Job 15:10

Among us are the gray-haired, the aged,

   Far older than your father.

I started life over this morning. To some degree I do that every day, but today I laid out my plan and started following it. Then I heard that the cat peed on the garage door again. This is like the fourth time in a week and one night after I told myself I would put the smelly stuff down today. I wonder if I should be looking so forward to the kid leaving the nest and taking these cats with her?

‘Gray-haired‘ was also ‘gray-headed’ and ‘gray beard’. I wondered why the white on my head didn’t count? ‘Aged’ was also ‘very aged’ and ‘old’. Hopefully, I don’t fit in either of those. ‘Among us’ was also ‘on our side’ and ‘with us’.

‘Far’ was also ‘even’, ‘much’, and ‘years’.

I spent some time on this verse looking at just when Job could have been living and who his father might have been. The assumption has always been that he was a Son of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob or some Jewish descendant of theirs. My favorite so far has always been Moses’s father with his brother Aaron having written Job. The image I get though is of really old men who no longer can contribute to the tribe physically and are limited to telling old stories. With the old in old folks homes, our society loses these benefits.

But the underlying false claim is that old people know better than young people. Age is just an indicator of opportunity and the lack of a tragic early end. A life well wasted leaves nothing to pass along. Our oldest spent many years with her grandparents and she shows an appreciation for them. Our youngest did not get all those same opportunities due to health issues so her relationships with them are not as full. But they did not learn to hunt, to gather, to cook, to tend, or any of the little things Job’s kids probably learned from their grandparents.

The other problem is of course that Job and his friends are speaking of much grander things that cannot be known through experience or through lessons from your elders, but only from the working of God on your soul. One who denies God, ignores God, or simply puts themselves before God never takes the time to learn from our only Father and Teacher. Jesus, of course, is our real teacher, and as I have been reading through Matthew again, I am joyfully reminded of where I got so many ideas of what is right and wrong. As we seek to love and glorify God, we need only speak of that love in our life and share the words in the Bible.

Written 12/9/24, Posted 12/31/24, Job 347