Job 12:1-2

Then Job replied saying:

No doubt you are the gentry,

   With you all wisdom will die.

 

As these are exercises in my understanding of what is going on in the verse and my life at the times I write these, I hesitate to do many in one day. My life is relatively boring, and I do not have as much material as others. That reminds me of a question I have for MLB journalists. I like to read about the Astros and I would think the MLB journalists would need to put out a story everyday and have multiple tweets or other bits of output all along the way. I mean if they are being paid to tell us about the Astros, you would think they would do so. I know nothing about what they do all day, but I sure do feel underwhelmed when I read what they put out.

I accidentally initially capitalized ‘Doubt’ due to the group with the song I like. ‘No doubt’ was also ‘doubtless’, ‘oh yes’, ‘indeed’ and not used at all. ‘The gentry’ was ‘the people’, ‘the voice of the people’, ‘a distinguished tribe’, and ‘the people that count’.  Not sure where I pulled gentry from, but it matched my definition of the word.

Some sources did not have the clarifier ‘all’.

I however make no money for any of these posts, and even if someday it makes it into a book, I am not thinking I will get any financial profit since I will have posted it all on the internet along the way. So I do not feel bad if I produce nothing for long stretches or that they add no value to others.

When I was posting about the Astros back in the day, I tried to read everything I could find on them and had a good handle on how the players would perform, the manager would manage, and the general manager would do his thing. But I had no idea Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora were big cheaters and would use their respected roles to cow the others into letting the cheating go on. I am sure there were others on the team that participated, and benefited, but my point is that I had no idea they were cheating. I did get very frustrated watching them play, and the cheating made that aspect of it all make sense in retrospect, but without access, I did not know any of them.

The same is true of Job and his friends. I can read their words and read the assumptions that people make about them, but we cannot know them. In this verse, I see Job calling them the ‘gentry’ and saying all wisdom will die when they do. I think of this as sarcasm and that he is putting them down. The source that added the phrase ‘(voice of)’ in front of ‘the people’ pointed me in the direction that these characters are like modern day liberal politicians thinking they know better than the people and are making these statements to Job as self-appointed spokespersons for the people. I think Job thinks they are bullies who have risen to their stations at the expense of less aggressive people and that he would not even interact with them if they had not grabbed power to get ahead.

I ran off on a political bunny trail, but I erased it all. I have been looking at course options for the big kid, and I trip over the differences in application of macroeconomics and microeconomics. Cars keep getting more expensive and I have seen all the statistics and heard about the focus on higher profit margin vehicles. That and the rush away from gasoline. The most optioned Honda Accords only come with Hybrid engines. Toyota Camrys cannot be ordered, so if you want one, you have to buy the feature combination you can find, or pick something else. The prices of new 911’s have always been too high for me, but now the used ones are beyond my limit as well. It seems I might be back to buying a Civic. My last one cost about $16,580. This one will probably cost about twice that. A lot changes in 28 years.

And that is the element that Job’s companions do not get, time. The wisdom they portray as so grand was developed by people over many lifetimes, and not only do other people have some wisdom, time renders most of it useless. Unless it is about how to treat people. I have had a lifetime of building friendships, but a lot of that was failing while a kid. Some of it was failing as an adult. I have offended people by doing what I thought was right, and I was wrong. I have offended people by doing nothing. I have offended people by doing what I thought was right, and I was right. Over time, I have continued to oscillate between doing what I thought was right and doing nothing and offending people all along the way.

When I was little, I heard the phrase, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Every time I thought I was given much in a worldly way, I have been humbled. It is only now that I have thought to try and apply the phrase to the spiritual, and factoring in time, that I think the phrase should be clarified. “To whom anything is given, that is expected.” Spending money I have on a car I want is acceptable, but offending people by doing nothing is not. I need to learn from the wisdom of others and learn how to balance my wants against the opportunities to offend by doing what it right a little more often. 

(Written 3/27/23, Posted 4/22, Job 254)