Job 15:11

Are the consolations of God not enough for you?

   Nor the words we spoke gently to you?

 

I have felt super tired the last two days and just want to go back to bed. I do not know if there is a medical cause or an emotional cause. I just know I want to sleep. I am taking a number of steps to try and address potential underlying causes. Making myself do this is one.

‘Consolations’ was unanimous, but new to me. My least favorite source did not include God in the first stitch. ‘Not enough’ was also ‘too small’, ‘too little’, ‘too light’, and ‘so trivial’.

‘We’ was not in any of the second stitch options with alternatives being God or an unidentified speaker. ‘Spoken gently’ was also ‘whispered’, ‘softly spoken’, and options ‘the word that deals gently with you’ and ‘is there any secret thing with thee’.

My mind brings up the phrase ‘rhetorical’ for these verses and reminds me that the speakers had a plan with their musings (or at least the author did). I have never been all that good with English or the thought processes that create words of art. I am much better with facts and stringing facts together. However, I can appreciate the divine author creating lessons I have to dig for.

Almost, if not every, time I do the thing I know I am supposed to, my body follows along and responses as needed. I can’t run or jump or throw a ball, but I can certainly type and lift weights, and row on my rower or walk. My mind is a little harder to wrangle with, but I know there is the part I can control and the part that does its own thing in the background much better than I can with the part I control. I understand that we can use the parts of our mind that we control to train the parts that we cannot.

I just looked up consolations to find it means what I thought, but the underlying word of console is first a noun and then second the word that leads to consolations. I still prefer leaving ‘we’ in the second stitch as the idea I had was that the efforts of God nor the efforts of man were impacting Job and his desire to know how he had failed God to deserve what he got. I struggle to overcome my desires and step into the life that God has blessed me with once  I do. Even now I feel better having read and studied and wrote. I still want sleep, and I may still, but now I can feel the pull to do what I should.

Written 12/11/24, Posted 1/9/25, Job 348