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Session 5, 2020 WIO Lecture Notes

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Session 5, 2020 WIO Lecture Notes CREATION TO NEW CREATION: JOURNEY THROUGH SCRIPTURE FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION CC 100: THE WHOLE IN ONE (THE WHOLE BIBLE IN ONE QUARTER) Session 5 PSALMS AND WISDOM FOR LIFE IN THE COVENANT Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Sirach “And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” (Job 2:13) 0. Introduction The person on the right in the picture above is of course Job, in sack cloth and with his head shaven in grief. His three friends are on the left: Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, and Eliphaz the Temanite. Bildad and Zophar only show up in the Bible here, in the book of Job. But there is an Eliphaz in Genesis. He was the oldest son of Jacob’s older brother Esau. Eliphaz himself had a number of sons who became tribal chiefs, the first of whom was named Teman (possibly after the region in which Eliphaz lived; or perhaps Teman ruled a region later known according to his name, and his father eventually came to be remembered in accordance with it). In any case, if the Eliphaz in the book of Job is the same Eliphaz from Genesis 36, this would corroborate the scholarly consensus that the story of Job is an ancient story in the folklore of Israel. But this raises the following question: If Job and his friends lived in the time of Esau, this would locate these events long before Israel’s exodus from Egypt, their wilderness wandering, the conquest of Canaan, the time of the judges, the time of the kings, and so on. So if the book of Job precedes all of that, why wasn’t it put at the beginning of the OT? 2 0.1. The Biblical Storyline So Far CREATION ̶> CORRUPTION ̶> COVENANT (Gen 1-2) (Gen 3-11) Part 1: Gen 12 – Deut 34: Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants Part 2: Josh – Macc: Davidic Covenant and the Kingdom Part 3: Job – Sirach: Psalms and Wisdom for Life in the Covenant 0.2. Development a. A biblical covenant is a divine-human bond predicated on the faithfulness of God’s promises and man’s obedience, by which God’s program moves forward toward its goal. b. The Abrahamic Covenant (Gen 12ff.) outlines the provisions of God’s covenant program, the Mosaic Covenant (Exod 19ff.) delineates the prescriptions for its fulfillment, and the Davidic Covenant (Josh-Macc) identifies the person at the center of the covenant plan and the Kingdom associated with his everlasting dynasty. c. The next group of books—Psalms and Wisdom—describe the path of life in the covenant. These books guide the people of God in the way they are to live as God’s covenant members in anticipation of the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom plans and purposes. They provide songs and prayers and guidance for life “on the way,” including its high mountaintops of praise, its low valleys of pain and lament, and all its mysteries in the daily realities of every kind. JOB 1. Where We Are in the Story: Getting Our Bearings The book of Job is part of a collection of writings we sometimes call the ‘Wisdom Literature’. Although many scholars reckon that the story of Job predates most of the other writings of the Old Testament, it is fitting that this “wisdom book” comes where it does in our Bibles. The preceding books raise a variety of questions for the reader about wisdom: Which action is wisest in a given situation (e.g., Ruth, Tobit, Esther)?; What happens to the community of God’s people when wisdom is absent (e.g., Judges, parts of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles)? Into this context comes the book of Job, whose own great personal suffering raises another question: Is it wisdom to worship God when he does not seem to be concerned with making an unjust situation right? 2. The Story Unfolds: The Revelation of God in Job The man and what happens to him provide the occasion for the book, though perhaps ironically, the book is about something other than Job. 2.1. How it’s shaped: The author’s plan I. PROLOGUE, 1:1–2:13 II. JOB’S OPENING LAMENT, 3:1-26 3 III. THE DIALOGUES, 4:1–27:23 A. The First Cycle, 4:1–14:22 B. The Second Cycle, 15:1–21:34 C. The Third Cycle, 22:1–27:23 IV. INTERLUDE: A HYMN TO WISDOM, 28:1-28 V. THE MONOLOGUES, 29:1–41:34 A. Job’s Speech, 29:1–31:40 B. Elihu’s Speech, 32:1–37:24 C. Yahweh’s Speech, 38:1-[40:3-5]-41:34 VI. JOB’S CONCLUDING CONFESSION, 40:3-5; 42:1-6 VII. EPILOGUE, 42:7-17 2.2. What it says: The message conveyed There may not be a piece of writing in all of literature better known than this for its description of the mystery of human suffering and the inadequacy of popular advice on how to think about it. In the story of Job, we read about a man whose world collapses through no fault of his own. In fact, Job is elevated to one above whose righteousness there is not in all the earth (1:8). We might expect the book then to address the question, Why do godly people suffer? But in fact it concentrates on a more pressing issue: Is God still worthy of trust and worship when life comes apart and God is all you’ve got? Suffering is the occasion which gives rise to the suspicion of God’s rightness in the matter; is God worthy to be loved and served by a mortal in the quintessential worst-case scenario? The one being tried in fact is not Job, but God. The challenge issued by the adversary (1:9) has assaulted God’s character, and it must now be defended and vindicated. Front to back, the book of Job obsesses over this issue. 3. Inhabiting the Story: Making It Our Own 3.1. The “hymn to wisdom” in the middle of the book (28:1-28) raises the question: Where shall wisdom be found? In one sense wisdom is to be found in the message of the book. But how so? Not necessarily in learning to respond to one’s friends like Job—although responding like Job would be virtuous. Nor is it necessarily in learning not to respond like Job’s friends—there is much that is virtuous about their points (e.g., suffering is often the result of sin [Eliphaz], God is just [Bildad], guilt does deserve punishment [Zophar], etc.). Nor is the message necessarily how to suffer well. Wisdom is found in fearing the Lord even when confronted with life’s worst-case scenarios. When life is insurmountable for us (even though God is capable of surmounting) and God seems absent (even though he is present), we discover God disclosing himself in the wisdom we are given to hope rather than despair, to love rather than to loathe, to place ourselves in a posture of submission to God and his mysterious will rather than to reject God and abandon it. St. Thomas Aquinas proved the existence of God through the soundness of logic. Job shows how the existence and worthiness of God is proven in and through the shape of one’s life. 4 3.2. Job exemplifies the fear of the Lord in the way he is figured in the form of Christ. Consider the similarities: a. Job loses his family, his possessions, and his status as a man with much . b. Job is afflicted with sores . c. In Ezekiel 14, Job is compared with Noah and Daniel, both of whom were agents of salvation— Christlike figures playing pivotal roles in moments of history in which God worked mighty acts of deliverance. How is it that Job comes to be named among them? PSALMS 1. Where We Are in the Story: Getting Our Bearings The Book of Psalms, or the Psalter, epitomizes 0.2.c. above. It describes the path of life in the covenant and points the way to living righteously in the anticipated fulfillment of God’s covenant plans and purposes. It provides songs and prayers and guidance for life “on the way,” including its high mountaintops of praise, its low valleys of pain, and all its mysteries in the daily realities of every kind. 2. The Story Unfolds: The Revelation of God in Psalms 2.1. How it’s shaped: The author’s plan a. The structure of the book I. BOOK ONE: THE ANTICIPATION OF MESSIAH AND HIS KINGSHIP INTRODUCED AND TESTED, Pss 1-41 A. Introduction, 1-2—The righteous and truly blessed life consists in avoiding the ways of sin by meditating upon and living according to God’s word (1). God’s word points to trusting and obeying the Divine-Davidic Messiah-King (Son of God and Son of David), who will rule the nations and judge all peoples, blessing those who seek refuge in him (2). B. Life Awaiting Messiah-King, the Promised Davidic Son, 3-41 II. BOOK TWO: THE ANTICIPATION OF MESSIAH AND HIS KINGSHIP REITERATED AND TRANSMITTED, Pss 42-72 III. BOOK THREE: THE ANTICIPATION OF MESSIAH AND HIS KINGSHIP SHATTERED AND REAFFIRMED, Pss 73-89 IV. BOOK FOUR: THE ANTICIPATION OF MESSIAH AND HIS KINGSHIP REFOCUSED AND INTENSIFIED, Pss 90-106 V. BOOK FIVE: THE ANTICIPATION OF MESSIAH AND HIS KINGSHIP REVIEWED AND CELEBRATED, Pss 107-150 5 A.
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