Job 9:34

Who could remove God’s rod from me,

   So that my fear of Him would not terrify me?

Over the weekend, I experienced my wife talking to anyone and my daughter who would not even talk to people she knew. I can definitely identify with the reluctance to talk to people you do not know, but I can generally overcome it easily enough when I am performing a duty like at work or while volunteering. I rarely have a burning desire to talk to someone as plain ole Jeff Dice. For whatever reason, I have been turning over how to be more like my wife in this arena, and I finally have an idea.

The who in this first stitch is the previously introduced Arbiter. Job is asking that the Arbiter remove the punishment for sin. Job wants to love God and revere Him and not be frozen in fear.

“Who” was also “someone”, “he”, or “him”. I cannot list a bunch of English rules, but who seemed grammatically preferred. “Could remove” was “would take” (or similar) or “would make Him take”. The “would make Him take” was from the “poet” and another example of why I dislike his method as it tries to say someone can make God do something. I often think this rabbi is a learned scholar, but not a real believer.

“Fear” was also “dread” or “terror”. “Terrify” was also “frighten”, “cow”, and “confound”. A common difference was calling the thing to be feared “His terror” instead of the thing to dread “my fear of Him”. I prefer the view that Job is terrified and that it is a product of his own mind and not the actual characteristic of God.

I believe I safely sit on the team of the Arbiter and do not “fear” the wrath of God as Jesus has paid the penalty for my sin, and I am free to “revere” Him. My “job” now is to be the hands of Christ loving those I encounter. My new idea is that I no longer try to think of engaging people as an act of Jeff Dice, but that I view these opportunities as a role I fill in my following Christ and that it is up to him to guide the discourse, much like I let the engineer run the conversation when I am working or the teacher lead the engagement when I am teaching. It is probably a simple thing but let’s find out if I can make it applicable.

(Written 10/3, Posted 10/31, Job 206)