Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Tonight's Discussion of Job

Different Saint Matthew folks got together today in the morning and the evening to discuss this past week's Read the Bible in a Year chapters, Job 4-24.

In these chapters of what scholars believe is the Bible's oldest book, the increasingly contentious dialog of Job, a man who has suffered incredible grief, pain, and loss, and his three friends--Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar--are presented.

A good outline of Job can help us understand it more readily. One outline comes from The Message of Job (Augsburg Old Testament Studies) by Daniel J. Simundson (chapter numbers on the left):

1-2                   Prolog
3                      Job's passionate outburst
4-27                Three cycles of speeches of three visitors and responses from Job
28                   A poem about the inaccessibility of wisdom
29-31              Job's concluding statement-longing for old days and oath of innocence
32-37              Elihu's speech
38-41              Two speeches by God
40:3-5             Job's reply to God's first speech
42:1-6             Job's response to God's second speech
42:7-17           Epilog

Below is a recording of the evening session. Both sessions today got interrupted by "critters." In the morning, we had a bug of some kind. In the evening, we spied a bat in the church fellowship hall and decided to open a door in the hope that it would find its way out the building.



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