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Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 314 here on the Bible Department. We are looking at job chapters 8, 9, and 10 today. Chapters 8 through 10 of the book of Job. Solid, solid chapters. Hey, we are in the thick of the dialogue that Job is having with his three friends. And by the end of this section, not the section today, but like, this entire section of dialogue, right, Going to get a surprise speech from a new friend that has honestly is just creepily, just been there the whole time. And he's going to start talking anyway. We'll talk about that on the day where we get to his content. But we are in the thick of Hebrew poetry. If you have not done the reading for the day, I want to invite you, admonish you, challenge you, stop the video, pause the audio, go get the reading done. A lot of nuggets, especially from Job's portion of the speech. And we're going to talk about these three friends. And you know, it. It's painful to even read what they have to say when chapter eight opens. You know, obviously, we all know Job's children have died. You know, this friend Bildad is just. Golly, man. Verse 4, chapter 8, verse 4. When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin. Ah, dude. Even if you're right, Shut up. Like, that is a terrible thing to say to somebody after the children have died. Just, ugh. Now, he's also not right. Like, what he has to say is not true. Even if he was. This is a good wisdom principle right here. Even if you're right, that doesn't give you the right to say what you're right about. Even if you are right, that doesn't give you the right to just say what you're right about. So many people, you know, they say things that are just wild, and then they're like, but am I wrong? No, but am I wrong? And it's like the content of what you're saying isn't wrong, but saying it is definitely inappropriate or, you know, impolite or, you know, just unhinged generally. So, all right, let's actually dive into some context. Okay? Today I want to do something a little different. I actually want to dive into theological context. Okay, Theological context. Tomorrow we're really going to handle this idea that Job is the oldest book of the Bible, because that's just not true. But there's a reason why people think that and why people preach that. There's something that I've heard from, from prominent voices, like, that is something that I've heard from, like, very, very, very, very, very prominent pastors, preachers, ministers. Not a very popular idea in the academic space, but definitely a popular idea in the church space. Tomorrow we'll tackle that on our context clues. Today, though, for our context clues, I just want to tackle some, some theological context, because if we don't have an understanding of Job's friend's theology and Job's theology, then it's going to be hard to even understand. Like, what, why. Why is Job such a hero? Because once you get into chapters 9 and 10 and job starts responding, you're kind of like, did Job just accuse God of being unjust? Like, Job's kind of saying some wild stuff about God, you know? And I kind of want to help to put what Job is saying into some kind of not historical context, maybe cultural context, but definitely theological context. Okay, so let's talk theology. Okay, this is. We'll open up our context clue today by talking about some theology. Now, for many of us, because the Judeo Christian worldview has influenced the world that we live in. I don't think we realize just how much of a Judeo Christian ethical worldview we all have, Christians and non Christians alike. Okay? It is a Judeo Christian ethic, a Judeo Christian worldview that is behind some of the literature that has shaped the Western world. Right? Like the Magna Carta, like the Constitution of the United States of America, like the Bill of Rights. Okay? Now I'm not here to debate whether or not America was founded as a Christian country or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't have a dog in that fight. That's not something I care about. What I do care about is how we don't even realize how moral of a society we live in be. Because the world that we live in has been, I mean, thoroughly shaped by a Judeo Christian ethical worldview. Okay? So even someone who's like, protesting against, you know, religion, it is Christianity as a religion that gives them the right, like, like in the history of society to, to protest. Like, like, like prior to a thoroughly biblical worldview shaping the world, there is no, like, freedom of speech or like, or like, just human rights. Like, human rights is not an idea in the Babylonian world or in the Canaanite world or in the Roman world or in the Persian world. There, there is not a world where human rights is a thing outside of like a Judeo Christian ethic, okay? That, that people are endowed with like value, like as, as a human. That understanding stems from people being made in the image of God. Okay? So even for the secularist who is an atheist to themselves, you know, the self proclaimed atheist, they are standing on the shoulders of, of Christians by even arguing human rights, ok? Human rights in terms of just the history of thought in the world. Christians can take credit for that. All right? Without the Bible, no one would be arguing for human rights. Nobody in the Roman world, nobody in the Persian world, nobody in the Babylonian world or the Assyrian world or the Canaanite world believes any of that. There is no human rights for anybody. The reason they are human rights is because Christianity, like, I mean, took hold in the Roman world and changed Western civilization irrevocably, like forever. Ok? So I just want to like get that out there. So we have to then think, all right, what is the theological worldview for someone living in Job's time? And that theological worldview is essentially like there's only a couple of sins, like couple of big ones, right? Like stealing stuff, sexually assaulting people, murder, you know, outside of that, there isn't like we don't have this idea in the, in the pagan world of like sin, okay? This is why the law is revolutionary, okay? We read Deuteronomy and we're just kind of like, oh gosh, gotta get to the end. This is boring. Okay? In the ancient world, revolutionary that there's a God that would outline like what's sinful, like what's moral. Revolutionary. If you're a pagan and you have not sexually assaulted someone, murdered someone, or, or stolen and bad things are happening to you, there's this superstition default, I would say a superstitious default where you would immediately just assume, gosh, I must have ticked off a God or the gods somehow. Don't know what I did, don't know how I did it. I made the gods angry. Okay? So this could be the gods must have a plot of ground or a plot of land out in the woods while I was hunting. And they must have some ground out there that's holy and I must have made a mistake and stepped on it. That's why my kid died, or that's why, you know, my crops aren't, aren't. That's why there's a drought or I must have done something. So. So outside of, like, you know, sexual assault, murder, and stealing, you know, if something bad is happening to you, you're assuming, gosh dang it, I should have felt I should have fed bail some more corn. Like. Like, I must have done something, okay? And this is the perspective that Job's friends have. They have a perspective that's like, bro, you must have done something. And it doesn't have to be a sin. It could be some kind of petty religious act that maybe you cut corners on unknowingly. Okay? And so there's two reasons why Job is going to be platformed as a hero. And without knowing just how, like, superstitious the ancient world is, you don't really get it. And so I want to give theological context. Okay, let's dive into these two reasons. Number one, Job never curses God, does not do it. He doesn't curse God. Now, he says a lot of things about God that aren't true. He says God's not just. He essentially calls God petty. He said a lot of things about God, but he never curses God. Okay? And number two, he never sacrifices offerings to God in order to repent. And for many of us, that is a foreign idea. Okay? So what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are trying to get Job to do is like, dude, come on, man, just offer a sacrifice. Just say you're sorry. Dude, you could have been walking in the woods and stepped on one of God's twigs and broke it. And God could be mad because you broke one of his twigs. And that may sound ridiculous to you and I, but I'm not joking. I'm 100% serious. Like, all throughout the ancient world, Canaanite, Babylonian, Persian world, it was really like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube on how to please the gods. And essentially everyone is in a codependent relationship with the gods. Ok? So, you know, most people don't love the gods. They hate the gods because the gods are unpredictable. It's like they could just make your life terrible. And you don't know why, but you need them. So you're in this toxic, codependent relationship with the gods. And the gods don't really like humans. They hate humans. If you read pagan literature, the gods hate humans, but they do away with the humans. They're going to be hungry, who's going to sacrifice food? You know, like, they don't want to get their own food, so they're in a codependent, toxic relationship with humans. The gods and humans are in this toxic, codependent relationship. So the friends are just like, dude, just cover your bases. Just get some animals, throw them on the altar and just sacrifice to God. Sacrifice to Yahweh. Actually, they're going to call the friends, call God El Shaddai. We'll get into that tomorrow. On why. So Job refuses to do that for two reasons. Job refuses to do that because A, he's innocent. But Job refuses to do that because he understands that God's not like that. God doesn't have special twigs out in the forest. And if you step on one of his special twigs, he kills your kid. That's not what God's like. At least that's not what the God of the Bible's like. That's not what Yahweh's like. That's not what El Shaddai's like. He. And because Job doesn't just bust out a sacrifice and offer up an animal sacrifice to appease God, he therefore wins. Like, that is winning. So there's two reasons why Job wins against Satan or the Satan, the accuser. He wins because he never curses God. And then he wins because he understands something about God. He understands that God won't just take your kids away because you did something that you didn't even know you were doing. It's this idea, you know, and by the way, today is Halloween. And you know, there's always Christians who are gonna be like, we can't celebrate Halloween or we can't go to yoga, we can't do this, or we can't do that, we can't do this. And I just always want to remind people, hey, hey, worship is an act of your will. I think sometimes there's all this fear mongering and we, it's like we convince Christians that you could worship by accident. You're going to accidentally worship Satan. There's no way to accidentally worship anything. And so what Job is doing is saying, no, no, no, no, it didn't accidentally sin. There's no such thing as accidentally like doing something that bothers God. God has laid out in his law what he requires from us and what he doesn't require. We're not in a guessing game, so I'm not gonna offer up sacrifices just to be safe. Now, there's a bunch of other things we could talk about, but a lot of those things you could probably see on your own. But that I just felt like that is theological context that the average reader just doesn't have. And so Job is going to win this trial against the Accuser against the Satan or Hasatan. Satan is the correct pronunciation for Satan. By never cursing God. Never curses God. Does he have some bad theology? Absolutely. Does he vent and his honest? Yeah. Does he say some things that I wouldn't be comfortable saying? Yeah, but God doesn't judge us based on our theology. He judges us based on our theopraxy. That. That's theology is right knowledge. Like. Like right word. Theopraxy is right action. Okay? So Job, though, he has some theology that I would love to tweak and fix. I wish I could go back in time and like, help Job out. He has good. He has perfect theopraxy. What he actually does does not displease the Lord. And honestly, that's all of us. God doesn't judge us based on our theology. God judges us based on our theopraxy. Like what we do. Now, let me communicate with nuance. What we do is determined by our theology. However, you could do the right thing and your motives and your thoughts can catch up if you're practicing the right stuff. Okay, all right. There's so much more to go into. However, let me just give you this last little bit because this whole dialogue is going to be between, you know, Eliphaz going to talk, then Job, then Bildad, then Job, then Zofar, then Job, ok? And they have slight nuances. Eliphaz is only going to talk from personal experience. So he's giving wisdom from personal experience. That is kind of how I would summarize everything Eliphaz has to say. Now, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are all essentially saying, hey, Job, you did something. You did something. Just fess up, dude. Fess up and offer a sacrifice. You did something. God is just. And you did something. Job is arguing, I didn't do. I did nothing. I'm innocent. And therefore God's not. Just both are wrong. Both Job and the friends are wrong. We as the audience have information that neither Job or his friends have. So Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are all arguing essentially what's called retribution, which if you look at what Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar have to say, and you didn't have someone telling you that they're wrong. What they have to say doesn't sound wrong. It actually sounds a lot like the book of Proverbs, Okay. Because they have a very proverbial perspective. Now, Eliphaz is typically going to give wisdom from personal experience. Number two, Bildad is going to give philosophical Answers. This is more like, this is stuff that's universally true based on research. And Zophar is going to give. Always going to offer black and white perspective. Job. You're trying to create a lot of gray here. This is very black and white. Life is pretty simple. So. So these are the three strands of wisdom in the ancient world. The first strand of wisdom is, dude, I may not be that smart, but from my personal experience, buying bitcoin is fantastic. You know, that doesn't mean you have a bunch of research on bitcoin. It just means it worked for you. There's a lot of people who, they think they're wise because things worked for them. Second research, information, truth, you know, general wisdom. You know, a rule of thumb, okay? This is the person who's learned, who studied. And the reality is that just because you're smart and just because you have a lot of information doesn't mean that you're wise. Okay? And a lot of people assume that I'm going to come off that way because I have a doctorate, and then they're shocked when I don't come off that way. And I'm like, yeah, because I got a doctorate in a pursuit of wisdom, not just information. And then black and white. Zofar is black and white. And the reality is that wisdom doesn't come from being black and white. Wisdom comes from understanding nuance in gray and gray. Throws a lot of people off. And the more complicated of a society we live in, the more there's this desire to just be black and white. And I promise you, I promise you, just being black and white is not going to help the people who are stuck in black or white. Right? If someone's stuck in transgenderism and you are very, like, date, there's boys and there's girls, there's black and white. It's like, got it. Fantastic. You won the argument, but you didn't win the person. And the goal is not just to win the argument, is to win the person. And there's a difference between telling the truth and leading people into truth. Okay? The Holy Spirit doesn't just tell the truth or reveal the truth. The Holy Spirit leads us in the truth. And people who really have unlocked a gift of wisdom know how to lead people into the truth. Not just tell them the truth, not just bark the truth at them, but lead them into the truth. Communicate in such a way that helps them to see the truth that's right there in front of them. Okay? So Elifast, Buildad and Zofar all have the same perspective, but they're all going to communicate their perspective with unique styles of communication. And I actually think that these styles of communication still exist today. And Job is obviously going to respond to each of them over the course of multiple cycles of confrontation and communication. All right, that's a nuance that maybe you wouldn't have seen if you're just reading on your own. So I wanted to make that aware. I wanted to make you aware of just that little nerdy nugget. All right, family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode Timeless Truth. Job is going to demand to meet with God. All right. Job is going to make it clear. Hey, I want to encounter with Yahweh. Me and this dude need to talk. All right, which is good. Confrontation is good. I'm going to throw out a ran a stat that's going to feel random. Uh, but in America, 70 to 90% of all divorce is initiated by women. 70% is the stat that's quoted a lot. But if a woman is college educated or has a master's degree or a doctorate or is any kind of, like, just successful, it goes up to 90%, which means men don't file for divorce often. Now, why? And the answer may shock you. It's because men just be leaving, period. A dude will wake up and there's just like, I mean, thousands of stories. I'm not just giving, like, anecdotal kind of, you know, thoughts. I'm actually telling you, like, data. The reason that women end up filing for divorce at absorbing rates, obviously way more than 50% of the time, is because there are hundreds of thousands of stories of men just waking up one day and just going to work and never coming home, just disappearing. And honestly, like, they'll Just stop paying. The mortgage won't and will literally disappear. They're just, I'm out. A dude will realize I've been emotionally checked out for years. I'm just gonna leave. I'm outta here. We'll just move to Minneapolis. I don't know why Minneapolis is the place that came to mind. Just. Just. We'll move to Boise, Idaho. I'm out. Just. They're outta here. Which then forces women to have to, you know, file the paperwork. The. Because dudes just won't. They. They will literally just leave. And you want to know something? Like, that's not admirable. Just chucking up the deuces and ghosting your wife. That's cowardly. Like, that's terrible. But there's a lot of people. That's how they interact with God. You just ghosted God. He just. And Job refuses to ghost Yahweh. Instead of ghosting the Lord, he's like, let's have a showdown. Let's confront each other. Like, let's talk. I'm demanding an encounter with you. And guess what? God can deal with that. Guess what? God doesn't deal with you ghosting him. You just like disappearing. You just like taking your ball and leaving. Cause life got hard. And that right there, that's where our Thomas Truth is today. Because there's a lot of us, religion taught you that talking to God the way Job is talking to God, and maybe the way that David talks to God is just inappropriate, not respectful. But guess what? You're now in the opposite extreme, which you don't say anything now. You have pent up frustration. And really, you are angry with God. You just won't admit that you're angry with God. And the more you won't say anything to God, there's not even hope for there to be healing because you cannot heal what you refuse to reveal. So you're harboring bitterness towards God and, you know, disappointment. But instead of bringing it out into the open and talking to God like a grownup, you've decided to just ghost him. And my challenge to you today is I'd rather you be more like Job. I'd rather you not be like the husband who just picks up and moves to Idaho and just, you know, I'm out. Like, that's cowardly. And there's a lot of us who deal with God in a very cowardly way. And the reality is that you're not gonna get far in your spiritual life if you deal with God in ways that are cowardly. Tomorrow we got day three 15. We're gonna be looking at job 11 through 14. It's gonna be fantastic. We're gonna continue looking at the dialogue between Job and his friends. I hope that this episode was helpful. If you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. Even if you're not. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. Same time, same place. Base. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram @thebible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.