Job 18:21

Surely, such are the dwellings of evil,

   The place of ones who know not God.

I was just writing about my paradigm of what evil is, and this verse matches it exactly. As I told my Bible study group this morning, I am enjoying life more now that I am spending time with God. Of course, I am also not eating as well as I should and not exercising enough, so not everything is going well. If I had two guesses of what the thorn in my flesh was, I would guess not eating right and not exercising enough.

‘Surely’ was actually used in six sources and left off in the other two. It’s like a record for matching how whatever this particular  word in Hebrew comes across to English as they always seem to conflict. ‘Dwellings’ was also ‘abodes’ once and ‘haunts’ once. ‘Evil’ was also ‘ungodly’ or ‘wicked’.

‘Ones who know not God’ was pretty consistent.

One source used El to name God rather than just God. It reminds me of how English pounded all the names for God into one word and all the words for love into one word. The symmetry of this with God being love is nice, but I know that the result is confusion about the need for a personal relationship to God, using which of His names, and the need to understand the differences in feelings the word love stands for. I never caught on to how the Bible translation may have tried to use different terms for God for each Hebrew version of His name, but I can be pretty unobservant of too many things.

I think the cat got tired of me reaching out past the gap he likes to keep between us as he ran off to probably hide under the bed. I feel like this is how we seem to get right up close to God, but not close enough to really expect much, and then when He reaches out, we go running. We have some friends whose middle child is experiencing some kind of identity crisis. The world would want us to support them to accept the non-traditional outcome, but my gut tells me they are just not able to accept that God loves them the way they are and that they should accept their situation and focus on bringing God glory and not appease their sinful nature or the craving of the world.

I read almost everyday about how the powers that be are fighting to change how our government works. I read the other day that God has placed our rulers in their place, and how we are supposed to obey. I do not understand how we are to combat evil if we are cowing down to it. I pray that God will show us the path to both influence the government to align with Godly principles and influence those who do not know him to not make our lives a living hell.

Written 10/17/25, Posted 11/5/25, Job 431/~1070