Job - The Rest

My notes ended there-- it seemed the argument among the characters was finished.  Job's fourth friend arrived, and put each in his place.  The ultimate solution was to recognize that the greatness of God, and the designs of God, ultimately surpassed human understaning.  Our individual, finite experience of the world cannot tell us the ultimate meaning of the world, and we shouldn't expect it to.  Introduction of Leviathan and Behemoth, examples of the inscrutability of God's design.

Ultimately, Job was restored and his three friends punished.  Speaks to the importance of maintaining faith, even in the face of questioning.  Soulful searching for answers is perfectly all right-- righteous disparaging of the faithful, and of the searching, is not.

Job 21

Job: That's not even close to being true.  And you say suffering is placed on the wicked man's offspring?  What does he care?  Even death itself falls exactly equally on the wicked and righteous.

Job 20

Zophar: You're acting like you deserved your lot when things were prosperous.  Still not paying attention.  We know the wicked reach heights, but all wicked are eventually laid low.  And it's bad.

Job 19

Job: Not helping, guys.  My suffering is extended.  I have been fully abandoned.  But take note: I have not lost faith.  My questioning has not undermined my belief in what has been said.  It is just so hard.

Job 18

Bildad: We're not listening to you?  You're not listening to us!  And don't play these rhetorical games-- trying to draw out the absurdity of human suffering.  Yes, it's all true-- your sin has brought you low.  And it's further wickedness for you to insinuate otherwise.

Job 16-17

Job: But look at me!  Your words are of no comfort as I sit within my suffering.  From here, the understanding I had on the outside is insufficient.  My current experience demands new answers.

Job 15

Eliphaz: Awfully uppity of you, isn't it?  You're trying to talk your way around the central fact: sin results in suffering.  Deal with it.

Job 14

Job: Here's the unfairness of it all: We're born into a broken world, and all our experience is surrounded by badness.  This is what we know, and it shapes our lives-- all the cards are stacked against us.  THEN we die.  We were given one shot, and a handicapped shot at that, followed by an eternity of... the nothingness that follows the one shot.

COME ON.

(Me: this is where Purgatory is a grand solution-- death followed by the consequence of our life, with a knowledge of ultimate reality sustaining us.)

Job 12-13

Job: 12 - Don't condescend to me.  Don't pretend you just came up with some great insight.  I've come to the same conclusions about God as you.

13 - Look-- all these partial attempts at explanation aren't helping.  I need direct answers from God.  I need to know where we stand.  I need a fair hearing-- I must be allowed to make MY points fairly.  That's all I ask.  I need to know precisely how I merited suffering.

Job 11

Zophar: What a copout: protesting a standard of perfection means you don't have to make the effort to repent.  And then questioning the wisdom of the whole project?  He's GOD-- and yet you hope to make sense of His wisdom.

Do you not believe that suffering is a result of sin?  MAKE THE EFFORT TO REPENT.  DO IT.  Then we'll talk and complain of consequences.

Job 9-10

Job: But there is no way my repentance can satisfy God.  He's GOD!  Anything I do will appear as deserving of scorn in comparison to His goodness.  So, given that, the suffering (eternal?) that I endure was always inevitable!  In that case, WHAT WAS THE POINT?  All of life was a cruel joke, a setup for THIS!

Job 8

Bildad: Relief comes after your repentance.  YOU make the move to correct your iniquities.  God is just-- how dare you await relief before you've performed your repentance?

Job 6-7

Job: WHEN?  From my current pit of despair, I see no sign of abatement.  Without that assurance (and surely I must be given some assurance) I maintain that death is preferable.

Job 4-5

Eliphaz: 4 - Your suffering is on a par with the suffering all experience-- and it is the result of sin.  You KNOW this.  Are you surprised that you suffer?  What arrogance!

5 - But you also know that, with devotion to God, after the suffering God will heal.  Have faith in this and you will withstand your suffering

Job 3

(These notes were written manually after I had decided to begin the reading project, but before I recognized that the project should involve note-taking.  I read through about a quarter of the book, and realized I wasn't following the flow of the argument between Job and his friends very closely at all.  I could tell the specfic moves within the argument were hugely important, but read in one sitting the details weren't clear.  Notes are brief because there really isn't much plot to speak of, and the chapters are short.  This must have been August or September 2010.)

Job: Death is preferable to this suffering-- why does not death simply come?  Non-life would have been preferable to this life I lead.

Job and Ecclesiastes

Obviously, it wasn't necessary to purchase these works in a stand-alone form.  My Bible is Ignatius Press' Revised Standard Version.  I bought my copy in 2006, a few months after sponsoring James Fox's initiation into the Catholic Church.  That experience helped me recognize my own need for a fuller understanding of, appreciation for, and participation in the Catholic faith (an ongoing project in its own right).  Reviewing my Amazon history, apparently I did not purchase the Bible at the time I purchased James's gift books-- finances must have been tight.  Instead, I got around to the Bible purchase five months later-- in the same order as Mark Steyn's America Alone, of all things.