Job 16:9

In His wrath He rends me, He reviles me,

   He has gnashed His teeth against me,

      My foe sharpens His gaze upon me.

 

Just for fun I used google AI to calculate how many verses from Job 16:9 through the end of the book. It gave me the answer of 98 which is clearly wrong, so don’t believe everything AI tells you. It then ran through its logic where it gave what might be a correct answer of 695, but it also said 703, and I got tired of reading. In the end, I’m guessing about 700 verses, and with 365 days in a year, I might get these done in two years, maybe three.

‘Wrath’ was also ‘anger’, ‘rage’, and ‘assault’. ‘Rends’ was also ‘tears’. ‘Reviles’ was also ‘hate’, ‘anger’, ‘persecutes’, and ‘seethes’.

‘Foe’ was also ‘adversary’, ‘opponent’, and ‘enemy’.

When I read the book by my favorite source, he often pointed out how Job’s friends called out the ‘nice’ attributes of God, whereas Job often cites the less positive attributes. In this verse, Job is not focusing on how nice God is. I did find it interesting that the previous verse was addressed to God and this one is to the audience of people.

We went to a wedding last night, and it was two strong Christians, one from a very strong Christian family, that were getting married. But they invited some people who might not have the same religion and a bunch of young adults and teenagers, so the range of dress was wide and varied. One could focus on the more mature people and call a very conservative dressed event, or one could focus on the others and call it a typical ‘party’ dressed event. One’s focus of observation or one’s intent on declaring it either would be the only clue to how an individual described it.

So, it is with the events in our lives that we choose to focus on or communicate about. Seeing cars run a red light may help us avoid accidents, but thinking the drivers will change their behavior if we respond isn’t likely to help anything. Observing how others dress might help us to fit in at an upcoming wedding, but talking about dresses that showed too much skin or underwear isn’t helping anyone.

With goals of glorifying God and loving our neighbor, we can focus on the individual situation to see if praising God for the good or warning others of the not so good is more appropriate to the situation. We have rear wipers on four of our cars, and I noticed that one was coming apart. The one on the car only I drive was fine as I never use it (since it’s for snow), but all three that the others in the house drive were in various stages of disrepair (since they are used for rain). So to love my ‘neighbors’ I changed the rear wipers that needed to be changed. No lectures on the whys or anything, just a simple act. Sometimes, that is all we need.

Written 6/22/25, Posted 8/23/25, Job 383