Job 8:4

Surely your children sinned against Him,

   So, He dispatched them for their transgression.

(Written 5/4, Posted 5/10)

On our street right now this afternoon, workers are painting two houses, putting up a new fence for another house, and continuing the process of getting us a new roof. I assume it is like this all over for the people unwilling to pay a whole lot more for a newer house that does not have all these age-related issues like ours. I spent a lot of time yesterday with a company that has built software to optimize maintenance before outright failures. Their tool only applies to 270 structures in the world right now, but the structures are expensive, failures are unacceptable, and the maintenance is very costly. No idea what this has to do with today’s topic, but on we march.

Alternates for “surely” include “if”, “when”, and the very odd “that is all”. “Sinned” had one alternative of “offend”. To me “surely” includes the hint of “if” and the intent of “when”, so I tried to split the middle, so to speak. I put no value in the use of “offend”.

“Dispatched” came from three of my Jewish sources, “got rid of” from the other, “cast them away” from the two King James versions, with the other two Christian sources seeming to mask the violence with the following:

• He delivered them into the power of their transgression
• He gave them over to the penalty of their sin

Did we not just allude to what a not nice person Bildad was?

“Transgression” was also “sin” and “crime”, but I much prefer the transgression that aligns with my daily saying of the Lord’s prayer.

Bildad is basically saying Job and his family are being punished because they sinned against God, and Job that deserves instant death just as his children received. I had the fleeting thought that Satan took advantage of the limit God gave him not to touch Job when he killed Job’s children. Not that God did not allow it, but that Satan did all the evil he could.

The media is screaming about inflation and yet many of the companies that sell us things are now making profits where they used to barely stay ahead of bankruptcy. Steak costs a lot more than it used to and the ranchers are failing, yet the meat packers and grocery stores are still making money. Growing up we were taught that capitalism is good, communism is bad, and as long as we did not go “red”, we would all be okay. There is no doubt that communism is bad as only the very highest levels get enough, but capitalism is built on winners winning and losers losing and that it all averages out for better of all. But the system is modified by winners paying off the politicians to make sure only certain groups win and everyone else loses.

From a worldly view, Job was once a winner, and due to circumstances quickly became a big-time loser. Bildad is trying to paint this as a spiritual issue with sinners becoming losers. But we all know sinners who do not get killed early no matter how great their sin. Sometimes we do everything right and people die or thieves steal, or things burn, or we get sick.

Bildad is a sinner and deserves death as much as the rest of us. We all deserve death, but God holds back death, He saves us from death, and He will eventually eliminate death and the sin that causes it. We can maintain our houses, our bodies, our resources, but storms still come, and consequences still occur. We cannot live assured of never experiencing death, but we can live knowing God is a God of mercy.