Job 16:11
God hands me over to the evil doer,
Wrings me out through the hands of the wicked.
We were talking about what people thought sin was this morning, ranging from two men being married, running a stop sign or speeding. Somehow speeding became going over 100 mph, then 120, then unsafe, and then depending on who was in the car. And then it all became a relative question. Sin as a relative question was not something I expected when I was a kid.
‘Hands’ was also ‘gives’, ‘turns over’, and ‘delivers’. ‘Evil doer’ was also ‘ungodly’ or wrong ‘doer’.
‘Wrings’ was also ‘casts’, ‘throws’, ‘turns’, ‘ thrusts’, ‘tosses’, and ‘lets me fall’. None had the ‘wrings’ connotation. ‘Hands’ was also ‘clutches’.
One of the great debates about Job was when it was written. Another is whether Job was a real person or not. One of the issues with timing was whether the Jews had been taken into captivity in Babylon or not. Some concepts within the book turn on whether the Jews had been punished at the hands of the Syrians and Babylonians or if that was still to come. Other’s turn on whether Job knew God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or simply as God. Is this verse about the poor who treated Job badly in his condition or the nations that would punish Israel as a nation?
Our country took active action to bomb another country this past week. I am not in a position to judge whether this was good or evil, but it does make me wonder if this country will respond with terrorism simply to respond since it no longer has a real military option to push back with. I align terrorism with cowards but how does one fight back against overwhelming force. I want to have compassion on the individuals, but the leaders who drive bad behavior need to be punished. I just do not know how.
From a historical perspective, people have labeled individuals, nations, and religions with nifty titles and characteristics that fit a long-term development of people building on the findings of those before. But history is full of people, nations, and religions that had great ideas before anyone else and were wiped out by disease, lack of aggression, or overwhelming force. An article I read today denoted a 50,000-year-old skeleton of a 3’ tall human. My guess is they were wiped out by 5’ tall humans, but the article contends it could have been from another cause.
My point is that all of these topics are bigger than any one person. Yes, as a group we have to have some mechanism to protect the weak from the misguided strong, but as individuals, we should not be trying to take the Lord’s work into our own hands. If God was using the evil doers to punish Job, then Job needed to not take it out on the evil doers. Just like my wife tells me I can’t expect the cats to behave, we should not expect the evil among us to behave without sin. We miss the mark when trying desperately to follow Christ, and others ignore the concept of a mark while desperate to pleasure themselves. Practice discipline for ourselves, but grow patience with others. How else can we be good neighbors?
Written 6/24/25, Posted 8/25/25, Job 385