Week 22 Job
A month-and-a-half ago I read the story of Micaiah, a prophet who had an other-worldly vision of the Lord sitting on a throne surrounded by heavenly beings, discussing king Ahab and how he would decide to believe a lie that would lead to his death.
There’s a similar thing in Job: there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Two behind-the-scenes accounts of what else is going on.
At least two times, location not precisely known, there were gatherings of beings, maybe ranked in an escalating hierarchy of transcendence but all inferior to the Lord, and the Lord was discussing events in the world and what people were doing.
These are sobering stories; a little frightening; kind of eerie; dangerous.
If I’m a material guy and know that the only real things are materials-I-have-sensory-access-to then I’m not concerned with Micaiah’s cock-and-bull vision.
But Job and his colleagues weren’t material guys. They were all pretty religious guys who you’d think knew that things were going on out past the skin of this world. But they go on and on and on talking, the whole time missing a big piece of the puzzle, forgetting to remind themselves: we have a huge knowledge-deficit. But if it crossed their minds how much they didn’t know they didn’t let on.
Note: quote from Job 1:6; see Michaiah in I Kings 22:19 (NASB version)