. He's actually just going to ask him a set of questions that are gonna lead Job to the conclusion that he doesn't know it all, that he doesn't have enough information to even judge whether or not God is just or not. And that's wisdom. Wisdom is when you come to the conclusion that you don't have enough information to properly judge anything, really. Like even let's take when you're offended. Oftentimes when I'm offended, I know what someone's done and then I fill in the gaps. I tell myself a story about why they did it. So not only am I observing their actions or judging their actions, but now I'm creating a narrative about their motives. But the reality is that I don't know their motives, but that sure doesn't stop me from creating a story about their motives, does it? It doesn't. And so what the book of Job is actually getting you to do is to adopt wisdom.

Now, what it proverbs teaches that the beginning of wisdom is what, the fear of the Lord. That the fear of the Lord should lead us to humility, to put ourselves in context of who God is. Wisdom leads you to the conclusion, he's infinite, I'm finite, he's big, I'm small, he's awesome, I'm nothing, he's everything. He's omniscient, I know nothing. That is actually the humble conclusion that wisdom leads to. Wisdom doesn't lead a wise person to think they're smart. Wisdom leads a wise person to realize they know nothing in comparison to the one who knows everything. And so who am I to ask the omniscient one who knows everything, why he's doing what he's doing, or why he put the universe together the way that he did, or what justice even is. Think that a lot of us, we really do want to define justice. We want to define for ourselves what is just and what is right and what's not just, and at a certain level we can. We can know what human justice is, but we don't know enough. I actually wrote it the way that I want to say it. Wisdom is coming to the humbling realization that we simply don't have enough knowledge or information to judge whether Yahweh is ruling the cosmos justly. We don't, and that takes a lot of humility, doesn't it? That's our Thomas Truth. We are not omniscient.

You're not omniscient, I'm not omniscient. None of us are omniscient. There's one who knows everything. And his name is Yahweh. And therefore, he is the only one who's adequately prepared, designed, and positioned to judge. He can judge you, he can judge me, he can judge all of us. I may be able to judge your actions, but I can never judge your motives or your heart. 'Cause I don't know your motives and I don't know your heart. It's funny, you can be married so long where you think you can start to assume the motives of the person that you're married to. But humility begins to say, I'm married to a mystery. The more I know about my wife, the more I realize what I don't know about my wife. And this book, this book of Joe, is supposed to get you to the place where you go, I know so much about God that now I realize all the things I don't know about God. And wisdom doesn't puff up. Wisdom, unlike knowledge, actually leads you to the humble conclusion, I don't really know what I'm talking about. And that is what the prologue is actually designed to do. It's designed to give you and I, as the audience, information that the players don't even have, which is just a microcosm of the reality that we all live in.

There's stuff that you don't know and that I don't know. And the whole point of the prologue is to set us up to know something that Job and his friends don't know. And then we're looking at them for the rest of the book. We're gonna look at them, have a conversation and go, wait a second, if they only... that they're coming to. And the same way that we as the audience have an understanding that they don't have and we're desperately wanting to give them that understanding, that's how God sees us. He sees us interacting and God's like, "Oh, only if they knew." They're taking their best stab at it. They're guessing. They're wandering around the dark and wisdom is there to actually lead them to the conclusion that they don't know. Wisdom's not there to give them the information they don't know. Wisdom is there to let them know that there is information they don't know. And what humility says is, "I don't know, I'm probably never going to know." And since I don't know, and since I'm never going to know, then I'm never going to position myself in a place to judge God. I'm just going to assume that whatever he's doing, that's justice. That's what the prologue is. The prologue of Job is designed to do. Tomorrow we got day 313. We're going to be looking at Job, chapters 4, 5, and 6. Really, I'm excited about it because I'm going to tease the fact or maybe even teach the fact that this is a garden story. That's right. There's a lot of similarities between Job and what's happening in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

Can't wait to dive into it. I love you guys. I'm proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. I'll see you right here. Tomorrow, same time, same place as we dive into Job, chapters 4 through 6, for day 313-3, 13-3-1-3. Let's go. See you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebobledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.