Job 17:3
God, accept my pledge with you,
Who else would take a surety from me?
I am in the process of changing some habits. I’m probably halfway through this book the second time and I am finally taking action rather than just making motions. (A play on the most recent section I read.) My next action is to delete Instagram from my phone again. I want to use Instagram to support my card habit, but I have trouble staying within that limit.
Only a couple sources used ‘God’, but I felt it was key to the context. ‘Accept’ was ‘take’, ‘lay down’, and ‘put down’ which have the same general meaning, but also ‘give’ and ‘stand (as)’ which have a totally opposite meaning and is wrong for me in the context.
The second stitch either follows the case of Job giving pledge or asking God to. Oddly, the second stitch often uses ‘shake my hand’ which has the double meaning on the physical repulsion as well as the lack of desire to bet on Job’s recovery.
I once thought I loaned someone money only to find out they thought it was a gift. Luckily, I knew not to give a loan expecting payback, so we were not in financial hardship when it was not repaid. Growing up in our capitalistic society, I never understood the directive to not loan money to others expecting interest. I eventually figured out you either gave it to your companions or loaned it to business partners, and did not mix the two.
In this verse, we do not know what pledge Job is making, but we can infer that no one else would expect him to be able to pay it back. For whatever reason this reminded me of a conversation where someone commented that maybe the Rolling Stones sold their soul to the devil. I don’t really believe in that as the devil doesn’t need to buy something from a person that is willing to sell it. The nominal next chapter to address in the book is long, so I’ll skip that for today, but one of the key things I have extracted from this book is that people have the ability to chose the things they want to believe.
The book actually put forth the idea that someone could train their brain to overcome an uncomfortable thing like moving your fingers in order to play the guitar. I wanted to learn but struggled with low manual dexterity. I believe I could now overcome that if I wanted to put in the repetitions, but I more recently decided that I just did not see a worthwhile outcome if I were to put in all the repetitions required. I probably could have learned something else with all the time I spent studying Job verse by verse and writing these blogs, but I think I have improved my ability to share the gospel with others and that is much more up my line of expected impact.
My niece in England is about a year older than my youngest daughter, but the school systems are drastically different. My niece is attending some form of college that I totally do not understand. My kid is in her second year of high school. My niece is probably not far from moving out and getting a job, and my kid wants to be in school for eleven more years.
I feel like I am rambling onward, but with a hope. I have never wanted to try and promise God anything for a reward because I know I would just fail. I can’t even promise to try, because I know I often don’t. But I want to follow God, and I want to be useful to His plan, and I know that He will deliver on all His promises. About the only thing I could promise him is that I need His help to follow His call.
Written 9/2/25, Posted 9/15/25, Job 399/~1070