Job 3:6 Learning to Ask
That night – May blackness take it,
May it not rejoice among the days of the year,
May it not appear in any of its months.
I goofed here by hitting a 6 when I meant to hit a 5, and I did 7 before 6. Does that even make sense? I assure myself I am not losing my mind, over and over each day. Not really, but I do make what seem like stupid mistakes every so often. So, I skipped ahead and wrote about 3:6 before 3:7. I will post 3:7 next, so feel free to wait and read it before this one.
Blackness is another term signifying the lack of light associated with pre-creation and the worst curse Job could find for it. Nothing new here, but since night is black anyway, it seems more likely, right? Of course not.
Other options were murk, deep darkness, thick darkness, obscurity, gloom, or simply take it. I continually find it odd how some words have seven renditions among my sources. Especially, when one is King James and another the New King James. They do all mean about the same thing, but it often serves to narrow down what I fell the original author meant to convey.
Speaking of originals, we started watching the newest version of King Kong last night. I still have memories of watching the 1933 original as a kid and comparing it to the one I got to see in the theaters in 1978. Watching the Japanese monster movies with dubbed English was always a hoot. We actually watched all of the newest Godzilla last night too (We are preparing to watch Kong vs Godzilla in the theater next month.) and I was fascinated with how they stuck to the “let’s drag out the actual introduction of Godzilla as long as possible” mantra from the early movies. King Kong was of course always my favorite, but I have no doubt it was because of the 1978 Jessica Lange and me being 10.
I did not really understand the background for taking the night off the calendar so to speak. And this verse is mainly about that. I wondered if he meant just the one particular day be skipped or drop it from the calendar every year. I included what I would call the third option of not letting it rejoice among the days as if the individual days were personalized and at a party looking back on what great things happened among them in the past. This is more of a one-time slant then the alternative of not having a party each year for whoever was born on that date.
We hosted a birthday party Saturday and then on Sunday we ripped out all the wet sheet rock from the garage. I was happy that it worked out in that sequence. “Do life and then worry” is how it translated in my brain. I have already lost track of when the bad stuff happened last week and must learn from this not to fret about the things I cannot work on and to actually do the things that need to be done, when they need to be done. I am going to be 53 about the time Kong vs. Godzilla comes out. One would think I would have learned this by now.
The last part asks that it not be numbered or not appear in any of the months. Looking at history books, trends are shown over centuries and the actions of any day seem lost among the rounding errors of observation. Dropping Job’s day and night from among them would seem to have little impact. But as we know in today’s world of instant access, the actions of one individual at a given moment may greatly shift the flow of history.
Job is asking God to change all of history for only Job’s benefit. It seems a huge ask that will not be answered. But from it we can learn one important thing. God does love each of us enough to change history. We can pray knowing that God will listen, and if He so choses, grant our request. Job wanted God to do something for him. He asked. God did not give Job everything he asked for, but Job received tremendous blessing, because he asked. So learn to ask and ask.