Job 5:22

At the ravage of Famine, you will laugh,

   You shall not fear the Beasts of the earth.

 

I sat down to figure out how far behind I was in number of verses from my writing (now on 5:22) compared to my amalgamating (now on 16:1). Turns out it is 269. While at it, I counted the verses to finish amalgamating and came up with 711. That leaves 980 verses to write about. My original hope was to finish in three and a half years (at the end of 2023). If I kept my current pace, I would finish at the end of 2024. So, in order to end on time, I have to stop skipping days and I need to do a piece and a half every day. Now I have a new goal. It is not the horror that 3,000 miles on a bike was that one year, but I have already thought about the fall back of the end of 2024, June 30, 2024, or my birthday 2024. Who knows, I may get on a roll and finish early.

So, I ran into a problem as soon as I read this verse. It does not contain drought and messes up my list of seven perils from a few verses ago. My first instinct was to change famine to drought, but… The actual terms suggested were “destruction and famine” from all the Christian sources, “violence and starving”, “raiders and famine”, “assault and starvation”, and “ravage of famine” from the others. In the end, I neglected to see “drought”, but I went with the single term from my favorite source over the others that each had two. I do believe the concept here is a result of drought, but I am still unsure of the selection I want.

The first stich has variations of “you shall laugh”, “you laugh”, “you will laugh”, and “You smile”. Due to growing up with the King James Version, I am partial to “shall”, but after years of dealing with technical specifications, “shall” seems like a cuss word. I did not like the options without “will” or “shall” due to the time element, but I was tempted to use the simple “smile” over “laugh” from a sense of being above it all.

The only alternative to “beasts” was “animals” and it seemed underwhelming. Same comments of fear from the previous verse.

When I reread all this, I was struck by the combination of “assault and starvation”. Destruction, violence and raiders did not fit with the list if the verse was about something other than manmade war. However, combining assault with ravage and looking at them as adjectives for starving and eliminating Famine from its earlier inclusion, I feel inclined to suggest “At the destruction of drought, you will laugh”. Famine and drought are similar in that a drought can cause a famine, but it is not necessarily so, and the issues with droughts can be significantly different that just starving. An alternative I meant to suggest was “the assault of drought” or “the ravage of drought”, but my mind went with the alliteration “d of d”. Now all I want to do is replace famine with drought and move on.

At the ravage of Drought, you will laugh,

   You shall not fear the Beasts of the earth.

My mind landed on a different kind of drought. God did not speak to the Jews for four hundred years from the last prophet until John the Baptist. This drought of God’s Word lasted for what I consider to be twenty generations. (Assuming people had kids at about 20 years of age during this period.) That is a long time not to hear from God. I like my goal of needing to do a verse a day and to write more than once as day, as each is time I spend with God listening to His direction and seeking to learn more about Him. Yesterday I had lunch with my “old person” friend and his goal was to be a good person who served others by engaging with them while he walks the neighborhood. It may seem like a little thing, but he sees the benefit of a little each day as he grows on his neighbors. I still recommended he read his Bible every day, get a Bible study group, and go to church, but he knows his mission. Maybe it broke a drought in his neighborhood.