Main news for 20 January 2025

Job does not argue. What, in fact, could he argue with? Before this Eliphaz says absolutely correct words. Only they do little good. Everything Eliphaz says misses the point. It misses not only because Job himself knows all this perfectly well. It misses above all because what Eliphaz says neither explains nor solves the problem in any way. The point is not that God is higher than man. The point is that this does not make things any easier for a human being. Job's main question is: what, then, does God want from me? What have I done wrong before Him?

If Job's friends had helped him answer this main question, their support would have been invaluable. But this is exactly what they do not do. Eliphaz, for example, speaks only general correct words, whose correctness is of no benefit to Job. Meanwhile Job himself sees perfectly well the main problem of his friends: they were simply frightened. They saw something terrible and became frightened, as Job himself says. What were they frightened of? The calamities that fell on Job? His illness? Hardly: if that were so, they would have left Job long ago, or would not have gone to him at all.

Something else was frightening: the questions Job asks, the words he speaks. And they are frightening precisely for religious people. Because they destroy their religiosity. Not deliberately or intentionally, but simply by bringing them face to face with a situation that does not fit into any religious framework. Then a religious person finds himself compelled somehow to explain this situation. Not so much to the one who is in it, but to himself. Otherwise there is catastrophe. Catastrophe for the religious person himself.

All his religiosity may collapse - nothing more terrible can be imagined. And Job's friends do everything in order to answer for themselves the questions he has raised. For themselves, not for him, Job. They cannot help him at all: they have a different task. Still, they would very much like to return Job to the framework of their own religiosity. Especially since quite recently, before he began to speak, Job himself was the same as his friends. Perhaps he will become his former self again? That would be best of all: then all the questions Job had asked would disappear by themselves. But Job could no longer become his former self.

Job 6:24-25

NOTES

Of course, Job has nothing to say in reply to Eliphaz about what has been said. But he understands perfectly...

Of course, Job has nothing to say in reply to Eliphaz about what has been said. But he understands perfectly well that his friend's words in this case miss the target (vv. 26-30). Job had no intention at all of denying the obvious religious truths that were known to him no less than to Eliphaz or to any of his other friends. Job does not argue with Eliphaz or object to him at all. He says: how much longer can I endure, and what can I hope for (vv. 11-13)? The most terrible thing has happened: something has fallen upon a righteous person that he does not deserve in any way, and a human being can do nothing about it, because God explains nothing to him. He only strikes blow after blow, and human strength is not boundless (vv. 2-4).

Job had always feared sin and impurity most of all, and now he has fallen ill with a disease that makes a person unclean, a disease known to be sent by God to the most terrible sinners as punishment for their sins. Now God forces Job to live precisely in such impurity, like the worst sinner (vv. 5-7). It would be better if He gave Job the chance to die: death is the lot of everyone, there is no sin in it, and the death of a righteous person is as pure before God as his life. But death does not come, and there is no end in sight to a life spent in impurity (vv. 8-10).

Job, as we can see, is frightened not by death, but by a life whose meaning and purpose he does not see, and by a punishment whose reason he does not understand. In such a situation, it would truly have been better for his friends to keep silent and simply be near the sufferer, without trying to "instruct" him with common truths and general phrases (vv. 14-20). But they cannot be silent, and Job himself tells them why: they are afraid (v. 21). This, of course, is not fear of leprosy; otherwise Job's friends would hardly have come to him, and certainly would not have spent a whole week beside him. What frightens Job's friends is what he says. Job's words do not fit into the framework of traditional religiosity, and his friends try to "bring him to his senses," or in essence, to squeeze him back into the old framework that has become too tight for the sufferer. But Job stands firm in what he says; he is convinced that he is right (vv. 24, 29).

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