Job 9:16

If I summoned Him, would He respond?

   I cannot believe that He would give me a hearing.

(Written 8/24, Posted 8/24, Job 188)

I feel like I am back from a summer break. I do not really feel like I had a summer break, but maybe my mind did without me. In this verse, Job is still wanting to plead his case before God. It feels like a court room drama.

“Summoned” was also “called”. It feels like a less commanding word was the intent, but I went with summoned to leave the incredible aspect of a man demanding anything of God. “Respond” was also “answer”. Answer seemed to equivalent to call, so I went with the other option.

“Cannot believe” was also, “do not believe”, “would not believe”, and “doubt”.  I preferred the humility in “cannot”. “Give me a hearing” was also “listen to my voice”, “harkened to my voice”, “lend me His ear”, and “heed my voice”. I discounted “lend me his ear” as I believe He always listens to us. I discounted listen and heed as I believe the verse is about getting a hearing rather than God simply hearing. I really felt there was something in “harken to my voice” that was not in the others, but that is probably just something frozen in 1611 English and not applicable to the translation itself.

We are watching a police drama in our spare time and last night there was a quote from Shakespeare. Of course, the English of the King James version is also the English of Shakespeare and the popularity of one impacts the popularity of the other. Shakespeare was never an interest of mine as I struggled to understand the meaning behind so many of the words and phrases that I had no idea what was happening or when a good phrase had been turned. I did read a little Othello last night to get a new feel for it and the first phrase I recognized was more aligned with the negative aspects of culture today than I would project into the time of the story in the play.

A different we are watching a court room drama in our spare time. The first court scene was fairly comical (pun intended) and when reading Othello, I was reminded how critical the concepts of Law and Order are to civilization. (Maybe more important than running water.) As we move through Job learning more about how the understanding of men differs from the understanding of God, we also learn how important it is to do the right thing because it is right and let God handle those aspects that we cannot control. The world is full of evil and full of selfish people whose actions are indistinguishable from evil. We are to live apart from the sinful nature and live through faith that God is protecting us from losing the one thing that matters: salvation.