Job 6:4

The barbs of the Almighty have pierced me,

   My spirit drinks in the poison,

      The terrors of God are arrayed against me.

 

I started over. As I went through the piece, I was trying to show the struggle I had in understanding how to amalgamate, and I got confused all over again.

I still do not get the mechanism of how the barbs/arrows of God have poison in them, but I have struggled to be able to justify another arrangement. Maybe it is just that I do not like job attributing the source of his sorrow in this specific manner. I know people blame God for all kinds of bad things and indeed God uses “bad” things to mature us, but apparently,  I must accept that Job was mad at God and said some things that do not bring me comfort.

An alternative to “barbs” was “arrows”. Arrows was the used by all my sources, so I changed to barbs on my own. Options for “the Almighty” were “God” and “Shaddai”, but I prefer the power of “the Almighty” in English. In a totally weird day for me, it seems I ditched the main option of “are in me” for “have pierced me” when I switched from arrows to barbs. In fact, I had also changed their poison to “my doom” (which also had absolutely no support). There was also the option of “within me” that I discarded as well. I am beginning to think I let this one get away from me.

The only options in the second stitch were “breath” for “spirit” and “venom” for “poison”. Spirit is accurate enough that breath is not helpful. And venom comes from living things, and not arrows.

In the final stitch, only the options of “beset”, “marshalled against”, and the totally incoherent “invests” were found for “arrayed against”. Arrayed seemed by far the best option.

I arrived at a point where I did not think “arrows” or “barbs” made any difference, nor did “pierced” vs “within”, or even “the” vs “their”.

Digging deeper, I found that one source had “around me” instead of “in me”.  If I take this as a complement to God’s terrors arrayed against me, maybe the arrows are indeed around him and his “breath” is breathing in the “air contaminated by poison on the arrows” and not actually suffering from the poison itself. I like this much better as it fits the context. Besides, if he was really suffering from the poison, he would be asking for it to kill him.

For the arrows of the Almighty are all around me,

   My breath brings tastes of their poison,

      The terrors of God are arrayed against me.

I like this better. I am not sure I have not changed the meaning from that intended, but I do like “around me” better than “within me”. I can understand the physical aspect of the breath breathing in the taste of impending doom from the poison rather than the nonphysical spirit drinking in the physical poison itself. But the impending doom can be inferred if you wrangle over the context enough with the poison being nonphysical as well to match the spirit. I do not feel like a poet and maybe this is masterful poetry that I am butchering. Maybe by the time I cycle back through this I will get it.

I noticed this is the 100th post on Job, so only like 1000 more to go. I wanted this effort to grow me and stretch me, I just forget how painful that can be. If we look only at the troubles in the world, we can be paralyzed by fear. The media has been trying to scare us with Russia nd Ukraine for weeks and now that it happens, it barely registers. If we rely on God and only on God, then all the fear goes away and all is only opportunity. Opportunity to be on God side and have the arrows and terrors be on your side.