Job 5:19

From six troubles, He will save you,

   In seven, no harm shall befall you.

As I finished typing the verse, I found my finger bleeding. If this is like cats having nine lives, I hope this isn’t one of my 6 or 7 to get saved from. (Humor, in case it is not obvious.) One of our cats keeps throwing up and I am beginning to wonder what is triggering it. The other one throws up whenever it eats ribbon, but I have not found a root cause for this one. Root cause is a fun phrase from work and leads me to wonder if this verse responds to a particular root cause.

I found options of “calamities” and “straights” for “troubles”, but straights did not have a negative enough connotation and calamities has a little too much. Options for “save” include “deliver” and “rescue”, but both seemed to fit better with calamities than with troubles.

The only alternative given for “harm” was “evil” and while harm fit better with trouble, evil brings a new level of interest. The “evil” always came with the verb “touch” which was used in all but where “befall” came from. The concept of evil not touching us is not one I first think of. I assume evil will touch us and God will bring us out the other side as He sees fit. Maybe He only saves us from seven evils. The list of seven issues looks to be famine, war, fire, flood, drought, rocks, and wild beasts. To me, these are not evil. Each of these issues impacts believers and non-believers. I rendered the noun “harm” as it carries a spiritual component and the verb “befall” as each issue impacts us, but the promise is that God will save us spiritually from these things and not from the physical nature of natural life on earth. (War being the lone man-made issue here.)

One of the drives of mankind is security. We want to be safe from these seven issues. But the six natural issues happen every where, over, and over. We cannot control droughts or floods. We can not make wild beasts un-wild and harmless to humans. The only one we can really impact is war and even that is brought about by different groups each seeking their own security. The only security available to us is that we can be guaranteed to live with Him eternally in heaven (assuming no one finds security in looking forward to eternity in hell.)

I read an article about a religious group called the Satanic Temple that says they do not believe in Satan and they apparently only use the term in their title to rile up Christians. As we discussed in our Bible study this morning, the world hates us, and this hate will cause us trouble as long as we live in this world. God does not promise us a life with security in terms of the world. He promises us security for life in the next. That is the saving I want.