Job: Chapters 22 to 28

Last time, Job had his second go-around with his friends.  Now for the third and final round.

CHAPTER 22

The third and final round begins.  There is actually, thankfully a little bit of progression in the debate.  Eilphaz gives his third speech and he takes a new line of attack on Job.  Instead of just attacking him for not blindly following God and assuming he’s responsible for his misfortunes, Eliphaz engages in a sustained personal attack on Job.

Oh, so you’ve got it bad now, Job.  Well then – you shouldn’t have denied water to the thirsty.  You shouldn’t have sent begging widows away empty handed.  You shouldn’t have tried to ensnare those around you.  You shouldn’t have broken your word to your families, and left them naked and alone.  He accuses Job of every misdeed in the book.

And it’s clearly and obviously bullshit.  First, we know – having read the opening chapters – that the cause for Job’s misfortunes isn’t that he committed tons of crimes.  It’s because God and Satan made a bet.  And the reason why they made a bet is because God considered Job to be the most righteous man out there.  I’m assuming that screwing over widows and the poor isn’t what makes someone righteous in the eyes of God.  For that matter, if Job really was this bad a person, why would Eliphaz be his friend anyway?  His entire logic is transparently bull. 

It’s one thing to make general statements about how all the good are treated well and all the bad are treated bad.  That’s also weakly thought out, but at least by keeping it abstract you make it impersonal.  But now the stupid argument is getting even stupider.

I said the argument does progress – but maybe it’s better to say it regresses. 

CHAPTER 23

Time for Job to do what he does best – a verbal smackdown. 

Job points out that he has always followed God’s ways, always walked in God’s steps and listed to God’s commandments.  He hasn’t deserved this. 

And he’s terrified of God.  Because God is so powerful and who can contradict him.  But might doesn’t make right.

CHAPTER 24

Job goes in a new direction.  He acknowledges God’s power, but then wonders why God doesn’t help his friends.  Job lives in the real world.  In the real world, God doesn’t always help the good, regardless of what he friends what to think.  Bad things happen to good people, and Job goes on for that theme for quite some time.

Thus completes his smackdown of his friend.

CHAPTER 25

Finally, mercifully – it’s the last exchange between Job and his friends.  Bildad gets a third speech – so Zophar will be the only one to go just twice.  Anyhow, this is by far the shortest speech: just six verses (and one of them is just noting that “Bildad said” and not what he said. 

It’s a dumb argument Bildad makes against Job.  He basically argues for God’s power.  “How much less a human being, who is but a worm, a mortal, who is only a maggot?”  Yeah, Job has always acknowledged God’s power.  But Job doesn’t think that might and right and synonymous.

Actually, this shows that his friends are clearly losing the battle.  The speech in Chapter 22 was a last ditch attempt to argue that Job earned it, but when that fails, they fall back here.  This will also fail, so it makes sense that this big debate will finally end with this exchange.

CHAPTER 26

Job’s last response to his friends has Job against acknowledge that God has power.  He has tons of power.  He has so much power that no one can comprehend.  But that’s not the point for Job.

CHAPTER 27

The point for Job – again – is justice, not power.  And Job here makes one last fierce argument.  “My lips shall not speak falsehood, nor my tongue utter deceit.”  Job may not have the power to stand up to God, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be a boot-licking lackey, telling the boss what he thinks the boss wants to hear.  “I will not renounce my innocence.  My justice I maintain.”  He’s still taking his stand. 

The Bible has put a great deal of emphasis on acting in a proper manner.  It’s what God has wanted from the people, and ever since at least Chapter 18 of Genesis, it’s been clear that this is a two-way street.  No one ever so directly makes this claim as Job, though. 

And the dirty little secret: God really can’t defend what he’s done to Job.  On purely moral grounds, how can you?  He let Satan destroy everything about Job’s life just in order to win a bet.  There was no broader point.  It really was like the Duke brothers in “Trading Places.”  When Job says, “Let me enemy be as the wicked, and my adversary as the unjust” – well, God is the unjust one to Job. 

And Job takes another shot at his friends: “Why do you spend yourselves in empty words.”  He’s absolutely right.  Job is standing up for morality but his friends are servile toadies, who will just play pretend – pretending to God and to themselves.  Job’s emphasis upon morality is heroic, and his friends efforts to deny it is pathetic.

CHAPTER 28

We interrupt our normal broadcast coming at you at this time to bring you a poem that has randomly wandered for no apparent reason.

After 27 chapters of back and forth about Job and his situation, you get a poem that talks of the glories of wisdom.  It looks like a long-last psalm that can’t find its way home.  It’s the missing book of Wisdom; only finally one written in Hebrew. 

It’s just a poem about how great wisdom is and how awesome it is and how it’s more valuable than all else.  Yeah, I know.  This is a point made repeatedly in several other Bible books.  But this poem is entirely divorced from what’s going on.

I guess you can find some thematic similarities, as it ends by saying “the fear of the Lord is wisdom” and that’s how this book will end – with Job caving in fear of the Lord.  But that’s a really weak connection. 

It’s not a bad poem, it just feels like the reel from the wrong movie stuck in here by mistake.  

Click here for the next seven chapters of Job.