Week 2: Job 1-21/Matthew 7-11

It's a long post this week. As always leave questions and comments below by clicking on the comments link. You can expect slightly longer posts for the beginnings of new books. Be sure and take a look at the section on Hebrew poetry.

Job 1-21
This week we skip to Job. What is going on here? I thought we were reading the Bible through! Well, this particular system attempts to place the readings in a rough chronological order, which will give us a break occasionally from the book we are in. Job is a very ancient book, and the world it describes is much more like the times of Abraham than any other major section of the Bible, so it is placed here.

Job is made up of different parts, likely composed at different times and then edited into a final form. When this final form was finished is debated, but most scholars agree that the book needs to be read as a final whole.
If your Bible doesn't have an introduction to Job, check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job

You will notice immediately that the book changes in the third chapter from prose to poetry, which is a great chance to introduce you to Hebrew poetry, because you are going to be reading a lot of it.

First, you will notice that the lines go jaggy, as opposed to being laid out across the page. This is your first hint that you are reading something poetic. Hebrew poetry is not like our poetry. It is not based primarily on rhythm, and certainly has very little rhyme. It is based, rather, on a certain consonance of ideas, on a parallelism of concepts and images that are paired together in groups of twos and (occasionally) threes.

You can see this couplet pairing in the first poetic lines of chapter 3:

Let the day perish in which I was born,
and the night that said, "A man-child is conceived"

Here we have a pairing of time: day/night and the idea of birth: I was born/A man-child is conceived.

Verse 4:
Let that day be darkness
May God above not seek it, or light shine on it!

Here we have the idea of darkness paired with two ideas of darkness and abandonment: God does not seek it/light does not shine on it.

There are also larger structures of the poetry as well. Verses 3-10 are verses about the day of his birth, and how horrible it was. Verses 11-19 discuss his wish that he would have died at birth.

Obviously, Job is upset about something, and so we come to meat of the issue for this book: How do God and evil relate? The first two chapters setup the situation and then we have the poetic discourse between Job and his friends about his suffering: its causes and remedies. Finally in Chapter 38 (March 4) God speaks, and we'll have more to discuss then.

Clearly the opening chapters of Job will give us plenty to discuss at our meeting on the 24th.

For the passages you will be reading, notice the argument between Job and his friends. It is not a friendly discussion! His friends are telling Job, "Shape up! This is you own fault! Does God punish the righteous?" Job's reply is basically 1. Who can argue with God, but I'm willing to try! 2. I'm not worse than you! Why am I the one suffering! 3. You guys are as comforting as a cactus chair!

You will also, towards the end of the week, read the famous passage: "I know my Redeemer lives..." You need to understand that the entire book is set up as a kind of court case. In the opening prose sections, the Devil - the Adversary - is not the character we usually think of. He is a kind of prosecuting attorney, accusing the righteous before God. The Redeemer, or Vindicator, is the one who is on the Defense Team, arguing and saving the accused.

Matthew 7-11
In Matthew this week we finish up the Sermon on the Mount and move on to Jesus' deeds of power and his second great discourse in Matthew. Chapter 8 sees him doing great works of healing and his power over the elements, including demons. Chapter 9 shows the beginnings of tension with those in religious leadership, but Jesus again casts out demons and even resuscitates the dead.

Chapter 10 is the second great discourse in Matthew in which Jesus gives the Twelve his instructions and teaches them of the realities a disciple will encounter. Chapter 11 lets us know Jesus has finished the discourse: "Now when Jesus had finished..." (compare the end of the Sermon on the Mount: 7.28 - Now when Jesus had finished...; also 13.53; 19.1; 26.1). Then we have the story of Jesus and John the Baptist (read last month in church) and Jesus expresses his frustration with the places he has been ministering. This tension is carried over into Chapter 12 where Jesus has his first great conflict with the religious leaders represented by the Pharisees.