Job 3:18

There the captives are at ease,

They no longer hear the overseer’s shouts.

 

“Captives” won out over “prisoners” although prisoners was more prevalent. The logical part of my brain thinks back to the era of Job and the prevalence of people being taken captive and forced into slavery as larger “tribes” from the area overtook their weaker neighbors whenever they pleased. Civilization was an outcome of power and not from everyone deciding to be nice to one another. Seattle was not civilized when the police pulled out last year.  People do evil.

On an emotional level, I see the images from my youth and seeing shows about slavery in America and the mistreatment of some captives by their overseers. These people were not prisoners, they were captives. Many were as good a person as one can be, yet they were not in prison, but still not free.

I am reading a book written in the 1950s that touches on the unreasonable hatred people groups have for each other. The author was a scientist by nature and while he did not know all the science we know today, there can be no scientific argument that any current people group is better than another or even different. I have two cats. One grey and one orange. Same mother cat, same father cat, same litter, no scientific reason one is better than the other. Like the cats, my mind does not let me fool myself that people are better or worse than another scientifically.

Our history shows other people have not been so enlightened and even today people act like they do not believe the science of equality.

But let’s make no mistake. We have the “dumb” cat and the “smart” cat. We have the “lazy” cat and we have the “active” cat. Individual people can be dumb or active or have a million different differences or similarities to other people. This does not make us unequal.

My book has apparently riled me up on the topic. In essence we are all equally “captive” to sin and our sin nature. We can all be at ease only when the are free of sin. This only happens in death. That is the ease that Job is discussing once again.

For “ease” I had the options, of “rest”, “tranquil”, and “repose”. As noted recently, repose to physical and rest is spiritual. And while tranquil is applicable, it seemed to miss the mark of the captive being free from work as opposed to a temporary condition that I associate with tranquility. I did not really like rest here as it is used so often and feels not set right with the negativity of being a captive.

Only one option for “no longer hear“ was presented, and it was “need not heed”.  I agree with the concept of death making it so that you do not have to heed the overseer’s calls, but I liked the concept of being at ease because you cannot hear it more. The outcome is not really freedom as you are dead.

The last part was “overseer” and overcame “task master”, “slave driver”, “oppressor”, “boss”, and “foreman”. I took a long time to work through this piece, but slave driver was too specific, boss was too everyday, foreman was just a job, and oppressor was too generic. I had a hard time distinguishing between a task master and an overseer. In the end, task master seemed too job like and overseer always gave me a “non-owner” feel that seemed appropriate to the captive term.

Job has hit the rich and the slave, the wicked and the innocent. In death we are all equal and we should recognize that that makes us all equal in life.