Show Notes
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar arrive to comfort Job and spend thirty chapters insisting that his suffering is proof of hidden guilt. Everything they say about God is true, and they aim all of it at an innocent man.
David and Christine walk through the three cycles of speeches and talk about windy arguments, whether innocent suffering is even a legitimate category, and Job's hope in a redeemer who would vindicate him out of the grave.
More from Spoken Gospel
After nearly thirty chapters of accusations, a new voice enters the debate. Elihu claims to speak for God, but he twists Job's words just like the serpent in the garden, until God himself answers from the whirlwind with a question: who darkens my counsel?
The accuser always offers a shortcut. He tells Eve she can have maturity without waiting, tells Job he can end his suffering by cursing God, and tells Jesus he can have the nations without a cross.
In the land of Uz, out in Gentile wilderness, a blameless king-priest tends a pocket of paradise—a flourishing household he rules and intercedes for, keeping the snakes out. Then the accuser appears in God's throne room and takes every good gift Job has been given and twists it into an indictment: remove the hedge, and this man will curse God to his face.
Job is not the only ancient book about a righteous man who suffers for no nameable reason. Cultures across Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt wrote about pious sufferers who lamented, searched their lives for a hidden crime, and found nothing—and every one of them eventually traded away either their innocence or their god to make the pain stop.
When Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, he isn't just fulfilling a single prediction from Zechariah. He's taking up a promise made to Judah on Jacob's deathbed—a scepter, a roused lion, and a donkey tethered to his brother Joseph's vine—that has been waiting centuries for Israel's two divided kingdoms to become one again. David and Christine trace donkeys and vines from Genesis 49 to a strangely well-behaved lion in 1 Kings 13. They talk about brothers, exile, and the good news that the oldest rift in Israel is finally healed in the grave of a resurrected King.