Tuesday 1 October 2024

Psalm 148

Background
This week we are reading the Book of Job, which is a sort of novel, written roughly 500 years before Jesus. The unknown author describes the fictional Job as a non-Israelite, living in the land of the sages, in the Far East. He is perfect in piety (in 1:8, where it says he ‘fears God’ it means he ‘obeys God’s will’).

God knows that Job’s righteousness is unconditional, but is willing to have that conviction tested. God authorises two experiments in the imagined heavenly council, whose members are ‘sons of God’ (or ‘divine beings’, 1:6). One council member is the official prosecutor. ‘Satan’ is not a good name for him because in much later literature ‘Satan’ becomes the Devil, responsible for corrupting the whole earth and provoking hostility to God. Better here that the prosecutor is seen to fulfil his proper duties as ‘the Accuser’, proposing the experiments that, in his view, will demonstrate that everyone without exception will, under pressure, act to save their own skin (2:4).

In the first experiment, all Job’s considerable resources (1:3) are destroyed in turn. The drama builds to a terrifying climax with the death of Job’s children while they were partying together. Stripped of everything and everyone dear to him (except his wife), Job continued to worship God and honour God’s freedom to give and withdraw gifts as God alone deems to be appropriate. (God knows that what has happened to Job is irrational 2.3.)

In the second experiment, God permits the Accuser to hurt Job but not kill him. Job is given sores that cover his whole body. Even his wife – a bit like Eve with Adam in the book of Genesis – taunts and tests Job (2:9). However, The Accuser’s hypothesis collapses. Job’s integrity remains intact ("he did not sin with his lips", 2:10). God is right about Job; and Job shows what a human being is capable of.

To Ponder:

• Modern society favours facts and scientific methods in determining truth. But the imagination is crucial in probing the deepest, most mysterious realities in the human heart. Do you have a favourite novel or poem, a painting or piece of music, that in your experience powerfully expresses the strength and tenacity that faith can show in face of life’s disasters? Have you spoken about why you hold it so dear with other believers and heard what they hold in highest esteem?
• Does the gospel’s promise that God will readily forgive sins run the risk that believers will have insufficient seriousness? Granted that we cannot make much, if any, progress out of our own resources, how important is it to you to strive earnestly towards complete integrity? Who or what most encourages you in that pursuit?

Bible notes author: The Revd David Deeks
David is a Methodist supernumerary presbyter, living in Bristol.