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Week 25  Proverbs 30

A man named Agur wrote this chapter – the only part of the bible he wrote.
He started with a prayer. At least I thought he started with a prayer. The bible I’m reading says: I am weary, O God; I am weary and worn out, O God. That sounds like a prayer.
The problem is that I looked at two other bibles and neither one of them said anything about being weary or worn-out. So is Agur weary or not? (I finally saw that the bible I’m reading says in a footnote that: “the Hebrew can be translated (differently)”).
So that left me in a Hebrew-language deficit.
But I do see that Agur says four other things in his intro. And all three versions say more-or-less the same:
I’m the most ignorant man
I lack common sense
I haven’t mastered human wisdom
I don’t know the Holy One.
Three versions. Three language differences. But the same self-critical assessment. Agur will go on to give some good proverbs but he starts with some pretty negative self-talk.
Common advice against self-criticism in southern Alberta these days is: don’t-be-too-hard-on-yourself. But the impression I get from Agur (and as far as that goes from other parts of Proverbs) is that being self-critical is only unhealthy if it’s wrong. On the other hand if I am – for instance – a genuine fool I’ll be staying that way as long as I keep telling myself I’m not.

Note: quotes & paraphrases from Proverbs 30:1-2 (NLT NASB NIV)

Week 25  Job

Two years ago – May 26, 2020 – I was thinking about what Eliphaz Bildad & Zophar said to Job. They said quite-a-few things that sounded pretty good so that year I did a rough quantitative analysis to see what “quite-a-few” converted to in numbers. In the first series of conversations I calculated that 70% of the EBZ content sounded pretty good.
This year I decided to do that exercise again in the later conversations – chapters 15-31. Would EBZ keep saying pretty good things at a rate of 70%?
In 15-31 there are 121 verses of EBZ speaking. That much is a counting exercise. The second – trickier – judgment-call part of the calculation was deciding how many sounded pretty good. One simple test I used a few times was to ask: if I read this verse somewhere else – say Psalms or Proverbs – would it sound ok? (for instance: the light of the wicked will be snuffed out). And a second test was to ask myself: do these sound common-sensically legitimate to me? (for instance: God is so great – higher than the heavens, higher than the farthest stars).
Findings: out of the 121 verses of EBZ material I counted 67 verses that sounded pretty good. That’s ~55%.
EBZ slipped from 70% in the early going to 55% as the debate went on. But 55% still seems high to me (it didn’t drop to zero). So it looks like EBZ were arguably correct about quite a few things but still wrong in what they said about Job.

Note: quote from Job 18:5 & 22:12 (NLT)

Week 25  Job 31

Job is getting near the end of his debate with EBZ and in this chapter he makes a whole bunch of conditional comments.
If X…then Y.
If Situation X happens…then Outcome Y occurs.
With Job the pattern is: “if I’d done Wrong Action X then the result would be Negative Outcome Y”.
I counted the number of times Job said if I’d done… I found 13. But there’s more than that because Job also switches off and uses words about equal to if I’d done. Phrases like or I’d done & and I’d done & the question have I done? Different ways of saying if I’d done. I added the ‘if I’d dones’ + ‘or I’d dones’ + ‘and I’d dones’ + ‘have I dones’ and got 33 – give-or-take. That’s quite a few conditionals in a 40-verse chapter.
Approximately 33 Hypothetical Concessions from Job: if I did Wrong Action X then I deserve Negative Outcome Y.
Job knew that one of the Inescapable Laws of the Universe was: If I Do Wrong Then I’ll Be Penalized. He had no argument with that Law; didn’t have any concern with it. His (Big) concern was the flip-side: if I’ve done nothing wrong will I get penalized? (And it really looked to Job like the answer was “Yes!”)
Job’s dilemma was that he figured he was in-the-right.
EBZ’s observation was that Job had been smashed to pieces and therefore he had to be in-the-wrong.
So in the end EBZ gave up on Stubborn Job.

Week 25  Proverbs 26

When arguing with fools, don’t answer their foolish arguments, or you will becomes as foolish as they are.
When arguing with fools, be sure to answer their foolish arguments, or they will become wise in their own estimation.
I sit there thinking about these consecutive (and pretty contradictory-looking) verses.
Don’t argue with a foolish guy…
Argue with a foolish guy…
Hmmm….
With a Real Contradiction there’d be two things that are so different that one has to be wrong – wrong by definition. So for instance: ‘a foolish guy is wise’.
But Solomon’s Do-Argue and also Don’t-Argue are different…and a bit trickier. So for instance – maybe the idea is that I can’t both argue and not-argue at the very-same-time. But I can at different times or under different conditions. That’s a situation where Do-Argue & Don’t-Argue are more circumstance-or-time-dependent and doing both is possible.
So verse 4 would be saying that if I’m going to get into a foolish & degraded & acrimonious & destructive argument then better not to argue.
And verse 5 would be more like: I’m doing the other guy a disservice if I don’t at least point out the other-side.
That’s one way I can think about it to help myself make sense. I have to do something since Solomon doesn’t always leave me much to work with. A lot of the proverbs are minimalist sayings. Simple-Complex short-hand comments. And I have to dope them out as best I can.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 26:4 & 5 (NLT)

Week 25  Job 27

A few years ago I heard a guy say that Job 27:7-23 wasn’t actually said by Job (even though the chapter begins: Job continued speaking). The reason was that it didn’t sound like something Job would say.
I read the 17 verses asking myself: ‘could Job have said this?’ In the end I figured the answer was ‘yes’.
The main point of the speech is that evil people with be judged for their evil actions. I couldn’t think of a reason why Job wouldn’t say that. His concern wasn’t whether wicked people would be punished. His concern was quite a bit more personal – why am I being punished?
EBZ were a bit befuddled too. They started with the True General Principle (TGP) that evil people would be judged for their evil actions. They had the idea that negative consequences were almost magnetically attracted to evilness…that where one was you’d predictably find the other. So then EBZ took their TGP and applied it back-to-front to Job’s specific & personal case: awful things are happening to Job…therefore Job is awful.
I figure I’ve got to cut them some slack. They didn’t have an alternative TGP that applied in Job’s case. Didn’t realize that terrible things can happen to innocent people.
Even Job didn’t know that. Maybe nobody did until Job lived out his  life.

Note: quote from Job 27:1 (NLT). BTW: the guy said that the Job 27:7-23 passage was a speech by Zophar.

Week 25  Proverbs

Yesterday I was reading a collection of proverbs that my bible subtitled: Thirty Sayings of the Wise.
Those Thirty-Sayings were followed by another subtitled section: More Sayings of the Wise.
Those More-Sayings were followed by another subtitle: More Proverbs of Solomon (which went for the next ~140 verses).
I wondered why I’d not been noticing subtitles. I paged back from Thirty Sayings of the Wise past 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10. Chapter ten said: The Proverbs of Solomon. So there haven’t been any subtitles for 13 chapters.
Anyway then I wondered – since Solomon wrote chapters 10-22:16 and 25-29 – did he write chapters 22:17-24:34 too? I just kind of assume he did since that section is sayings-of-the-wise and Solomon was wise. But I also noticed a slight difference in the two.
Many of the Solomon Proverbs are one-verse long: the rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord made them both. But quite a few of the Wise Proverbs are a couple of verses long: don’t weary yourself getting rich. Why waste your time? For riches can disappear as though they had the wings of a bird.
Does that prove anything? Maybe the Wise Proverbs were written by someone else (the last two chapters of the book weren’t written by Solomon). Or maybe ancient Jewish literature had different styles/forms of proverbs and Solomon wrote both kinds. It’s hard to say.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 22:2 & 23:4-5 (NLT). Added note: I figure 99%  of Solomon’s proverbs were only one-verse long. Someday I might do a count.

Week 24  Proverbs 22

One of the bibles I read adds subheadings. The subheadings aren’t part of the bible. They’re just tip-offs the publisher plugged-in to signal key break-points in the text.
One of those subheadings is added just before Proverbs 22:17 and it says Thirty Sayings of the Wise. A couple of verses later Solomon says: I have written thirty sayings for you.
So I’m expecting to read thirty more proverbs. But the chapter ends nine verses later and there are only five. I scan forward through chapter 23 and then 24. I spot another subheading after 24:22: More Sayings of the Wise.
From 22:17 (where Thirty Sayings of the Wise begins) to 24:22 (where Thirty Sayings of the Wise ends) there’s roughly 70 verses. I do a quick count and find 33 proverbs in those 70 verses (I won’t take that number to the bank – it was a quick count).
I check another bible version. It adds subtitles too: Sayings of the Wise. A couple of verses later Solomon asks: have I not written thirty sayings for you? (after 24:22 it adds: Further Sayings of the Wise).
I check another bible version. It doesn’t add subtitles. And Solomon doesn’t say anything about thirty sayings: have I not written to you excellent things?
Hmmm. In English the word ‘thirty’ is quite a bit different from ‘excellent’. There’s likely a technical linguistic explanation but I don’t know about it.
So I move on and just start reading the thirty proverbs.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 22:20a (NLT NIV & NASB)

Week 24  Proverbs 22

The third verse says: a prudent person sees danger and takes refuge. I stopped for a bit. Thinking about the word prudent. A guy I knew used that word to argue for doing something when he didn’t have a good practical reason – “it would be prudent” (vs. for example “it would save time”).
I checked a word book:
“Prudent” is used 21 times in the bible. 12 times in Proverbs.
“Prudence” is used 3 times in the bible – all in Proverbs.
In Proverbs I get the sense that being prudent includes things like being careful cautious thinking-ahead not-being-rash – like that. But Solomon says more about it:
…every prudent person acts out of knowledge
…the wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways
…the prudent are crowned with knowledge
There’s the normal anticipatory think-aheaded-ness kind of prudence that some people naturally have. Then there’s a second-tier prudence that’s linked to a Solomonic-style knowledge/wisdom.
The idea of two-tiers of ideas in proverbs doesn’t surprise me that much. Solomon’s proverbs are like a bi-level house. On the lower level are common-sense proverbs (e.g. lazy people are a pain to their employer). But when I go to the upper level it’s like I need common-sense plus more-than common-sense (e.g. a righteous man hates falsehood).
In Alberta we don’t use the word prudent very much so Solomon’s reminder is a help.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 22:3 13:16 14:8 14:18 10:26 13:5 (NIV). One bible version I looked at almost always used “wisdom” instead of “prudence”.

Week 24  Job 19

Job had three friends – Eliphaz-the-Temanite Bildad-the-Shuhite & Zophar-the-Naamaathite.
When EB&Z: heard of the tragedy (Job) had suffered, they got together and travelled from their homes to comfort and console him.
EB&Z felt bad about Job’s reverses and went to console him. And they probably did console him at first. But then after a bit of consolation they started realizing that Job was not only devastated and ruined. He was also wrong.
That created a dilemma for them. On the one side they were sorry their friend had been smashed-to-pieces. But on the other they were getting irritated about how he was doping-out reasons behind why he’d gotten smashed-to-pieces. And so EBZ’s consolation started transitioning into disputation-correction-argument.
I’ve been reading Proverbs at the same time and Solomon says some Job-applicable things:
arguments separate friends like a gate with iron bars…
the tongue can kill or nourish life…
the human spirit can endure a sick body, but who can bear it if the spirit is crushed?
I’m down to Job 19 today and Job tells EB&Z – more or less: “you guys are killing me!” Then Job told them what he needed most from them: have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy.
Solomon: there are friends who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother. What Job needed more than anything from EB&Z was a friend who stuck.

Note: quotes from Job 2:11 & 19:21 Proverbs 18:19 21 14 24 (NLT)

Week 24  Job 7

By chapter seven Job is near the end-of-the-line. He wishes he was dead.
Part of the attraction of being dead was that any circumstance was starting to look better than the one he was in.
There are two basic states: being alive and being dead. I don’t have any clinical studies to prove it but my sense is that the normal feeling among living people is that being alive is the preferable condition.
In my mind I imagine a long horizontal line – a Life & Death Preference Continuum. Life is on the left. Death on the right. And everyone is located in between. Lots of us – maybe the majority – are clustered over toward the life-preferring left-end of the line. But as life gets less attractive for me I’ll start inching along toward the right. Job’s life circumstances were alarmingly bad. Job was a strong right-end candidate.
He says: I prefer…death, rather than this body of mine. I despise my life…my days have no meaning.
He’d been mulling being dead since chapter three: I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest
In death: the weary are at rest
In death: captives enjoy their ease
In death: the slave is freed.
Personally I think Job embellished the benefits of the death state a little too much.
But the point is that he’s definitely warming-up to the benefits of being dead.

Note: quotes from Job 7:15-16 3:13 & 16-17 (NIV)