God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (26 page)

The following day, after Satan and God had spat into their own respective palms and shook hands to seal the wager, poor old hapless Job was enjoying dinner in his living room, when one of his servants suddenly burst through the doors all panic stricken to inform his master that a nearby tribe had attacked all the donkeys, oxen and slaves and now all were dead from the sword of the Sabeans. Interestingly, the author claims that this servant passing on the dreaded news is the only surviving, but then the very next paragraph states:

The contradiction doesn’t stop here, as a third servant enters Job’s living room to tell him that three raiding parties from a nearby town stole all his camels and killed all his servants, except of course for the one passing this message. And then there is more:

With all his livestock, his human stock and now his family dead within minutes, Job stripped off all his clothes threw himself to the ground in grief and also in worship and said:

Thus, the origin of the phrase, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh’. Although, Stephen King, prolific horror author and movie producer, summarized it best when he was once asked of the story of hapless Job:

Half-time score: God 1 – Devil 0: Job had passed his first test of tribulation and continued to worship God despite his suffering, but Satan was still up for a fight and flew up to Heaven once more to lay down a challenge for a second round of betting.

Again Satan’s arrival in Heaven catches God off-guard, as God asks, “Where did you come from?” Seems to me that a few mall cops may be handy to prevent such easy access to the kingdom. Satan ups the ante with the following dare:

God accepted this double-downed bet and Satan flew back to earth to unleash painful sores all over Job’s , from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. The author overlooking the fact that he had earlier stated that the conditions of this wager between God and Satan were that Job was not to be physically harmed. Anyway, Job’s wife witnessing her husband’s anguish pleads with him to forsake this God he still worships because in worshipping him they have lost everything, their property and their family. Read this passage again and you can see that it is just another charge against women as evil temptresses. Job maintained his faith, however, and had passed the second test.

When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, saw how much their good friend Job was suffering, they travelled to his house to offer comfort and solace. Upon finding Job huddled in the ashes of his home covered in pus filled sores, they barely recognized their defeated friend. In somewhat black comedy fashion, the three friends tore off their clothes, wept aloud and sprinkled dirt on their foreheads in effort to share Job’s pain. I have had some down moments in my life too, but if three of my friends turned up to my house and stripped naked whilst sprinkling dirt on themselves, this would cheer me up somewhat. Nevertheless the three friends of Job sat silently with him for yes you guessed it, seven days and seven nights.

On the eighth day of this communal silence, Job finally was the first to speak and with tears streaming down his face he cursed the day he was born and said:

The three friends were in agreement that surely Job must have sinned in order to warrant this punishment. As Eliphaz rebuked:

Thus, begins a monotonous claim versus counter-claim between Job and his buddies, with each maintaining their certitude that Job must have done something to displease God to earn such wrath. Job continued to defend his unblemished record of righteousness, whilst also wishing that God just put him out of his misery by ending his life:

In Job’s desperate moment of self-pity, Bildad and Shuhite echoed what Eliphaz had said to Job earlier:

Some friends, huh? Further implying that Job is paying for sins he or his family had committed, albeit unwittingly, because it was unthinkable to his friends that a righteous man would be treated so ill by the God they all worshipped.

Finally, after another thirty-two chapters of back and forth between Job and his friends, God appears before Job to provide him the comfort he is seeking, as God says to Job:

God then explains to Job why he has suffered, in an extremely verbose manner that resembles that of a drunkard, his explanation being that the righteous are so strong that they can withstand any dark hour, because faith in God is all they require to withstand hardships. This is the lesson he was trying to teach Job, that bad things happen to good people but faith will pull you through. This is a fine teaching, but I’d like to see a follow up chapter on why good things happen to bad people, probably even more so in my personal experience and understanding of historical events.

Job replies to God:

God was unhappy with the advice that Job’s friends had given him and so ordered the slaughter of seven bulls and seven rams in his honor to pay for their errs.

Job then prayed for the redemption of his friends and then God rewarded Job for his faithfulness by making him twice as rich as he was before the start of all this. Which goes to say that God believes money and wealth to be more important than the lives of his children, because God did nothing to bring back to life Job’s sons and daughters murdered as a result of his gambling habits.

Job Count: 60

God allowed Satan to kill all of Job’s ten children plus all his servants which is guessed to have been at least fifty = 60.

Cumulative Count: 31,749,342

Final Old Testament Count: 31,749,592

It’s interesting to note that Satan’s count is only 60 and he needed God’s permission to achieve that, whilst God’s death toll is almost 32,000,000 by conservative estimates.

Ronald Knox

Without doubt, Psalms is the most beloved book of the Old Testament for Jews and Christians alike. The Hebrew title of this book is the Book of Praises, which indicates that the contents include songs of worship, praise and prayer – a total of 150 psalms or songs are included.

The Book of Psalms is so indelible to the Jewish experience that many read this book from start to finish on a weekly or monthly basis, as it is viewed in Jewish tradition as a tool for gaining God’s favor.

Similarly, Christians equally refer to this book to heighten the religious experience through song, and in the early centuries of the Church it was expected that any candidate for the position of bishop would be able to recite the entire book from memory, something they often rote learned during their time as monks.

As to who authored this book, modern biblical scholars often attribute the works to various authors from different time periods throughout Israel’s history, ranging from the time of David (approx. 1100-900 BCE) to the inter-testamental period (300-50 BCE).

Whilst reading Psalms 22 and 23 take a note of some of the phrases and keep in mind when we review the biography of Jesus in the New Testament. Some of these phrases are used to construct his life’s story.