Today, I am reading and commenting on Job 16-21.

In today’s passage Bildad and Zophar once more argue that the wicked suffer, with the implication that ONLY the wicked suffer.  This is every bit as much of a heresy as the teaching that doing good is a surefire path to health and wealth.  )I want to mention that the arguments of Job’s friends in the Book of Job present a good example of why reading the Bible repeatedly is important.  If we did not know that God condemns them at the end of the book we might not realize that their arguments were wrong.)  Job responds that his experience shows that the wicked often prosper, but that nevertheless he would avoid their plans.  While Job repeatedly complains that he does not understand why God has allowed him to suffer, he says some things which as a Christian mean a lot to me.  First, he says that even now, even in the midst of his suffering, even in the midst of him accusing God of unjustly allowing him to suffer, he has an advocate in heaven pleading with God for him.  Then a little later, after speaking about how God had wronged him, he says that he knows that his redeemer lives and that even though he will die he will see God in the flesh.  That is an interesting thing for Job to declare, since he had several times expressed the idea that life is short and ends when we die.  Job’s suffering led him to wish he could die and be at the end of his suffering.  It led him to feel like the peace of nonexistence would be better than what he was experiencing.  Yet, in the depths of his misery, after experiencing the condemnation of his friends in place of comfort, he acknowledged that God would not abandon him to death and that he would see the One who would suffer so that he could experience fellowship with God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.