Month: August 2021

Week 35 Ecclesiastes

A couple of days ago I checked how often the Preacher used the word Vanity – I counted nineteen (vanity is used twenty-six times in the OT).
Today I looked up the word Wisdom and saw he mentioned it about twenty-seven times.
Thinking about the two words my instinct is to turn them into opposites – VANITY vs. WISDOM. I write VANITY on one side of a page then draw a thick black line down the centre and write WISDOM on the other. Opponents.
But the thing is I’m not certain the Preacher is saying that. I think on his page he’s writing VANITY on the left side and on the right side writing NON-VANITY (or some heading like that). Those are the real opposites.
That leaves me with the question: where does WISDOM go? Well…I think it lands on the left side – under VANITY (if all-is-vanity means all then wisdom is part of the VANITY WORLD).
I’m not too jacked-up making wisdom a subset of vanity but I finished Ecclesiastes today so I have to move on. But for now I’m assuming that VANITY WORLD’s vanities are organized in a hierarchy set (meaning that wisdom – even if it is the highest vanity – still has room for improvement).

Note: one other thing I think is correct: the Preacher thinks there’s a different wisdom that is unique to the Lord.
End-of-month reading report: I finished the OT today. 1334 pages out of 1730…roughly 77%.

 

Week 35 Ecclesiastes

The Preacher drops bible-readers into deep water with his first words: everything is meaningless…utterly meaningless (another version says: vanity of vanities! All is vanity).
It’s a comment with two parts. There’s the quantity part: All. And there’s the topic part: Vanity. On the surface it sounds simple enough but I realize it’s only simple enough if I know exactly what vanity means. And if I know what-all All includes.
Figuring that out would be a complicated exercise and since I have to finish the book tomorrow I don’t have the time. But I’m going to at least record a couple of ideas about where I’m at with this idea about All being Vanity.
First – I don’t think that All means absolutely everything that exists. For example later in the book the Preacher talks about the Lord. I don’t think All includes the Lord. I figure All could mean all the things I can observe in the material world and whatever-all I think about them.
Second – I don’t think that Vanity means totally and completely without meaning weight or value. From other things the Preacher says my guess is that Vanity is a relative idea. Things in the material world and my thought-world are extremely lightweight. They have just about the lightest meaning-weight-value that it’s possible to have and still have any weight at all. Almost nothing without being nothing.
So my paraphrase is: virtually everything is nearly-meaninglessly lightweight.

Note: quote from Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NLT & NASB)

Week 35 Ecclesiastes

I was reading the prophets this summer and I kept seeing phrases like ‘this is the word of the Lord’. Or ‘the Lord spoke to ______ saying’. Or ‘the Lord said to me…’ Or maybe the writer describes an oracle a dream or a vision from the Lord.
Ecclesiastes is different. The Preacher’s content is the product of personal observation.
He says things like this:
I devoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything being done in the world
I worked hard to distinguish wisdom from foolishness
I remained clear-eyed so that I could evaluate…things
I decided to compare…
I realized…
I observed…
I concluded…
I searched everywhere, determined to find wisdom and to understand the reason for things
I have thought deeply about all that goes on here in the world
I tried to observe everything that goes on all across the earth
I carefully explored…
In this way Ecclesiastes is different from other bible books that quote or paraphrase the words of the Lord. The Preacher is more like a social science observer assessing a bunch of real-life things: Pleasure & the good life. Wealth & poverty. Work & leisure. Law & order. Friendship & relationships. Politics & power. Education. Morality. Death. Developmental psychology.
The Preacher is assessing exploring observing concluding.
I like the Preacher but he’s pretty shrewd so I’m cautious around him. I think it’d be easy to decide he’s saying something he isn’t.

Note: quotes from Ecclesiastes 1:13, 17, 2:9, 12, 3:18, 4:1-2, 7:25, 8:9, 16, 9:1 (NLT)

Week 34 Ecclesiastes

I remembered today that Ecclesiastes was written by one of the world’s smartest guys.
I flipped back to Solomon’s story and re-read what the Lord had told him: I will give you a wise and understanding mind such as no one else has ever had or ever will have!
I get lots of reminders while I’m reading-through that the bible is a Combination Book – a mix of things that make sense plus things that don’t. [A useful formula is Understandables + Non-Understandables = the Bible].
Anyway when I started reading Ecclesiastes I remembered that a) I was reading a heavy-duty topic and b) it was written by the World’s Smartest Person. So I jotted down five useful guidelines-reminders for myself:
If I think I know what the Preacher is driving at maybe I don’t
If something sounds juvenile or obvious or crazy maybe it isn’t
If the Preacher is making no sense check my sense-making capacity
If the essay seems random & disconnected maybe I’m missing connections
If a comment sounds trite maybe it’s important.
My Summary Conclusion: Avoid Hasty Conclusions.
I know a guy who read a book by a very smart guy. He read and re-read page one about fifteen times before he figured he was ready to turn to page two. I thought about that as I started Ecclesiastes.

Note: quote from 1 Kings 3:12 (NLT). I think the book the guy was reading was Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Week 34 Job

The last major speech in the book of Job – apart from the Lord’s – comes from a man named Elihu.
Elihu says many things about the Lord that sound pretty accurate to me:
God is greater than any person
God will not do wrong
If God were to take back his spirit…all life would cease, and humanity would again turn to dust
God carefully watches the way people live
God hears the cries of the needy
God is mighty in both power and understanding
God is all-powerful
God is exalted beyond what we can understand
We cannot imagine the power of God.
Elihu says things like this that he knows for sure are true. But along with them he adds other things he thinks are true. For example he says some nasty things about Job:
Has there ever been a man as arrogant as Job, with his thirst for irreverent talk?
Job speaks without knowledge; his words lack insight
Job, you deserve the maximum penalty for the wicked way you have talked
Do you think it is right for you (Job) to claim, ‘I am righteous before God’?
One of the things that jumps-out at me reading Elihu is that it’s possible to say things that are totally accurate as well as things that aren’t.
Elihu called himself: a man of well-rounded knowledge. But that didn’t stop him from arriving at some dopey and uninformed conclusions.

Note: quotes from Job 33:12, 34:12, 14-15, 21, 28, 36:5, 22, 26, 37:23; and 34:7, 35, 36, 35:2, 36:4 (NLT).

Week 34 Job

The whole big middle section of the book is a debate between Job and Eliphaz Bildad & Zophar – Eliphaz…Job…Bildad…Job…Zophar…Job. Like that. And as the debate goes on it goes from okay-to-bad-to-worse. If at first EB&Z came to console Job they ended up disagreeing mocking ridiculing and degrading. In the end everyone piled on Job. So chapter 30 is Job thinking-out-loud about where he’s at now:
I am mocked by those who are younger than I
They despise me and won’t come near me
They oppose me to my face
They send me sprawling
They lay traps in my path
They hold me in contempt.
When you think about it Job’s complaints about his friends are probably justified. But then he starts praying and says six things to the Lord that are a bit harder to excuse:
I cry to you…but you don’t answer me
I stand before you, and you don’t bother to look
You have become cruel toward me
You persecute me with your great power
You throw me into the whirlwind and destroy me in the storm
You are sending me to my death.
I figure Job might get a pass on his first couple of comments.
But numbers 3-4-5-6 really move him into the Red Zone.
I guess we all feel sorry for Job. And I guess we can agree that his friends are duds. But calling the Lord a cruel destructive persecutor sounds like one step too far.

Note: quotes from Job 30:1, 10, 12, 15, 20-23 (NLT)

Week 33 Job

A lot of the time a bible reader is reading so he can collect bible data; be bible-informed. But the bible’s a religious book so you can’t figure on getting just raw information all the time.
Job 28 is one of those places where there’s more-than-just data. Not that 28 begins that way. The first eleven verses discuss the topic of mining – silver gold iron copper precious-stones. The idea is that a thing of value takes work and skill and effort to get…but then you’ve got it!
Wisdom is the opposite.
Job asks: do people know where to find wisdom? And he replies: no one knows where to find it, for it is not found among the living.
Job asks again: do people know where to find wisdom? He says: it is hidden from the eyes of all humanity.
A diamond is rock-solid material and if I look hard enough I’ll find it.
But wisdom isn’t a thing I can find. It’s as immaterial as the temperature of the air.
Job says that the Lord: saw (wisdom) and measured it. So it was visible to the Lord; measurable to him. But not to me. So it sounds like a futile search. But Job doesn’t give up. He finishes by saying: the fear of the Lord is true wisdom.
A direct search for wisdom is a wild goose chase.
I have to find wisdom indirectly – by fearing the Lord.

Note: quotes from Job 28:12-13, 27, 28 (NLT)

Week 33 Job

One of the basic differences of opinion between Job and Eliphaz Bildad & Zophar was this:
Job thought he wasn’t guilty of offending the Lord.
EB&Z thought he was.
Job and EB&Z all agreed that Job was suffering.
What they couldn’t agree about was why.
The big question: Why Is Job Suffering?
It’s possible that before chapter one ever happened Job and EB&Z might have agreed with the idea that if you did bad things then you’d suffer. It might have been a pretty common idea.
If EB&Z had started with that idea – that when a person was suffering he was suffering because he was an evil person – then even though they couldn’t discover in any evidential way whether Job actually was an evil person made no difference. Since Job was suffering and since evil people suffered therefore Job was evil.
Eliphaz was so sure that Job was an offender that he said things like this:
You must have lent money to your friend and then kept the clothing he gave you as a pledge
You must have refused water for the thirsty
You must have sent widows away without helping them
Eliphaz floated these scenarios about Job as being most likely true because he knew that only evil people suffered.
Meanwhile Job was wracking his brain trying to make sense of this common assumption that – at least in his case – couldn’t possibly be true.

Note: quotes from Job 22:6, 7, 9 (NLT)

Week 33 Job

It’s Job’s voice talking in chapters 9-10 and it’s a pretty hard section to absorb. Job seems to be heading for trouble.
He knows very well there’s a huge power differential between the Lord and him. He knows that in a Q&A contest: he could not answer (the Lord) once in a thousand times. There is no contest.
But Job still makes some pretty unflattering and questionable comments about the Lord.
Things like…
The Lord would never listen to me
The Lord attacks me without reason
Innocent or wicked, it is all the same to (the Lord)…He destroys both the blameless and the wicked
He laughs when a plague suddenly kills the innocent
The whole earth is in the hands of the wicked, and God blinds the eyes of the judges and lets them be unfair
Even if I were to wash myself with soap and cleanse my hands with lye to make them absolutely clean, (the Lord) would plunge me into a muddy ditch
And there’s more content like that in chapter ten.
If Job hated the Lord he’d likely say things like that. But whatever all else Job might hate he doesn’t hate the Lord. When his wife maniacally advised him to curse-God-and-die Job said: should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?
Still…even though Job’s belief & faith & heart are all in the right place his tongue is saying some crazily-dangerous things.

Note: quotes from Job 9:3 (NASB), 9:16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 30-31, 3:9-10 (NLT)

Week 32 Job

Yesterday I was wondering about the story in Job where the Lord conferred with his angels (and with Satan) about in-world events.
It seemed kind of ominous to realize that there might be a whole other dimension of life and activity going on that was a) invisible to me and b) could have an effect on me. It would be totally different to have an invisible dimension that was irrelevant. That would almost be like having no extra-dimension at all. But if extra-dimensional conferencing potentially had a real-life impact then that would be worthwhile info to have (I might or might not like it – but there’s no doubt that – if it was true – it would be useful intelligence).
Anyway I remembered another story I read back in mid-May that was pretty similar to Job 1. It was the story of the prophet Micaiah and a vision-type experience he had. He said: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the armies of heaven on his right and on his left. So…the Job story doesn’t have a throne and the armies-of-heaven. But just like Job there’s a discussion going on – in this case about what action to take in Ahab’s upcoming battle against Ramothgilead. So there’s a conference. Ideas are suggested. Recommendations are made. Outcomes are decided.
With both Job and Michaiah events inside-the-material world aren’t just randomly happening – they’re being affected by decisions outside-the-material world.

Note: quote from 2 Chronicles 18:18 (NLT)