The Secret of the Book of Job
The Gentile Who Lamented the Lack of a Mediator Between Man and God
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How I use Scripture: unless quoted directly with quotation marks (““) the chapter and verse references are where you can find the verses in the Bible. I encourage you to read them, how else will you know if I’m quoting correctly? My job is to bring alive the treasures of scripture, from the new and the old, to help you study and seek God for yourself.
This is the duty of the Scribe (writer) / Teacher (explainer) Matthew 13:52
I have added parentheses to the KJV verses to emphasize the points being made, and unless otherwise noted, all scripture is quoted from the King James Version (KJV) which exists in the Public Domain.
Astonishing New Discoveries in the Book of Job
In his astonishing web article titled The Strange Language of the Book of Job, author Edward L. Greenstein, EMET Prize (“Israel’s Nobel”) winner in Humanities-Biblical Studies, reports his examination of the ancient writer’s use of grammar, vocabulary, and multilingual wordplay, and states the Book of Job was originally translated into Hebrew with difficulty from a Canaanite or early dialect of Arabic resembling the languages of the Transjordan peoples - those descended from Lot (the Ammonites, the Moabites) and from Esau (the Edomites). Greenstein reports that the original writer of the Book of Job possessed a Shakespearean intellect and was a master poet who invented new idioms for his audience to consume. In 2019, Greenstein published his book, Job: A New Translation.
“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased,” Daniel 12:4.
If you’ve had a hard time reading Job, you aren’t alone. Job is an important book with concepts that travel into the New Testament. Job was the oldest and first book of God’s Word. You’ve most likely heard sermons about the unexplained sufferings of the righteous, but there is a greater secret hidden in the pages.
Christians without understanding of required ongoing repentance after salvation, experience unexplained suffering, not understanding the depths of repentance required in the sanctification process. Paul’s epistles hammered on the need to repent and were addressed to Holy Spirit baptized Christians, not the unsaved. Suffering for sufferings sake is not the point God is trying to make. He doesn’t afflict us unnecessarily, as Jeremiah tells us.
“For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men,” Lamentations 3:31-33.
The chastisements and trials mount as God works to bring a spirit of repentance in the person so they can shun the Old Man which is the Flesh. Without proper mourning of sins in repentance and asking for cleansing, the Lord doesn’t move. Peter tells us that the trials are firey but once they have done their work, there is joy.
The joy is freedom from temptation of the repented sins. Bodily injuries and disease can take hold due to demons that have not been cast out. Where there is unrepented sin, there is a sin right for demons to attach to. If you are repented and loosed, with all curses and soul ties broken but you still have trouble, you’ve likely not been taught to bind and cast out your demons and loose yourself from their curses and soul ties, so they are still with you. Jesus said you’d cast them out. Have you? Why not? Don’t be embarrassed, we all start out as a child of the devil and need to examine the principles of deliverance. Here is where you must take it upon yourself to study and undergo deliverance to ensure you are free. Satan’s strategy is silence. If you don't examine yourself, the demons stay silent and continue their disruption in your life. There are many newly raised up workers that are easy to learn from. God said he’d leave the “ites” in the land to teach you to war and cast them out little by little.
For some, Paul says they bear in their body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in their body, 2 Corinthians 4:10. Many dying refuse to reject God and his glory is their testimony.
On the narrow road that leads to life, there is God-ordained suffering for the Christian to bring about repentance in areas where the Christian has failed to repent and has failed to cast out their demons. But in Job there are scriptural secrets as juicy rewards of knowledge for those like Job who seek understanding while maintaining their reverence for God even in their suffering.
Are You Unmotivated to Read the Book of Job?
Many don’t read Job because it is a daunting book and the Land of Uz seems like a fable. It seems like a lot of words that have no frame, except suffering and accusation. On the surface, it is true, you can read the book for years and never understand. The secrets of Job are not in its poetry but in its truths found in the light of the New Testament.
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter,” Proverbs 25:2.
“…To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna…” Revelation 2:17.
Job was a gentile, not a Jew. His friends were gentiles, wealthy peers, who had come to see what had happened to the greatest among them. You see, Job had vast herds of camels and donkeys making him the cargo fleet dealer of the desert, and his friends were likewise traders, business peers who trusted him for his wisdom and judgments when they visited the city to trade.
The court reporter scribe for this trial, is Elihu, a secretary of one of the friends, a hidden prophet who came to tell Job the nature of his sin, because Job was asking God to tell him what sin he had committed. Elihu is the author of the Book of Job. All of a sudden Elihu jumps up with great energy and tells Job he is self-righteous, in a respectful manner that caused Job to listen. Elihu can be known as a prophet because God does not rebuke him for his words, like he rebuked the friends, saying they spoke incorrectly about God. Elihu was there from the start of the vigil, a silent scribe who took down all the words spoken privately between the men.
How to Read Job
Begin reading at Chapter 29 and read to the end. Then start reading at Chapter 1. Make note of the personality of God at the beginning and at the end, two different attitudes toward Jobe. Elihu the prophet would have seen a vision of God speaking with Satan, but at the end he would have experienced the reality of Jehovah’s fearful presence, the same as it was at Mt. Sinai.
Greenstein says the story is best framed with the knowledge that Job is claiming he wants to sue God to learn what sin is causing his trial.
Many things in Proverbs are sourced from Job. Even things in Deuteronomy are found in Job. Job is an uncredited gentile prophet, judge, and teacher. His friends are a type of the wayward and corrected gentile church. They know there is a God, but they don’t know God. God said only Job spoke accurately about Him. The friends had sinned in their descriptions of God, therefore God told Job to sacrifice on their behalf. God addressed Eliphaz the Edomite directly because he was born out of Esau who was circumcised.
Another way to read Job is to read only Job’s dialogs without reading those of the friends. You’ll see that what Job says is correct, unhindered by confusion. You’ll be less frustrated with the book this way. Likewise you can read the collections of Eliphaz’s statements and those of Bildad and Zophar separately to learn more about what each believed before God corrected them.
Yet another way to read is to listen to the Book of Job slowly and methodically asking God to reveal its secrets.
The Test
Satan had a simple goal, to make Job curse God. Job’s wife cursed God, and she told Job to curse God. But Job would not do it. Job cursed the day he was born. Job said he would not use God’s breath in his lungs to curse God or to speak any foul word. He had an understanding that Adam was made alive with God’s breath. God breathes in all of us. Job was determined to maintain his reverence for God.
“All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils; My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit,” Job 27:3-4.
Job didn’t recognize his reliance on his own integrity as self-righteousness. A reliance on his deeds for salvation rather than having faith in the blood of the sacrifice. Job continued to dissect his past actions, saying he saw no errors in his ways, assuming his correct actions saved him. He worshipped God, but placed his faith in the perfect execution of deeds. All of us wonder what we have done wrong when trouble comes and we replay our deeds over and over looking for the error.
Job laid the principle of chastisement leading to repentance and turning from sin.
“Surely it is meet (correct) to be said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more: That which I see not (the sin he is guilty of), teach thou me (tell me my sin): if I have done iniquity, I will do no more (I will repent and cease),” Job 34:31-32.
Job is saying that through his trial and forced self examination he wants to repent and he wants God to show him what to repent of that he cannot see in himself, and realizes he cannot continue to commit sin. He is humble and knows there are things that God sees that he does not see in himself. It has taken an unbearable trial and chastisement to cause Job to question his ways and come to a conclusion that his perfectly performed deeds have not satisfied the Lord. There is a trial like Job’s prepared for each person, and the way to quickly end it, is to comply with repentance. Some issues of sin take longer and the purpose of the trial is to burn out all pride of life that would lend itself to incurring the sin again. God deals with roots of it as well.
“For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. If ye endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby,” Hebrews 12:6-11. Read Hebrews chapter 12 for yourself.
The Secret of Job
Stunningly, Job is the only Bible character who actually pointed out the lack of a Savior. A lack of a daysman (KJV), a mediator (NKJV) between God and man, Job 9:33. Other OT writers talk about salvation (Yeshua) and about the God who saves, and that God would send a prophet like Moses, but the Jews never understood a mediator was to come. They believed in a conquering Messiah, but not God’s Son, even though Proverbs 30:4 told them God had a Son.
It was the gentile man named Job, who realized he needed a savior, someone to plead before God on man’s behalf. Jesus said if he’d done the miracles in Tyre, Sidon and Sodom, the gentiles would have believed. God chose Abraham’s pure bloodline, but it was Job who called for the mediator of the New Covenant. God tried Job to find out what depths of trials it would take to cause a great man to cry out and repent. When Job was ready to repent, God appeared to him. Jesus Christ makes himself known when you cry to him for salvation and repent.
Israel’s Sin Today
Job’s sin was self-righteousness, faith he could save himself by his perfect works. Israel’s sin is the same self-righteous and only a remnant will be saved. When they murdered the Prophet Zechariah, Matthew 23:35 who told them their end time prophecy, they proved they never returned to God, and this is why God never returned to the rebuilt Temple. They are self-righteous, the same as Job, and as a Prophet was sent to Job so a Prophet like Moses was sent to Israel, Jesus Christ, Deuteronomy 18:18.
“30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. 31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. 32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; 33 As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed,” Romans 9:30-33.
The Land of Uz is Near Edom, Jeremiah 25:20, Lamentations 4:21
The Land of Uz is inside the national boundaries of Jordan. Today’s Jordan is a combination of the lands of Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Seir. Greenstein says the original language of Job is Canaanite or early Arabic resembling the Transjordan languages of Lot’s children. The collection of friends confirms the location.
Job is the only man in the Old Testament to realize the mediator between God and man was missing. If they had understood Job, they would have understood the Tabernacle built by Moses was for that one person to inhabit. They were to wait for him and continue to worship God, conform their lifestyle, and stay clear of false religion.
Job has been determined to be the first book written in the biblical canon. Job was a wealthy man; a man with wisdom that princes would be silent to hear, Job 29:9; He lived another 140 years after his trial of suffering, almost a double life span. A new life to replace the loss of the first due to God’s purposeful trial. “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” Proverbs 9:10.
Job is the evidence of scripture that gentiles know God exists, as indicated in the book of Romans, that all know Him, and that God gave them wisdom to live for him if they were determined to do so, as Job did.
When Jesus cursed the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, he needed a scriptural basis to do so. The book of Job is that scriptural basis to curse those cities.
The Book of Job verses 42:6 and 42:9 are the basis on which God saved Job and his three gentile friends; that they being gentiles, the same as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, did what God commanded them to do without complaint or argument, unlike the Jews. Before the Law was given, they were all gentiles. Only after Moses gave the Law were they Jews.
“Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes,” Matthew 11:21, Luke 10:13.
“And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day,” Matthew 11:23.
Repentance is “The Way”
Repentance is how you walk forward on the narrow way which leads to life that few find. Prayer is for repentance, where the relationship with Jesus Christ is built. In repentance the Christian exposes all the details and reasonings and fears about their sins, including their part of the sins that involve others, taking responsibility for their part. This is how Jesus becomes closer than a brother. Through sincere repentance, he is faithful and just to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. When the change comes, even the temptations won’t bother you anymore, and “you will know He is the LORD,” because you can’t change yourself, but you must take your eyes and hands off your triggers, in obedience to his command to cease your sins.
Job was perfect in his ways, did all the right things, he examined his actions, but he couldn’t see his own sin. That’s why God gave the Bible. So we could look into the Word of God like a mirror, see our sin, be convicted, and turn from it in repentance. The parts of the Bible that you don’t like are those parts that are trying to convict you. God created us with a conscience to know right from wrong and when we are wrong, our conscience kicks us.
Since the Cross, the Holy Spirit is available to be received, as the comforter, the one who upholds us before the Lord to help us know when to repent, and to intercede for us and to bring tears when the proper attitude before God is required. We are to mourn our sin. You have the Holy Spirit if you speak in tongues.
“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” Matthew 5:4.
With the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, you will be comforted. You need the Baptism.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, I’m grateful to have received the revelation that it was Job who announced man’s needs for a savior.
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