Why aren’t wicked people punished?
The opening question in today’s reading defies response. If words had volume this question would be screaming. I agree with Job, it’s difficult to understand why God permits such great atrocities to go on when we all know He could stop them. Maybe it’s a matter of principle, He said that we all have a right to choose, and He is simply allowing us to make our own decisions…even when the decisions of some hurt others. Were He to step in and prevent the consequences He would be violating His own Word that we are free to choose.
Or, maybe it’s perspective as we talked about yesterday. We don’t know. Here’s what we do know from listening in on Job’s pain. He acknowledges that God is all powerful, perfect and beyond rebuke. Job never waivers in his devotion to God, and he never rebels against God’s authority. He agrees that God has a right to persecute him, since God can do whatever he wants.
He agrees that he has no choice but to submit to whatever God brings.
At the same time, Job maintains that he is innocent, and these punishments are undeserved. He doesn’t say God has made a mistake, but rather that he feels he doesn’t deserve this sort of treatment, based upon the way he has lived his life.
I find the reading today conflicted. On one hand Job believes that the wicked are “getting away with it”, but on the other hand Job says that God “breaks the wicked like a tree branch” (24:18-21). I wonder which one Job really believes? Are the wicked getting away with it, or are they being punished?
He then turns his attention to God’s treatment of those who are wealthy, and observes that worldly wealth doesn’t mean a thing to God. (If that’s true then perhaps being poor isn’t a special indicator…however I have always believed that God has a special place in his heart for the poor).
I’m not sure I want to draw many conclusions from this sample of the text. Maybe as we balance it with the rest of the book strong themes will continue to emerge.
On the other hand, I am amazed as Job talks about how men create mine shafts and know how to dig for special jewels in different places. This is one of the earliest accounts in the Bible, and here are men involved in complex mining and smelting operations. Job says the earth is “hung on nothing” in the heavens…and he is right. How could he possibly know that? If would be millenia before the wisest scholars came up with that theory, and even longer before they could prove it. Several of the names I didn’t recognize turned out to be precious jewels mined from deep inside the earth. How did we know to dig down to discover them? And why did we decide to value them in the first place?
The two I didn’t recognize: Lapis lazuli and Peridot
It would seem to me that mankind was very intelligent at the beginning of creation. That sort of flies in the face of evolution theory, where we were ignorant and became wiser as we “evolved”
Faithfully,
PR