Book of Job

The reading for me yesterday, today, and the next ten days will be the book of Job. I will not necessarily blog each day about this because I want to analyze and understand the story as a whole. As interesting ideas come forth though I will address them in here. 

Job reminds me of a junior high student at times. The story starts out with Job blest by God. He is very righteous and upstanding. He has a family, place to live, servants, lots of livestock and possessions. When this is taken away and tragedy befalls on Job he first withstands it. The second wave he crumbles (it seems right now). Several friends come to visit and start having a discussion with him. Through this discussion Job complains and seems to focus on only his suffering. The world revolves around Job. At one juncture his friends point out that after all those Job has helped why is his suffering so bad and will not let others help. 

There are many curious lines of in the conversation with Job. Much of it is depressingly curious, but there are also some insightful things. The concept right now in the book that I am engaging with is this idea of blessing by God. What is it that God bestows upon us that makes us blessed. There is the idea that wealth and resources make us blest (very USA thought). There is also the idea that it is our knowledge, connections, work, or identity. A pastor once told me there are two things that are important/eternal. Relationships and God (Word of God). As I read Job I want to tell him this. Hopefully his friends will. 

Job also states many times that God will look for him and he will no longer be living. This seems to imply that God's presence has left Job. As I noted before that is something that Cain could not handle. Cain probably would have preferred death to losing God's presence.  As I continue to journey with Job (remind me never to let my students read this book to get any ideas about how to complain) I hope we both get to see how God might deliver him. 

Genesis 10-11

The section I read late last night consists mostly of the family tree for Noah and his sons. In the middle of this we get a interesting story of one of his descendants. It is another well known story that we have come to know as the Tower of Babel. 

I had always thought of this story as another case of humanity doing something it should not and God stepping in to stop them. Before re-reading this story I would have summarized it as the people trying to build up and get to heaven. God hears of this and stops them by making it so they can not communicate by changing their languages. 

This is similar, but seems to be wrong as I look at this. What we see is the people start making bricks as they move out and fill the earth as commanded. They do this instead of using stone. So they start building a city and have a large tower in it to reach the heavens. What struck me as very different is the response God has. God sees it and realizes that people can accomplish anything now. God then states to himself (with a let us) that they should confuse the language. 

This is a story to help explain how people began to speak different languages. It is a myth to help explain how we came to have different languages. The part that perplexes me is that God is more concerned with how productive the people have become. Why would God be concerned about this? It does not make sense in this light. 

The only way I can understand this story right now is to see it as myth and an explanation of a situation on Earth.