Job 13: 26
That You decree bitter things for me,
Make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.
I have three more of these to finish this chapter and three more verses to finish my work in chapter 35. That means I am about 22 chapters behind if I were trying to catch up. Thankfully that is not a goal (especially since I do not like goals) and maybe what comes after my completing the work on Chapter 42 fills the gap. I actually still have over 200 verses to go, and it looks like we will have a new president by then and no telling what happens after that.
‘That’ was ‘that’ in all my Jewish sources and ‘for’ in all my Christian sources. Odd at a minimum. ‘Decree’ was also ‘write’, ‘record’, and ‘charge’. ‘Bitter’ was used seven times, but the lone holdout was ‘my past’. The typical response would be to use ‘my past’ to match the words in the second stitch more closely, but I have held out thinking maybe ‘bitter’ is being used to describe the sins of his youth. ‘For’ was ‘against’ almost every time.
‘Inherit’ was also ‘read’, ‘posses’, ‘answer for’, and ‘charge’ in place of both make and inherit. ‘Iniquities’ was also ‘sins’ and ‘crimes’.
An Alternative:
That You charge my past deeds against me,
Make me answer for the iniquities of my youth.
About this time forty years ago, I was discovering that my arm was broken and my hopes of making the varsity football team as a junior were dashed. I did get to have a sophomore take notes for me in health class, but that seems about all the good that came out of that. I am sure it changed my life in all the ways God wanted, but it was not enough to get me to quit football and focus on baseball. Talk about being stupid and having stupid goals.
I broke that same arm about six years before. Neither time did it hurt enough to know I had broken something when I did. In stark contrast to when I broke my leg. Or my tail bone. I wish now I had gone to the doctor to get an X-ray of my tail bone so that I could have it as a memento of my stupidity. You would think I would have enough of those.
We all do things we won’t grow up to be proud of when we are kids. Most are because our brains are still developing, but many are because we just want more for ourselves. As I understand it, we will one day have to answer for all those things we did wrong, and the only acceptable answer is Jesus paid the penalty for me and all my sins. Thankfully it covers all the ones I ever made or will make. At some point, I will go back and read all these for possible updates to the Amalgamation as a whole, but for today, I’ll stick with the first one as I know I will know more by then.
Written 7/25/24, Posted 8/20/24, Job 309