Job 19:23
O that my words were recorded,
That they were inscribed on a copper scroll.
I peeked ahead a few verses, and this section is one of my favorites. I recently read a book where an evil spirit could change the written word unless it was on metal. I really enjoyed the three books in the series. My question now is: Where does entertainment fit?
‘Words’ was also once ‘story’. I don’t think story is correct at all, but it comes from my least favorite source. ‘Recorded’ was also ‘written down’ six times and ‘transcribed’ once. Recorded fits the performance better.
‘Inscribed’ was also ‘written’, ‘printed’ and ‘graven’. ‘Graven’ sounds fitting, but graven does not appear in the dictionary without image behind it. So, that is a no. ‘Copper scroll’ was ‘on copper’, ‘a scroll’, ‘a book’, ‘a record’, and ‘a monument’. I combined the best two.
If you have not seen the movie ‘The Book of Eli’ feel free to skip to the next paragraph. In this movie a blind person is traveling across the wasted remnants of post something terrible went wrong in America. I think it might have had zombies, but I forget. I am not traditionally interested in such movies, but it was supposed to be good and this guy had a copy of the Bible and people kept trying to steal it from him. Turns out he had memorized the whole thing and at the end of the movie is reciting it to someone who has a printing press. Bad circumstances, great example of the kinds of things people can do for God. He has memorized the King James version if it matters.
The interesting aspect of this verse is that the words were not recorded on anything as fixed as a copper scroll, but were passed down from generation to generation verbally until written on paper scrolls that kept having to be recopied as the older ones began to fall apart. If you listen to the scholars, this is why Job has so many errors, omissions, and additions. I won’t deny all of that is possible, if not probable. But I think the version we have is the version God wanted us to have. It is the story that counts and not each and every individual word.
Not that I have not tried to get each and every individual word nailed down in this process, but I am trying to study the whole book, the whole story and model my life after what God wants me to learn as I go. As I have seen my in-laws hit their nineties, I have seen their consumption of Fox News go through the roof, but I have also wondered how God is using them and how I can learn from that to model my future life after. I do not want to spend my days listening to propaganda or watching dumb tv shows. I want to learn about God and share it with others. My hermit life of the last few days has proven that I am not built for isolation in spite of any introvert tendencies. My needs are to interface with others and then recover. Of course, I have watched a lot of NFL football since the girls went on their trip, but there has to be more to life than that.
Written 12/29/25, Posted 1/26/26, Job 453/~1070