Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today I have another episode with my good friend, Mike Chu. Hi, Mike.
Mike Chu: Hey, Carey. It's good to be back.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. So we're going to continue our conversation that we have had recently about the book of Job.
But before we do that, I want to make sure everyone is aware of who you are and what you do and that you are the academic director of the Awakening School of Theology. And I was wondering, what does an academic director even do?
Mike Chu: Well, one of my responsibilities is to coordinate all of the various instructors that we are contracting and having teach courses at the Awakening School of Theology.
And of course, right [00:01:00] now, one of the largest projects that we're working on is the Pastoral Initiative. It is a project that our founder, Dr. Michael Heiser it was a dream project that he would have always wanted to do for himself and to just provide this. The idea being that there are so many ministers, pastors, you know, folks who are trying to take care of churches around the world, but they do not necessarily have access to the scholarship content or training that comes when you're living in Western societies, such as Europe and in the Americas, where we have access to all these different seminaries. And even though Mike believes that, yes, one can find and do a lot of your own learning and study, there is also a need to properly train folks so they know actually how to use the content, and also the context of the scriptures that we are, you know, sharing.
One of his dreams was to be able to create [00:02:00] these courses that would be providing, essentially, equivalent type of training and an explanation of doctrines and ideas to the person who is taking care of a church in an area that doesn't have access or at least easy access to scholarly content material and also the training that will come with it.
And so we've been working on these 12 courses for the past year ever since Dr. Heiser had passed away. We are more than halfway through, we have actually filmed more than half of the courses already. They are slowly being released on a set schedule and we're targeting to be done with the entire project by the beginning or at least the first quarter of 2025.
Carey Griffel: That's amazing. I am so excited to see that project come to fruition and see Dr. Heiser's dream actually being fulfilled and really, just all of this information for people out there, especially in those hard to [00:03:00] reach areas because there's such a need and there's so many areas of growth of the church today that really need this deep content, this information so that people can think through things, they can know about things that we should all be knowing about that is just really touching on the Word of God. And our lives together as this growing global church.
Mike Chu: Yes. And one of the dreams and hopes about the project is that folks who live in areas, say like the United States, that they would be willing to pay for the courses in this pastoral initiative for them to learn and they would receive a certificate of biblical doctrine, but that their payment of these courses would also help fund overall the ability to provide these courses for folks who are in these hard to access nations and countries to receive the training that they otherwise would find a very difficult time being able to access. Very few people outside of [00:04:00] Western countries are able to access good seminary level training. And, you know, again, yes, Dr. Heiser did not necessarily believe everyone had to go to seminary. But at the same time, there is also an acknowledged reality that knowing a little Greek or a little Hebrew can be dangerous because if you don't even understand the grammatical use, how the language works, you can come up with really strange interpretive results in the end, just because of a lack of knowledge and training.
And so that is part of the hope is that these kind of courses will at least give a good groundwork for folks to be able to stand on and to be able to minister better to their congregations and the people that God has given them to take care of.
Carey Griffel: And so the people who are here in America, in Europe, in other places who are paying for the courses and taking these courses, we get kind of a double benefit from that. First of all, We learn [00:05:00] amazing material ourselves, and we're helping to fund this initiative so that other people can also learn this material.
Mike Chu: Yes, and that's one of the things I do love about the school, is that those who are drawn to take these courses at Awakening, they are already self driven folks, they're the kind of people that like, yes, I will invest a few hundred dollars into a Bible software program, but then they also have no idea, how do I use this? They want to learn. And so there is that wonder of like, yeah, you will actually be able to learn how to read the scriptures and also see a better view of a lot of these doctrines and ideas that have been tossed around. But understanding them on a deeper level of like, okay, so why did they develop things such as the doctrine of sanctification or the doctrine on the Holy Spirit or the attributes of God, or I'm just listing at some of the course names, but the overall thrust is to at least explain and to provide a good [00:06:00] groundwork of this is what this means and why it's important in the overall arching metanarrative that we call the scriptures and the story of what Jesus ultimately had revealed through the New Testament, especially the whole entire arc of the story that's began in Genesis and reaching towards its culmination hopefully in Revelation, right? It's this whole entire already and not yet kind of perspective that we have about the Scriptures.
There are things that are done, there are things that are still in play, and there are things that we're still waiting for to occur. And so having a better grasping of certain ideas is one of the main goals of this initiative.
Carey Griffel: That's awesome. Super excited about that and super grateful that you are part of that and working on all of these amazing things as well as working on schooling for yourself too.
Mike Chu: Yeah, I had finished my MDiv or my Masters of Divinity at Gordon [00:07:00] Conwell last May. Which is kind of crazy that that's now coming up to be almost a year. I was in school for five years. Like, you know, like, Oh, is that typical? It's like, well, , at the Boston campus, that's actually pretty average. I met students who are full time pastors themselves and they are still in the process of getting their MDiv after 10 years. So if this is something that you wonder, like, can I ever do this? There are great folks that I know who are still in process, and it is a good thing to do. Even if it means you're only taking one course a semester.
Carey Griffel: So last time we met, we were talking about the book of Job. And we were talking about Job as a second Adam, and we went through kind of a lot of chapters one and two of Job, and showed a lot of creation language, a lot of callbacks to the Garden of Eden, and just the character of Job and who he was and what was going on with him.
Lots of interesting [00:08:00] stuff there. So let's kind of pick up and remind people of what we were talking about and continue on from our discussion there.
Mike Chu: Yeah. So I, would assume some folks would be disturbed by the idea that Job is a second Adam. And I would just simply, like the previous episode, just point out to folks that we see this pattern throughout Old Testament scriptures where there is a person that is supposed to remind the reader a little bit about Adam. And one of the best examples I could think of is actually of Noah. Especially by the time we get into chapter 9, after the flood is done, has done its decimation, and God even makes that promise that like, you know, this kind of thing, whether it's regional or worldwide, however you want to interpret what the flood was, God promises that I'm not going to wipe out all of life and all of humanity in this kind of form and fashion again. And so, he's not going to send this kind of thing to just essentially bring all of creation back to an uncreated state, [00:09:00] use of, like, chaos water. And it's like, I'm not going to do that again.
And he then says , essentially a repeat of a verse that would remind the listener of Genesis chapter one, that Noah and his family are supposed to be fruitful and multiply throughout the land. And the first ones who were given that was the first human pair. And so we have this allusion again of, hey, God is starting all over again.
He's essentially , like, wipe the slate clean, in some sense, literally. And we are going to start again with another man, this guy, named Noah . And we're gonna start from there. And now, be fruitful and multiply, and those three sons that are supposed to go and be fruitful and multiply and, you know, we eventually only get to like Genesis 10 and 11, and then we start realizing like, wait, they didn't exactly do that, and, and God has to kind of force that of like, go, I said go, and, and then they go [00:10:00] out to the world after God does his little thing with a tower, Or does something to their tower, I should say. And so, it's an allusion again, back to Adam and back to the concept of being fruitful, going back to a creation state that is clean.
We talked about last time a scholar named Dr. Samuel Ballantine. He proposes that instead of being obsessed with trying to figure out where exactly is Job located . He believes that it's really just, it's considering that the book of Job is mostly poetry, that it pretty much is just more of a general description and more of a sense of getting the reader to think in the mindset of, what do you think of when you think of the term in the East?
And, you know, for us as modern Westerners, we generally, I don't know, China? Like, we would probably say something like that. But for an ancient Near Eastern listener or audience member, probably one of the first things that they would think of is like, well, what was in the East technically?
Oh, Eden. [00:11:00] They would think about Eden. And then even the description of Job himself and the way that his life is described is so idyllic. Everything's perfect. He has the perfect number of flocks. He has the perfect number of possessions. He has the perfect number of children. It's great. He has a great life.
And ultimately, you know, all that gets taken away. And so Ballantine's proposal is that the Book of Job is asking, on one level, the question, If Adam and his wife had never disobeyed God, would suffering still have come into the world? Which is a very clever way of putting it as how us Protestants tend to think of the fall. We tend to think of the fall as the very reason why All suffering occurs. It was because of sin. It was because of Adam's own disobedience and thus why we have suffering at all. And Ballentine is even just proposing that the Book of Job is this exploration into this concept that even if Adam and his wife, [00:12:00] in this case, Job and his wife being the stand ins, That even if they had never done anything wrong, on their own, suffering would still come into their world because you can't control other free agents who also exist in the world.
And other scholars like J. Middleton will take that concept even further. That you have agents in creation who are free willed, who can make their own choices. And unfortunately, sometimes those choices will have ramifications for other creatures in creation, and we cannot control the ramifications of what those choices will do.
And of course, we ended up talking about was essentially the accuser or the Ha Satan we got into talks about, like, whether this Ha Satan is actually the rebel from Genesis 3, spoiler alert, I personally don't think so. At the same time though, I also am open to the idea that there is something that is going on with this creature[00:13:00] with this being. And that is odd that he does not ever show up again after Chapter 2. And you can interpret that however you want. , I just personally take that he's not actually supposed to be a central focus as sometimes we tend to do with Job chapters 1 and 2. I think he is an agent. He is a free will agent. He does do stuff in the story, very clearly.
And he takes license. He takes power that has been granted to him and even though he can totally, you know, he has the right to choose, do I want to go full tilt into this or do I, you know, hold off a little bit? Do I reserve some of that? No, he totally made the choice of going full tilt into full destruction mode and I don't like it. And I think as readers of the text, we're supposed to also not like it either.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, it's supposed to make us uncomfortable, I think.
Mike Chu: Yeah. But I find it odd. He doesn't show up again.
Carey Griffel: He's not judged.
Mike Chu: He is not judged, exactly.
Carey Griffel: And in fact, it seems like [00:14:00] God really takes all of the credit for what's happening.
Mike Chu: Because in the end, if he is the lord of the council, You know, he's the guy that makes the final call. He's the king who ultimately will execute whatever in the end he deems fit, whether it goes along with what the council, his advisors are saying, or if it's going to be against what they're recommending.
The buck ends with him. And so I think that's something that we have to also contend with, right, a lot of times people want to try to protect God's reputation in the Book of Job. As though, like, well, it's not really God who destroyed Job's family and all his possessions and everything. But God never actually argues that he's innocent before Job. He never argues with Job that he didn't do any of this stuff. He never corrects Job's theology. He never corrects Job's, interpretation or understanding of the events of chapters 1 and 2. He never tells him what's going on.
And so we have to also reckon with that. [00:15:00] And, you know, some commenters and some Bible teachers will just say, like, well, he tells him outside of the text, which is kind of ironic when you have these same Bible teachers who will also say, we only bring interpretation from the text, but then they will naturally really quickly, without maybe realizing it, insert an interpretation that is not from the text itself, that we are uncomfortable with ambiguity.
The real problem about the Book of Job is, there is ambiguity. You don't get a resolution to the identity of the accuser. You don't get a resolution, there's no scene in the text where God basically like, Ha ha! Now you're gonna be punished, you idiot. Like, he doesn't say any of that. We get no, you know, cathargic feeling of justification of like, Yes, he got his commupance.
Never. And we just have to leave it as that. You have to become comfortable that there are going to be ambiguities in the text because there are some things that we just will not know on this side of[00:16:00] eternity and so the sooner we can come to that, the sooner it's easier to enjoy the text instead of trying to resolve every question, there are just some questions that cannot be answered on this side.
Carey Griffel: So, one thing I've been talking about lately is just the structure of the Bible itself, especially in regards to the Tanakh and the three parts of the Tanakh. And so, when you look at where Job is structured in the Tanakh, it's very interesting to me how it is at the beginning, well, not exactly at the beginning, but almost at the beginning of the third section of the Tanakh.
So, in most lists of the Tanakh that I see, you have Psalms, and then you have the Book of Job. So, the Book of Job is basically the first narrative section of the third section of the Tanakh. And, to me, that makes me wonder, and this is not something we can necessarily answer, but it looks like a callback to that first book of the [00:17:00] Torah, Genesis.
And so once we're looking at all of these connections, it's like, the more you see, the more you can see. And I mean, some of it might be a bit conjecture or speculation, but it's really interesting to dig in and see what you can see.
Mike Chu: Yeah, I think folks need to realize that there were actual thinkers behind the ordering of things of how they're presented, right? That even how books are ordered conveys the kind of theological bias that one may have, right? Us Protestants, for example, we reordered the Old Testament into a very I almost want to say like antiseptic kind of like approach, right? It's like, well, , we got the five books of Moses. We don't want to touch that because, you know, people will get really upset with us. But then we're going to reorder some of the books that were considered part of the writings. And we're going to say, Oh, these are history. And then here's some other things, you know, like maybe, you know, major prophets. And then we'll put the book of [00:18:00] Daniel as part of the major prophets, because we as Protestants assume Daniel is a prophet. And ignore that in the Jewish ordering of the text, the book of Daniel is not alongside books like Isaiah and Jeremiah or E It's stuck inside what's technically called the writings, right?
So that's already going to bug some people out of like, wait a minute, wait, they didn't think Daniel was a prophet? Like how can this be? And, you know, so then we get into all these debates, but this is actually just to point out simply that even the way that the books are ordered is supposed to convey a message.
So sometimes that's where we can glean certain things of like, well, that's odd. Like, we would order the Book of Chronicles in something we call the Histories. You know, alongside with Kings and with 1st and 2nd Samuel. But Chronicles currently right now, in the current versions of the Hebrew Bible that's printed, it's at the end of the book.
From what I understand, the new version that will probably not fully published until like, I'm like close to 50 something. [00:19:00] My goodness. Like it's kind of one of my little pet peeves. Like, come on, give me this version. But apparently the book of Chronicles will now then be put actually closer to the front, maybe even before the Torah.
Which, which, which, which is, which is, you know, that's going to tick off some people, to o.
Carey Griffel: I actually made that suggestion in one of my episodes, like you could actually do that. Like that, that would be a legitimate order in some fashion, if you're thinking in terms of like the history of Israel. And let's put that at the first so that people get this sense of here's the overview of the story.
Mike Chu: Yeah, so this is part of the debate and the scholarly research seems to be showing out in the end that Chronicles was in an earlier time actually placed closer to the front, if not the front of the Hebrew Bible. Later, it appears to have been moved towards the end in later, you know, [00:20:00] organizations.
And, you know, even then you get an interesting reasoning of the ordering. If it was at the end, then the original understanding or the older understanding was that the Book of Chronicles, especially because of how highly edited it is, the writers make it very clear that this is edited. That, you know, that's why, like, I think of, whenever I think of Chronicles, they have this interesting phrase of like, hey, if you want to, you know, this, we've talked about this story before, and if you want to check it out, we have the, the scroll of the War of the Kings, and all these other things, and you totally should just go check that out, if you want all the details, like they make it explicit, they are drawing from sources, and that, this work is not meant to be a replication of those works.
It's a compilation and in some sense a shortening or a summarizing of those sources. And interestingly, like, the way they summarize is they decided, we're not going to include any of the bad stuff of any of the Judean kings. Like, Bathsheba, the [00:21:00] incident with Bathsheba and David is not in the Book of Chronicles.
How is that possible? It's like, when I think of David, unfortunately, you know, like, yes, I think of a man after God's own heart, but I also think of a guy who had nothing better to do walking in the middle of the night on top of his courtyard, and he sees a woman bathing naked on, her home. and like, that unfortunately is just ingrained in my own understanding of who David is, but Chronicles doesn't mention it. It pretty much is just this idea as though like, hey, let's have a thought experiment. If the Davidic kings were great guys, just overall upstanding dudes, what would the history of Israel look like?
And even the way that the end of the Book of Chronicles ends is almost on like mid sentence, like it's not even done. It's as though the editors are trying to say, you know, we're still waiting for the next Davidic King. And so, like, that was the older understanding of why it was placed towards the end, and that might have been what was trying to be implied.[00:22:00]
If it is closer to the front, as now some of the more recent scholarship is pointing out, Then the messaging is pretty ,similar too. That like, Hey, you know, like we want to at least give you a good overall impression of what Israel is like and what our Davidic Kings were truly like, and that, yeah, we're looking for the Messiah.
Now let's get into Genesis. Now let's get into all the other narratives that, you know, that we have to unfortunately get into the nitty gritty and all the terrible stories. But we want to leave, at least leave a really good taste in your mouth of the people of Israel, the worshipers of Yahweh , and of the best one, the Davidic kings. You know, even the way how books are ordered in your scriptures is theological messaging. As strange as that is to some people, it isn't random.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, and so for us, we're not sure where to place this book of Job because, like you said, we want to stick it with the histories and we want to say that it was a historical book that was before the [00:23:00] time of the Patriarchs or something along those lines, but when we are looking at the themes of all of the books and we're tracing all of these themes and trying to see how those themes connect, it is super cool to see how this connects to the Book of Genesis and just our understanding of humanity in general, because, in a sense, the Book of Job is one of the most human books of the Bible.
Like, it's dealing with all of these things that we deal with all the time, constantly, almost on a daily basis, and it's uncomfortable for us. Sometimes we avoid it because of that, but if we can see it in some of these lights and see how it's speaking to our condition and how it's connecting to everything else, I find that exceptionally helpful and it really clarifies some of the difficulty that I actually have with the book to begin with.
Mike Chu: Mm hmm. Yeah, and this is again, like, this is my own pet peeve, right? [00:24:00] Whenever people study the Book of Job, they only focus on the narrative portions. And ironically, in some of the scholarship, it just seems to be pointing that the narrative parts were actually later editions.. Right, that the book, before it reached its final form, it was poetry, and then chapters one and two were added to the front to kind of frame, essentially, like, why are we even reading this poetry, and so it goes into the backstory, but that they were later.
And, and also another thing that I know probably will disturb some readers, is that , the fourth friend, the one that sometimes people wonder like, Oh, is this Jesus? Or is this God? Or is this a prophet? Or who is this dude? The fourth guy, interestingly enough, that also seems to be a later edition because Job and the three friends don't ever interact with him.
There's no response. There's no comeback. And God, when he talks with Job, he doesn't even reference that guy. He references the three friends. [00:25:00] He doesn't reference the fourth guy. Okay. So it's a, like, does that mean that we should ignore that text? No, we just have to understand that the buildup and how it developed over time in this work of art that we now call the Book of Job, that there were stages of development in the text and, you know, some Believe that the fourth friend, for example, that what you see in ultimately Job as a historical figure, because I do believe that this guy did exist, whether his real name was Job or not, not sure. t
But there is enough ancient near Eastern texts that talks of a righteous dude who essentially is going through immense suffering because of a testing or punishment from the gods and in the other ancient Eastern versions of the texts. Job is, you know, or their version of Job is the epitome of piety. He's the best version of a worshiper of these deities. And typically his response in the end is, yes, I [00:26:00] totally must have sinned somehow, some way. I don't know how, but I must be in the wrong because that's why I suffer, right? And yet our version of Job in this book, is he is insistent that he is innocent.
And that what we have is then a dialogue competition between him and three friends who I am convinced are actually representing different versions of wisdom in the Ancient Near East context. They all represent, like, they're the paragons of this version of why we suffer, of theodicy. And the conjecture is that the fourth friend is basically the Israelite version of theodicy during the time when the Book of Job was finally compiled together.
And it was almost like a contemporary moment of like, this is what we as Israelites or as Jewish people who are living in exile in Babylon, would say right now to the question of why do we suffer.
[00:27:00] But at the end, the one who gives the definition is God. And so it's a fascinating kind of thing to realize that it's a conversation that's being had. It's overall an examination of, why do people suffer? And again, people may not realize this. The book of Job never answers that question.
It guises itself as answering that question. It never actually does. Job never learns why he suffered. But what he is asking for is he wants an audience, which was unthinkable to an ancient Near Eastern audience. Like, who are you, a little mere human being, to demand that God would actually come and answer to you? You know, that was the general understanding. Are you crazy? And yet in the Book of Job, he does. And that itself is actually, I think, part of what we're ultimately supposed to learn about God through the Book of Job.
Anyways, yeah, we can get into a little bit more into [00:28:00] actual Chapter 3. I mean, this is one of the many reasons why I've really come to love studying and thinking about the Book of Job. I mean, it's just beautiful art. It really is.
Carey Griffel: It is. So before we actually get into chapter 3 of Job, let's talk a little bit about what imprecation is, because this word, imprecation, it might be a word that some of us know what that is, and we're really familiar, But I think a lot of listeners are not going to know what imprecation is.
And so we're going to start talking about imprecation and they're going to go, what is that? And what are you even talking about? So what is imprecation and where do we find it?
Mike Chu: So imprecation to really kind of quickly summarize it. It's basically cursing speech. That's the simplest way to describe it is any kind of speech where there a cursing or like evoking of angry emotions in your actual [00:29:00] speech and it's directed generally at a deity.
And so that's generally what an imprecation is. So for example, in my paper, I go into a little bit about what is imprecation. My paper was on Job chapter 3 verses 3 to 8, and I called it, and like, I, you know, this is the great thing when you do exegetical papers, you can create your own terms to try to describe what you're trying to say, and so I called it that those five verses are Job's curse lament, because when people look at those particular words that Job opens up with, it has all the signs and tellings of a curse, of a cursing, of an imprecation.
But at the same time, there's aspects about it that is lamenting. It uses elements of lament, of lament poetry, of lament speech. And so I think they are a combination of these two. And most of the time, you know, when you look at a lot of these commentaries and scholars, they will just, at the very least, we can [00:30:00] all agree it is an imprecation.
There is a cursing that is going on. And what people disagree on is like, but, you know, like God's not really invoked. It's like, I actually argue, no, he is. And usually the cursing is towards other things like, you know, curse this house or curse this land or curse something. Yet it's rare to find a cursing being declared against oneself.
And that's what's happening with Job. And so I wrote in my paper that , these five verses, it contains the majority of what I would say, and I would label as Job's self implication. Instead of Job's curse, as some commentators like to say, like, oh, it's just a general curse. No, no, no, no, it's not a general curse.
He is specifically aiming the curse, ironically, back at himself. And, you know, some people will recognize it. They'll recognize, yeah, he's trying to curse himself. But then they try to then shorten and just summarize it into the most, like, insipid and [00:31:00] insulting way of describing it. Of, oh, Job just simply wanted to die.
And even before we started recording, I was kind of like ranting with Carey a little earlier about how frustrating it is to read that kind of thing. Because when you understand the way of how narrative works and how important it is that they're mentioning certain words, the build up to those five verses in Job chapter three, verses one to two, the author is making it very clear that Job is finally speaking after seven days of silence, seven days and nights of silence. His three friends are sitting there with him in silence. He hasn't spoken at all. And so the very first words that come off, and this is actually the first moment we enter into poetry in the book of Job, you would think that these words are going to be important.
And I argued that these verses Actually set up the rest of the arguments that will go on throughout the rest of the book. And finally what God is actually going to [00:32:00] do and answer Job with by the time he comes into the story later on towards the end. He's actually answering and addressing the very things that Job brought up in these verses.
And so to ignore them or to just, you know, dwindle their importance down to the thing of Job just wanted to die ignores the impact of what the author is setting up about these words that Job is about to speak.
Carey Griffel: And some of what he says in these verses, like you said, it seems to be very essential and core to the things that God is going to bring out in the end.
You said in your paper about how the way that Job describes himself in these verses is actually called back to by God himself. And there's differences in how commentaries talk about that.
Mike Chu: Yes, in particular, there is a word that Job uses that is so strange that everyone [00:33:00] in all the commentaries that look at the actual Hebrew, they all acknowledge this is very odd.
It's the word Geber, some of your listeners , may be familiar with the word gibbor, right, of like mighty warrior. Geber is actually the lesser version of that. It's generally is used in the rest of the Hebrew text to describe a fully grown adult male. But when Job uses it, he's talking about himself as a baby.
He's describing that he as a baby was born as a Geber, which is very odd. And so when you look at the English translations of Job chapter 3, they do some interesting kind of gymnastics on trying to explain like what is Job trying to say when he says that word. And so they'll just say, you know, like, I was a male child and, you know, I was born as a male and it was like, that's the emphasis, but it doesn't make [00:34:00] sense.
And it's the only time that the word Geber ever used to describe a baby, an infant. And so there has to be something else that is going on in the text. So like, ultimately in my own personal translation for my paper, when I went into it, I translated it as, so this is the second part of verse 3, I'll just read my version of verse 3.
Let the day on which I was born be destroyed, and the night that said, A strong, genuine male child was conceived.
I was trying to capture the word strong, genuine is not in the text itself. It's my sort of italic description of trying to convey that Job is saying, I was destined to be not just any male, a strong adult male.
If you wonder, like, is this the man? Is this really the man, like, the guy that you need to look up to? It's like, yes, indeed, I am. I am that, you know, like, I am that [00:35:00] Geber. And the friends of Job later, as we get into the other chapters, they pick up on this. They pick up on the fact that he's like, why did you just call yourself a Geber?
That's odd. That's also kind of like, isn't that a little presumptuous, Job? And so when they use the word, they actually use it as an insult against him. Of like, oh yes, you, you truly were a Geber. It's sarcastically. But the reason we also know that this word is important is that God actually uses the word again when he finally starts talking to Job later on at the end of the book.
It's kind of indicating of like Job I know you assumed that I wasn't listening or that I was really silent or I just wasn't there or I didn't pay attention to you. Let me give you a hint that I was. You are a Geber. You, are this. and some people again, they assume God is treating Job like the friends were, like sarcastically.
I argue he isn't. He actually is stating a fact. Just as much as Job was stating a fact. Yes, I am a Geber.[00:36:00] I am an upstanding, righteous dude, like I am an adult male, I am strong and that this is not, it's a very weird usage of the word. And I think that this is an indication of like Job's understanding of like, look at me before all of this destruction happened, you would not have argued if I was a Geber.
And that even in a sense time itself or day and night would agree. Oh, yes, indeed. A Geber was born this day. It's just, it's just a very interesting way of describing himself. And God doesn't counter that. In the end, his friends try to, but God actually uses it. And I believe I remember correctly, he uses it twice.
It's emphasizing the fact that like, yeah, Job, I do agree with you. You are a Geber, which is very significant. Like, that's like an affirmation of like, am I crazy? Like, no you're not. No you're not, Job. You are indeed a strong, genuine male child. Yes, you are. So [00:37:00] yeah, even the way it starts off, this pericope is so strong.
I mean, as it should, the guy hasn't talked for seven days. So it's starting off like right off from the races and is going at this of like, let me remind you who I am and the day and the night themselves.... Oh, they witnessed my birth. I was important , and, you know, again, our Protestant tendencies would then kick in of like, Oh no, no, no, no.
You're supposed to be humble. Unless he actually is stating something that really was a fact, then to deny it is actually to lie.
Carey Griffel: So let's get into the rest of the way that you translated these verses here in chapter three. Do you want to go ahead and read your translation?
Mike Chu: Yeah, I'll read my translation and if folks want to, they can look at the NIV or ESV, whatever your favorite translation is, it will be very different, I will say.
And so we'll go into a little bit of it. And the reason why we're talking about this is because as I was digging into this, a lot of the [00:38:00] word usage is callbacks to creation and to also decreation, interestingly. So, Job chapter three, verses three to eight:
"Let the day on which I was born be destroyed,
and the night that said a strong, genuine male child was conceived,
Let that day be darkness.
Let God from above not care for it.
Let daylight not shine upon it.
Let darkness and grieving gloom reclaim it.
Let a rain cloud rest on it. |
Let them, responsible for the darkening of day, terrify it.
That night, let the tempest of gloom seize it.
Let it not be counted among the days of the year.
Let it not enter amongst the number of months.
Behold, let that [00:39:00] night be barren.
Let exultation not come into it.
Let the sorcerers of the sea enchant the ones skilled to agitate Leviathan."
Now, some may be wondering, like, why in the world did I translate it this way? And very much, again, it goes back to the concept of imprecation. This is a curse. And when I say curse, I don't mean I'm saying a swear word. When I say curse, or in this case, really a self imprecation or a self curse, Job is trying to invoke dark primordial powers. He's trying to invoke a curse, an incantation almost, a very dark incantation. Not against other people, not against a house or land or a nation or whatever else. He's trying to invoke it against his very existence. And so this is where, you know, [00:40:00] a lot of times people would just brush over this and not realize like, you know, if I was trying to describe through poetry, the despair and pain that I was going through after losing everything, including my children, including my own health, and even my wife's life was at risk, how would I describe that in poetry?
How would I be able to communicate that kind of pain to the reader, to the listener? Is it this just satisfactory enough to just say life really sucks or I'm in a lot of hurt? Is that enough? Cause from what I sometimes read and sometimes see from how us moderns react to these kinds of things, we try to diminish people's pain into a very like quippy line.
And we don't want to actually just sit like Job's friends, and actually meditate and ponder and reflect back upon ourselves the immense pain that those we love are [00:41:00] going through. And poetry is one of the best mediums to express something that is so difficult to put into factual words. And so here we see Job is describing his anguish.
And you're supposed to sit with that. You're supposed to be disturbed by it. And so if you aren't disturbed by it, I would be a little scared. But, like, you should be. If you're wondering, like, am I supposed to feel disturbed by this? The answer is yes. That is what the author is trying to do to you. He's trying to disturb you.
That Job is already kicking off right here. Oh, this is not the Job that we remember from Job chapter two or one. So, yep, this is a very different Job. This is a Job that has now gone through who knows how long of suffering and health issues. Who knows how long he's been sitting in the ashes and how long it took for his friends to get there to be there with him, right?
If you remember from the last episode, that whole challenge by the accuser [00:42:00] when everything was supposed to be done by now. We're at Yom Kippur. We're on the Day of Atonement. Should Job be in the Book of Life or not? And he instead proposes this crazy idea. Let the suffering continue indefinitely.
What do we do when we see our friends and family and even ourselves endure suffering and hurt and pain that has no end, that has no foreseeable end? How do we process that? And this is one way of how to process that, is through poetry and through trying to describe with very dark imagery, anguish.
Carey Griffel: So if Job was suffering needlessly, according to some people, you know, his friends and other people, they would say, why don't you just curse God?
But, here are his first words. He's not addressing God directly, and shaking his fist at the heavens, and saying, God, why did you do [00:43:00] this? Or at least he's not doing it that directly.
Mike Chu: Yeah, he's doing it in a circumventing way. Right? Part of the reason why there are scholars who are hesitant to call these verses imprecation, cursing, was because typically in the formula of a curse, you would invoke a deity. You would invoke the name of a deity. Job technically doesn't seem to be doing that.
But notice in verse four, he says, let God from above. not care for it. And sometimes, when we read our English translations, and I was trying to actually show it in my own translation, Job is actually giving a command, but he's giving it in a polite way. It's, he's not saying it in the second person imperative.
Right. As how we would say, like, Carey, get me some coffee or something like that. As though you were my secretary. No, you're not. You're a great scholar. You know, it's, it's in the other way of, you know, he's not using the second person. So he's not directly [00:44:00] saying you God, he instead is like, let God, and he's using the third person... let God, you know, as though if I'm being polite, if I'm a courtesan, if I am an advisor of a King, I wouldn't say, yo, King, you should do this. One, I probably would be beheaded right after that. Second, you know, if you are trying to show respect, even in the midst of his anguish, Job is still maintaining a certain level of decorum here with God.
Like, you know, he at least uses the word God here in this sense, and he's acknowledging God, let God from above not care for it and we're then trying, we're left with wondering, okay, if he's trying to address God politely, but still give a command, but he's giving a polite command, what is the command? Like, why does, why is he even saying this?
And this is because, again, this is from an ancient Near Eastern context of thinking. They [00:45:00] assumed, overall, in a pantheon of gods, if the gods, any of them, were not paying attention to what their special like, you know, arena was if the god of the air wasn't paying attention, just had a day off or something, or the god of water was just like, you know, I want to kick back and want to drink some like daiquiris or something, then you got a problem, because the moment that the god stopped paying attention, they take their eyes off the thing that they're focused on that they're responsible for, then the belief in the ancient Near Eastern context was everything's going to go to chaos. It's gonna just, like, unravel. It's gonna fall apart. And so the gods, in some sense, cannot take their eyes off of the ball, because if they did, everything falls apart. And so what Job is expressing here, it's like, he's actually trying to tell God, God, don't pay attention. I want things to unravel, I want the very day and night, I want time itself to just go into chaos because [00:46:00] of this pain. I really don't want to be experiencing this pain.
And one idea I have is can you destroy the very day itself, the very night I was born? That's actually why I translated it in verse 3. Let the day, now he's not talking about the specific time. He's talking about the actual concept of day, of that particular day. I want to destroy, like, annihilate it.
Which is a, like, it's such a strong Hebrew term. It's actually where we get the word Apollyon from. It's a transliteration that we see in the Greek. And of course, you know, those who are familiar with like dispensational theology, they'll like, Oh, or, or at least if you read Left Behind, I think one of the books was actually named Apollyon, it's actually coming from the same concept of destruction, of just destroyer.
And so let the day on which I was born be destroyed, like, just annihilated. You're supposed to be left like what? and I realized as I was [00:47:00] reflecting and studying that in many ways, if I were to put this into a modern parlance, I would say, let's say my let's say my birth. This is not really my birth. I don't want really people to know how old I am. Let's say my birthday was on on April 1st, 1978. It's not. But if I were to say, , let there be no such thing as April 1st, what I would mean in the way that Job is conveying it here is, let there be, you know, you'll know of March 30, you'll know of April 2nd, but if I were to ask you, What's April 1st, you would have a quizzical look on your face because the very existence of April 1st would be wiped away from existence, would be destroyed.
That's a disturbing concept that's the idea that Job is getting at is that he wants the very day and night that is connected to his birth be wiped out from existence. That's scary. And how do I know this is because when you go into verses four and five, you start realizing he's not invoking [00:48:00] just, you know, a lack of light.
He's invoking prime evil primordial forces that goes back to the concepts of creation and how ancient years and people thought about what was going on before time began. So we can go into a little bit of that unfortunately, oh this is where you get really into the Hebrew text and you have to go into the etymology or the study of the words and again as moderns we tend to just simply like let's just truncate that down to a simple concept: a lack of light, just that darkness.
For example, when we get into the first word of darkness, this word is translated as darkness in the NIV and ESV, even the CSB. But when you dig into the actual history and the etymology of the word, it's a reference to the darkness of the primeval creation. It's basically in opposition to light. So when God said in Genesis [00:49:00] 1, "Let there be light," It's actually talking about the darkness that was right there before the light was called into being.
That's nuts. It's already at the moment. You realize, oh, he's not talking about a lack of darkness. He's talking about like, you know, that dark chaotic darkness that was there before even creation began? Yeah, I want that. I want that to come. I want that dark power to come. And it only gets worse, right?
Because this word is itself, Hoshek, is just essentially it's a It's a very neutral word. It's just darkness or the primeval darkness. It's not a thing. It's not morally good. It's not morally bad, but it's not ideal. You cannot have life when there is Hoshek. You cannot have plants. You cannot have anything living. There was nothing living in the state of Hoshek. And so that was part of the reason why you have to call in light. And so you get that whole entire sense of like, okay. That's odd.. [00:50:00] And then you start getting into the other words that he starts using, such as let daylight... He's talking about the first very light of creation, not shine upon what?
The day, the night. Let that not even be there at all, right? In verse four, you know, I had mentioned already the whole entire thing, let God from above not care for it. Like basically, I don't want you to maintain this day and night. I don't want you to maintain that very day. I'm talking about that specific day, that very moment in time that I was actually, came into existence, that this Geber came into existence. I don't want you to maintain it anymore. I want it to just like, no longer exist.
And then you get into verse 5. Let the grieving gloom. That is my own personal way of trying to render a very difficult Hebrew word to translate. And let me go into where I actually say this here. I mentioned in my paper, "The popular assumption was that this was a combination of two [00:51:00] Hebrew words." This was the older understanding, that the words were a combo word, and it was typically translated as shadow of death or death shadow or deep shadow. However, it's been drawn out more and more that instead of actually being a word from two Hebrew words, in-depth scholarship is starting to point at that this word, salum, is actually connected to the Akkadian word, salamu, which means to become black, dark, or blackness. And there is even a cousin word of it in Ugaritic, which is a cousin Semitic language to Hebrew with the meaning of darkness or gloom.
And so the scholarly consensus idea is that this word is a figurative expression to express a person's deep sorrow. This word is also the other time it appears is in Psalm [00:52:00] 23. When it's older translations, right, the KJV and older English translations would say, you know, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, that was what they thought, that shadow of death was from was that it was a combination of two Hebrew words, shadow of death, like literally shadow of death. And that's what they thought that was. And now when you look at more recent translations, like the NIV and the ESV, they will say shadow or the valley of gloom or valley of darkness, because they're starting to come around to the realization that this is not a combo of two Hebrew words.
It's actually a transliteration of probably the Akkadian or maybe Ugaritic versions. And so you get this sense of it's expressing, this is deep sorrow. This is a darkness if you can figuratively imagine the darkness that a person experiences when they're grieving, sorrowfully, when they are experiencing anguish and sorrow.
What is that [00:53:00] like? It's just utter darkness. Or in my case, I, cause I've already used the English word darkness already. I don't want to be repeating it over and over again. Cause then it loses its significance. So I use the term grieving gloom to express the sense from the Ugritic of gloom, and to also, to express the sense of darkness and blackness from the Acadia of just trying to flesh out that this word is a terrible state of mind, this terrible state of being of this anguish that you're experiencing.
There's another thing that is interesting. In verse five I also have let a rain cloud rest on it. This word is very strange. It's the word that is for cloud. Normally, whenever you see cloud in the Hebrew texts, it's in the plural. it's normally clouds. So talking about, you know, rain clouds or storm clouds, like clouds, you're not talking about just one cloud. And the only other time outside of Job that you [00:54:00] see the singular version of the word cloud is in reference to the glory of God, for example, coming down upon the temple when Solomon is dedicating the temple, it's the glory cloud.
And yet here, Job is using the word cloud, and it, you know, when I read the commentaries, there is a confusion. It's like, what the heck is this cloud? And so some go to the license of, well, I'm just going to plurify it, because most of the time when you see this word, it's in the plural. So why is it being used in the singular?
And so they try to ignore that it's being used in a singular form, and it's just so strange. My conjecture, you know, that in a lot of English, it's rendered as clouds, like in the ESV these translations, I pointed out, they follow the logic that the singular form is used as a collective noun, thus why they render it plural, but the NIV, the CSB, New King James, they actually keep the [00:55:00] singular form, cloud, for their versions, which points to the concept that Job's rain cloud is not necessarily a meteorological phenomenon.
It's not something that, you know, one of our news weather people would point out and say, Oh, there's a cloud hanging over in this little area. It's actually more of an ominous threat, right? When we usually see the word cloud, it's in reference to God and it's a good thing. That his presence is here. His life is here. Like, it's something you would want. Like, yes, I want this glory cloud to be here. But here, Job is inversely using cloud, and I think he's actually invoking God's cloud, but he's using a negative version. Like, you've already destroyed so much of my life, why don't you just finish the job?
So I rendered it as a rain cloud to provide clarity that it's not plural and that it's building up to the darkness that was mentioned earlier and to the grieving gloom that was mentioned earlier that it's just getting worse [00:56:00] and worse as we go into the verses and then finally he even says that this rain cloud it was responsible for the darkening. Rendering it responsible for their darkening allows the word to modify the plural subject, meaning this trifecta, the darkness, the grieving gloom, the cloud... that these three, let them be responsible for the darkening. Let the very day that I'm asking to be just wiped out from existence, let them come, and that's disturbing.
And so, yeah, this is just a little taste that when you're digging into what those words are in the text, there is a lot that is going on here. And, you know, I think due to time wise, I want to make sure that we don't go on too long like last time.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, but I think it's important to note that there is this sense of build up. And it's not just one thing repeated after another thing just Oh, we like poetic language, and we're just going to say it the same [00:57:00] thing in different ways. But rather, it's telegraphing something that's really intently serious, and it's not just a threat that is a single threat, but it's a threat that builds, a threat that really is looming over, in a sense.
Mike Chu: Yes. And, you know, I guess the best way to show that is to look at verse 8. And, in verse 8, the way I translate it, and it's going to be different from most English translations, because of a particular word choice. Let the sorcerers of the sea, enchant it. Enchant what? The ones skill to agitate Leviathan. My conjecture, and my theory within this paper, is that this whole entire buildup is building up to the point of calling from impersonal, not necessarily moral evil, just primordial forces that get [00:58:00] worse and worse and worse till you finally get to the big baddie of all things.
Leviathan. Leviathan is, throughout a lot of the ancient Near Eastern mythologies, Leviathan is there in a lot of their cosmologies of how creation came to be. And that's why we get these hints and inklings that a lot of the Canaanite neighbors of the Israelites assumed that creation was basically the result of a battle, of a war, of a deadly battle between the gods and a force called Leviathan, some sort of terrible sea monster creature. That it's the carcass of Leviathan that makes up pretty much the world that we see the bones and whatever else and, you know, the Hebrew writers, they pretty much kind of neutralized Leviathan to essentially like, battle? Oh, yeah, there was a battle maybe. Even in Genesis 1, there's no real battle.
Like, they actually convey a non battle. They convey it as like, [00:59:00] Mm, no. God didn't really have to fight it. Because who can actually match up to him? And so that's their polemic, their way of kind of, you know, making fun and mocking some of those ideas. But here, Job is trying to tell folks, like the Egyptian priests, who would typically go out during the times when there is a solar eclipse. And in their minds, their version of Leviathan, I can't remember the Egyptian name for it. But their version of Leviathan would typically come out and they assume when there was a solar eclipse, what that meant was this sea creature was actually eating the sun. And they're trying to cast an enchantment, a spell, an incantation to basically get the Leviathan to regurgitate the sun so that life would not be destroyed, that all of creation would not be destroyed.
and ironically, instead of actually telling the sorcerers here, can you do that? Can you like get, you know, like reverse [01:00:00] this? He's actually telling the sorcerers, I want you to actually call Leviathan to eat the sun, but not just any sun. I want him to eat actually the day and night I was born. Again, calling back to that idea... I don't want to exist. I don't want even the day I was born and the night I was born to exist. So can you please like, you know, like, do me a favor. Can you call out an incantation? Can you enchant the Leviathan and instead of getting it to not eat the sun, can you have it just eat the day? Which is insane.
But this is again, to demonstrate, like, just the deaths of sorrow and anguish that Joe is at, the state of mind that he is in, of the grief that he is in. And so some your listeners might be wondering why is it translated, Let the sourcers of the sea? And that is because in the Hebrew text, the word is often assumed to be yom, which is day.[01:01:00]
But the problem is, older versions of this seem to be pointing out that the word yom, or ym, is not supposed to be vocalized with an o sound, but instead an a sound, which would make it yam, or the sea. I have a particular note about this and it was one of those kind of aha moments for me about what the Leviathan was and the connection that it has to words such as sea or river.
And so down around the end of where I mentioned this note from a scholar here. So, Robert Alter, his position, for example, that it's just a poetic buildup of a description of Egyptian crocodiles. I don't think that's what's going on. I think Leviathan and its counterpart Behemoth are a part of a category named Chaos Creatures or Anti [01:02:00] Cosmos Creatures. Leviathan has appeared throughout Ugaritic mythologies, often portrayed like a seven headed dragon.
Its legacy during the era that the Israelites inhabited the promised land would have been well known to the people and why Job's invocation for the sorcerers to agitate Leviathan is comprehensible in light of Job's end goal. He wanted to be wiped out from existence. An interesting note about the Leviathan is that the Leviathan is connected to words such as Yam, the sea, and another word as Nahar.
And in particular, this one scholar in his book, Creation Rediscovered, his last name is Lennard, he points out that those three words are usually synonyms. They're actually describing the same deity, just with three different names. They're not three separate deities or three separate entities, but there are actually three [01:03:00] names for the same deity.
And so the very fact that we see in verse eight a callback to Yam, to the sea, Leviathan itself is being invoked. It made more sense to me in the translation that it wasn't supposed to be rendered as day, that sorcerers are not supposed to enchant the day. They were supposed to enchant the sea, the very place that the Leviathan lives in, that is connected with.
It makes it very clear that the writer of Job is very well aware of the ancient Near Eastern mythologies that are going on, and the destructive power that a lot of Canaanite neighbors and a lot of ancient Near Eastern folks generally thought that the Leviathan possessed. And instead of trying to quell Leviathan, Job is asking Leviathan, can you do me a favor? Please take me out. Please take out the day. Please take out the night. I don't even want to have memory. I don't want to even exist. That's how painful it is. To have lost [01:04:00] everything. My children. My health. All the suffering that has no end. I don't want to remember any of it.
And that was kind of in the end, like part of what I was kind of going for as I was digging down into the paper and into this research that this is a beautiful, artful way in Hebrew poetry to describe the concept of I am in so much intense pain and suffering and hurt. I don't even want to have the memory. I don't want to even have existed that the way to my existence has now ended up in, it just would rather be better that I never existed. But the very fact that he would want not just himself to no longer exist, but that the day and night that includes everyone else who was born on that day and night, like, that would just throw all of creation into utter chaos. And so, like, that's how, deep the ramifications of what Job's imprecation was.
The reason I ended at 8 is that once you get into verses 9 to 10 and then the rest of the chapter, that's where [01:05:00] the lament comes in. Right? Like what we see in Job chapter three is this buildup, like this pressure cooker of all the way up of seven days and nights of him not talking and just grieving. And then finally when he opens his mouth, it's like that moment when we hit that little switch on the pressure cooker and all of the built up steam just bursts out and he runs out of steam by the time you get to verse 10. He starts lamenting, he starts grieving, he starts just crying. And that's why, you know, , it really is an imprecation lament to me.
This is a pattern that we have seen in one other time in the book of Jeremiah. And my hypothesis is that the writer of Job, the writer of Jeremiah, is actually using a formula that was well known in the ancient Near Eastern writings of a self implication. Of this concept of how [01:06:00] imprecation and lament, there's not a very clear boundary line.
It's fuzzy. And it makes sense when you think about the emotions of grief and sorrow, and the anger that arises as well, that the boundary between the two kind of ways of writing and description and emotions, it gets blurry. And it does show up. And I actually thank you, Carey, like, you know, I want to say thank you to you because you pointed me as well to another scholar that pointed this whole entire reality out in ancient Near Eastern writings.
it helped me tie this together and made the argument much stronger with my professor. And so it was great. And it was just so helpful to realize, ah, There isn't like this has to be only imprecation or it can only be cursing and the reality is like it's a lot blurrier and ironically the Jeremiah one is not as well put together as the Job version Job's is much more beautiful in a very disturbing way, but it's [01:07:00] way more beautiful It's Jeremiah does the same thing of I wish I was never born, but again, it's a self curse and lament. He's grieving, too.
Carey Griffel: What strikes me just from a modern perspective, because we need to look at books through our modern perspective sometimes, and our new understanding of psychology, the way we deal with things, you know, you think of the stages of grief and you think of the different things that you're going to go through when you're grieving something.
And, you know, the stages of grief are not something that you have to go through in a particular order. You know, you cycle through them, they can show up in different ways, all of those things. So you have like fear, you have the anger, you have the lament, you have all of these kinds of things that you're going through with grief.
And it strikes me as really interesting because the primordial chaos and [01:08:00] Leviathan and all of these things, those should be things that Job would fear. He should fear them. And this is showing he's no longer fearing them because he wants this situation of de creation. And that's a fascinating aspect of thinking in terms of our grief and the way that we see things happen in scripture.
It's like, oh, that, you know, the flood just happened back in the day, and that's something that doesn't ever touch us anymore. But this idea of decreation that happens and shows up over and over in the Old Testament, it is an indication that this is just part of our lives. It's part of our existence. De creation isn't just about one certain thing or a particular instance, but it can be part of creation itself and life itself [01:09:00] in this really weird reverse kind of a way. And God can use that. And Job is trying to get God to use that.
Mike Chu: This is towards the end of my own paper as I'm trying to wrap it and tie it together. And, you know, again, this is a very unique concept, right? Especially as moderns, we don't think that a self implication, a self cursing, and even saying stuff directly to God that may seem very impolite or disrespectful, that it's allowed.
And that, unfortunately, is a byproduct of well meaning God worshipers who were trying to protect the honor of God, and yet in the ancient Hebrew writers, never had an issue. They didn't think it was wrong for us as people to actually address God directly with our pain and our hurt. And even to say things that would be very, like, you would never want to say this rationally.
You would [01:10:00] never want to say this like when you're in a very calm and happy mood. But these are words that are being expressed in the midst of pain. And that is something that we are so uncomfortable with that we try to divorce ourselves from the emotion of pain. And, that, I think, does us a disservice because it then prevents us from understanding what the heck is going on in the texts when we read it.
And so I point out towards the end of my paper, "The examined pericope," and this is on page 68, Carey has a copy, I can't really share it right now with other folks, that's a long story. But, "The examined pericope, despite its harrowing self implicatory and decreation incantations..." , that's a huge, long way of saying it, " is a truly honest and moving literary portrayal of sorrow and pain, which recursively induce further pain and sorrow."
Further on, I point out, " Job's self implications invited his friends and the audience [01:11:00] into his pain. They communicated that the hopelessness and despair he was experiencing were normal. The intangible emotions, the conflicting thoughts, and confusion needed to be verbalized in some shape and form. In contrast to the wisdom from the teacher in Ecclesiastes, Job's words were not meaningless meaningless, from Ecclesiastes 11. 8. They initiated, instead, the form of Job's complaints before God. The pericope established a frame and grounds for his later laments, accusations, and defence before his friends and God."
This is part of the significance of these opening words is because basically they go back into it. His friends take offense with him of like, how dare you say these kind of things? Like, why would you call on these dark powers? And Job then goes right into it. He goes into why [01:12:00] and why he holds God responsible for this.
And that's the thing, as we said earlier, God never explains to Job, you know, technically it was actually the Hassatan. It was that accuser guy. You're not going to meet him. Like he never goes explaining any of this. God is actually totally fine with, I know you think it's me. I'll take it. And out of an abundance of Protestant piety, I think, sometimes we try to defend God when he himself felt no need to defend himself. And I think we have to be okay with that. Like we have to become okay with that.
And here's the thing that I found very touching and moving in the end. When God does show up towards the end of the chapter, what most people don't realize is that Job, throughout the whole entire, you know, poetic narrative is his one thing was, I want God to show up.
I want him to stand before me. I want to bring my case before him. I want to defend myself. I want him to answer me. And you know, [01:13:00] the friends are pretty much their message is, are you crazy? Like, who are you? You have no right. And God finally actually appears. He stands before Job. And what we don't realize and what we assume so often is that God was basically trying to shame Job into silence.
But if that was the case, there would not be the Hebraic narrative cues in there that God was actually trying to get Job to carry a conversation with him. J. Middleton really helped, like, just explode that out in the text exegetically. And it is something I learned earlier from studying, you know, Robert Alter's understanding of narrative in Hebrew writing.
It has all the cues. God was trying to get Job to actually talk. He was trying to have a conversation with Job. But here's the problem, though. Is that, you know, God actually does come and does address Job. And Job is just completely dumbstruck that God actually did. And we're supposed to be [01:14:00] left at the end, and Job is left in the end with this, this unspeakable acknowledgment that the God of creation actually thought it was worthwhile.
It was worth his time, and it was worth his own breath to come stand before a person that is made of dust and ashes, and who himself was surrounded by dust and ashes. And to actually Let's talk, Job. You wanted me to be here? I'm here. Let's talk. And so I'll ask you questions. Because you are a Geber. I'm not shaming you. You are truly this adult, genuine male. You are a strong guy. I agree with you. Let's chat. Because if God was trying to shame him, why was he then trying to provoke Job to say something after his major dialogues?
You see that when you look at just even the regular NIV or ESV texts. God is trying to get Job to talk. Cause Job for the whole entire [01:15:00] book was pretty much saying, I want God to be here. And God is saying, well, I'm here now. Let's talk.
And that's how come I realized the book is not a theodicy in the end because it wasn't trying to give us a whole explanation of why suffering happens. Job's whole entire recantation is just, this was an acknowledgement. I'm made of dust and ashes and I'm comforted now by the fact that I am dust and ashes, that.... wow. The Creator actually is here before me. And we further see, and Job doesn't say it himself, but God then says to the three friends, I'm really angry at you guys. Because Job is the only one who rightly spoke about me. Right? And I think that is the thing that we always have to remember, right?
People look at all of Job's words, especially in the midst of his anguish. And we say, oh, he got very close, or maybe he was sinning. But if he was, God would have said that, and he didn't. He said at the end of the book, Job is the only one [01:16:00] out of the people who were there who actually spoke rightly to him.
And I think that is ultimately, if we keep that in mind, that will help us understand how to interpret and how to take in the words of Job. They are not propositional truths, but they are the expressions of a man who is experiencing great pain and sorrow. And apparently God is okay with a person that is experiencing that kind of pain and expressing it with words that may seem indignant.
And yet they actually are as respectful as one can be in the midst of pain. And I think that's the challenge. That's actually the theological like, Oh my gosh, I never even could conceive of that kind of idea. And of course you won't be able to, unless you yourself have gone through some sort of suffering and pain where you feel the tension of, I am so angry at God, but at the same time, I love this God. How do I handle these two opposing emotions at the same time and still yet have intimate [01:17:00] communication with this God? and, you know, a sermon series at my church essentially was birthed from this after me sharing all my research and talking about it for over a year with my pastor.
And so we eventually did do a seven part week series on the Book of Job. think I mentioned it at the last episode with you, Carey, that when we began that series, my sister Ruth had already checked herself in at the hospital because of some complications with, you know, her cancer treatments and then the very last sermon that I closed the series with, that Sunday was the day after I had actually just buried my ,sister that we had our funeral. And, you know, I originally thought that my study of the Book of Job, it helped me process through the craziness of the cancer that my wife and I experienced. of the infertility and even some hearing loss. And so I thought as we went into the series, I was just going to recall and retell and, you know, use those examples in my sermons.
And it was [01:18:00] an interesting thing to realize, well, I am actually living, going through this in real time. And that this time, because of my own study and my own research and my own processing of Job, It helped me process, in many ways, metabolize the pain and sorrow that initially struck us when my sister passed away.
It was really surreal of just like, wow, I don't know how I would have gone through it if I had never done this kind of study. And I find that that's part of the miracle of understanding and reading the scriptures is how it prepares and strengthens you and builds your perseverance up because it helps you process what's going on.
And it also encourages you. In the Book of Job, it gave me permission to yell at God, not to be disrespectful, not to curse him, but to just curse the pain that I was going through, curse the very things that was experiencing, but to not curse God himself. But to just tell God, honestly, it really sucks. I miss my sister.
I miss everything about[01:19:00] her being alive with me. And I had a permission because of understanding what the book of Job is about, it gave me permission to be honest with my feelings and the contradictory thoughts at times and the confusion that it was okay because God already knew and he wanted me to talk, because just like Job, he wants us to talk to him.
And because of, you know, as Christians, we believe in the sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit, we do have him with us. He is not far and we can engage with him in conversation and intimacy all the time. And so that is the beauty that happened with the series.
And I think that is the ultimate benefit of studying books like the book of Job, is that we realize we have permission to engage God with topics and things that we normally have been taught is improper, but that he actually invites. And so that, that's my encouragement to the folks who are listening to this episode of the podcast to not think that [01:20:00] God is not able to handle your pain.
He invites you instead to engage him with your pain and your sorrow. And if that means sometimes you may actually utter like actual real curse word, sure. I know I may get some flack for it, but I think if, in the midst of your emotions and your hurt, that's the most best way that you can say it, I guess so.
I tend to try not to do that. But if your engagement with God is not honest and authentic... that is my encouragement, is to engage God authentically and with your full emotions and not be scared because he invites that.
Carey Griffel: Talk about application of a passage, man, it's hard to even wrap our minds around suffering when we're in it and when we see other people in it that we care about. Today we talk about a lot of, you know, self care, and take care of yourself, and do all of these things. [01:21:00] But we still have that strong, strong tendency to just sweep everything under the rug as quickly as we possibly can.
And yet here we see Job just dealing with it as forthrightly as he possibly could in this very serious way that, yeah, it's, it's just a deep, deep book, deep meaning and so much connection to humanity and our lives today. It's, it's hard to even wrap our minds around. That's why this is so hard.
Mike Chu: Yeah. And I think that my challenge to readers, right, of the book of Job, is to... you know, is it the describing history? Perhaps. I will grant that perhaps there's a little bit of history, but I would also say that's only part of the narrative, which is primarily two chapters long. And it's not the focus. If you really want to get to the point of what the Book of Job is, you have to engage with the poetry. That's the real point. [01:22:00] It's not to argue about, you know, who is the Hasatan. Like in the end, Job doesn't care. Job doesn't know who the Hasatan was. God didn't bring him up at the end.
Like the whole entire point at the end was a man who experienced great sorrow and pain, great loss and suffering, and God engages him in conversation at the end. And actually justifies Job in the end before those three friends, actually says to the three friends that he was angry with them for their words, that all the stuff that they said, honestly, if we were to examine the words of those three friends, I think that a lot of us would, over time realize, wait, do I hold to that kind of theodicy?
Do I hold to that kind of philosophy about suffering? Do I think that whenever a person suffers, it was because of some sin that I had actively done? Or it was because of some sin that I had done but [01:23:00] never knew? Or some sort of sin that I will do but I don't know that I will do yet? Like, that was the general three philosophies of those friends. And God basically said, No, you guys are wrong. Job was right.
And if we want to really appreciate like, well, what was right, you have to really look at Job's words and not assume that their opinions were on equal ground because God actually gave more weight to Job's words than the friends. And I think people will discover, wow. Job can give me words to be able to express something that I thought was off limits with God.
Carey Griffel: Thank you so much for sharing your translation, and some of your thoughts about this passage, Mike. As far as the Awakening School of Theology, are they going to be having some courses about the Book of Job?
Mike Chu: I'm hoping to eventually bring in a particular instructor that I think of who's one of these scholars who are [01:24:00] digging into the Hebraic poetry. And so , that would be a dream course. I would love to have him come work one day to help us with that. There is also one day, a course, that will be coming down that I'm actually working on. Well, actually will be working on, that's like one of the projects and responsibilities I have is to teach a entry level course on what the book of Job is, to go into the history, into some of the basics about Hebrew poetry and the overall message of the book of Job.
I will never claim to be a Job scholar. I am not like Dr. Samuel Ballantine. That would be a dream one day, but I'm, I know I'm not there yet. But, I glean, and I learn, and it is a book that I still would love to just keep on going back to, to study on just my own personal time, because I have found it to be helpful over and over again, especially these last couple of years, even if I am not going through any sort of hardship or suffering, but as a newly minted teaching pastor, sometimes I witness it, and I have [01:25:00] to prepare, you know, folks in my congregation on how to process that pain and what does that mean and what can you do?
And one of the things that this study has taught me very clearly, never tell people to bury their emotions down. Don't do that. That, in the end, actually is going to be more harmful. It prevents people from really being intimate with God, which is part of the point of being a pastor is to lead people into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, with God, the Father, working alongside with the Spirit more and more intimately. Like, like if you are trying to hide what you're feeling out of a fear of indignation, then ultimately you're going to be hiding a part of yourself and you're not being honest with who you are or what you've experienced with God. And that I find dangerous as though somehow our pain makes us so dangerous that somehow we have to be restricted.
And yet God engaged Job. Job still experienced the [01:26:00] pain. And in the end, he came out in the end, still worshiping the creator of all life and death, of heaven and earth. That's the exhortation, I guess, in the end, I would say.
Carey Griffel: Beautiful stuff. Thank you, Mike. I really hope this is helpful to a lot of our listeners and that they have gained some really interesting insight about how to read the Book of Job, how to think about it, and just even how to look at it and say, what does this mean to me? And how can I better process what I see in the world in front of me? It tends to be a very different kind of story and answer than we tend to think of it. Just like you were saying about how we might actually tend to be like Job's friends and we don't realize it. And so bringing all of this to the forefront might be painful, but it's good. And I think it is healing to really face things honestly. So, good [01:27:00] stuff. Thank you, Mike.
Mike Chu: Thank you. Thank you for having me on and I hope the listeners will be able to at least glean some, helpful tips and I'm sure they'll be wondering, like, is my translation wrong? It possibly is, but my goal was ultimately to flesh out the interesting creation and de creation pointers that are occurring in Job's self implication, something that I did not want to ignore and something I think is worthwhile to explore.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Very much so. Thanks.
Mike Chu: Thank you everyone.
Carey Griffel: Well, two weeks in a row with a kind of a long conversation with each week, but I think that it was worth it and I hope that you agree and I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode.
I thought that Mike brought out so many good points about the Book of Job that I'm not going to be reading that book the same way again after these conversations. For the moment, that's all I've got for the Book of Job. But Mike will be [01:28:00] back with another topic pretty soon, so I'm looking forward to that, as well as some other new interviews coming up.
So I hope you will look forward to that with me. Thank you guys for listening to the episodes, for rating my podcast, for sharing the episodes with other people, and telling me how much you're enjoying it. And a big shout out to my Patreon and PayPal supporters. I really, really appreciate you guys.
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If you guys like looking at art, I do have some of mine posted and [01:29:00] it is for sale on my website. At some point in time, I will also have merchandise for sale once I get my ducks in a row for that. But for the moment, I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
