The Bible In A Year
Lent – Pentecost Week 5 of 17
March 25-30, 2019
Readings for the Week
Theme of the week: Why do bad things happen to good people?
Monday -Job chapter 25, Psalm 37
Tuesday -Psalm 6, Job chapters 26, 27 & 28
Wednesday -Job chapters 29, 30 & 31
Thursday -Job chapters 32, 33, 34 & 35
Friday -Job chapters 36 & 37, Psalm 73
Saturday -Job chapters 38, 39, 40, 41 & 42
The Bible In A Year
Lent – Pentecost Week 5 of 17
A Framework for Understanding
Job
The book of Job provides scholars with many areas for lively debate. The time when the book is most likely to have been written, who wrote the book, what sources influenced the writing, what the real point of the book is, and the meaning of God’s discourses in the final chapters, are all matters for ongoing discussion.
Here are some things we do know:
• Job is not an Israelite (chp. 1:1)
• Other ancient near-east cultures had stories about “Job” (an ancient Mesopotamian text “Sumerian Job”)
• The book is not intended to be an actual/factual representation, as it provides no explanation of how the author obtained knowledge of the council in heaven (no visions, no “God told me this” statements)
There are two great concerns lifted up in the book:
• Will humans remain faithful to God if there is no reward in it?
• Do innocent people suffer? And if so, why?
Many people focus only on the second of those concerns. With regard to that troubling question, in reading Job you can see two lines of theological thought that are completely absent from the book:
• Human’s “free will”
• “Natural disasters” are not “the will of God”
It is also extremely important for our own spiritual journeys for each of us to spend time contemplating the first question: Do I worship God only because I personally get a reward from it? If I were to endure great hardship such as Job, would I remain faithful to God?