Week 22 Job
The basic story: Job experiences a series of catastrophically terrible things that smash him into a kind of physical-psychic pulp. Four friends visit him.
Even though technically they’re friends, I would draw a double-line down the middle of a page and write Job on the left side and Eliphaz Bildad Zophar & Elihu on the right because soon enough they look like adversaries. Friendly adversaries, but a little more adversarial than friendly.
The thing I notice is that even though EBZ&E are opposed to Job each of them say some things that are pretty good, things that sound just about right. I’m up to chapter 14. So far EBZ have chipped-in about ninety verses of right-side-of-the-page input. And out of those ninety I count sixty-four that sound pretty good, pretty okay. For example Eliphaz says: God will not reject a man of integrity. Nothing wrong with that.
There’s still about eighteen chapters of back-and-forth so I don’t know if EBZ&E will keep saying good-sounding things at a 70%-clip. But so far it’s definitely not goofy stuff.
And on the other hand Job sounds like he’s edging toward the dark side when he says things like: though I am guiltless (God) will declare me guilty.
Anyway wherever the right-side and left-side will end up, to this point they’re both having trouble explaining the experience of pain. Neither one seems to have the horsepower to do the job.
Note: quotes from Job 8:20 and 9:20 (NASB version)