What am I supposed to do? I've prayed, I've trusted God, I've obeyed, I've done everything right, and life still knocks me down. At some point, you just gotta stop and say, Lord, what am I doing wrong?
Well, guess what? Job knew that feeling all too well. But don't miss this, he knew how to ask the right questions. And because of that, he saw God more clearly than ever before. That's right, that's what we're talking about today.
Continue that conversation about Job and his response to the suffering in life and his response to God. Coming up right now on Clearby Today. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill.
I'm John Galantis. Thank you for joining us once again in the Clearview Today studio. We are back with our host, Dr. Abadan Shah. If you're listening for the very first time today, I just want to let you know Dr.
Shah is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. Just want to let you know who's talking to you. Dr. Shah, welcome to the studio today. Thank you so much.
Good to see you guys. Good to see you as well. Good to see you too. I'm excited to continue the conversation about Job. You know, last episode, we had, it was a wonderful discussion about setting the stage for what is one of the most fascinating and probably one of the most misunderstood books in the Bible.
That's right. But before we continue that discussion, Dr. Shah, I wanted to say that, you know, producing this show has been the highlight, or one of the highlights, I would say, of our time in ministry. We have touched hundreds and I would say even thousands. Of people by God's grace.
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That's right, Dr. Shuck, continuing our discussion on the book of Job. You know, we talked about Job yesterday, and I got to say, from everything that we talked about, Job seems like he's living a pretty good life. I mean, he's sitting pretty. He's, as my dad would say, he's living high on the hog.
Well, everything that we hear about him is just so amazing that he's a great dad. He's a great, I would say even granddad because by the age of 60, what most scholars believe is when things began to happen in his life, he is leading his family well. They're coming together to meet together, to spend time, which is a great joy to parents of sibling children. Mm-hmm.
So it seems like in every way he is blessed. He has tons of wealth. But his world is about to fall apart. But I have a few more things to clear up before we go into the book to lay the foundation for the book of Job. And I know sometimes that can be frustrating for people because they're like, just get into the book.
You cannot appreciate the book until you understand. The context. That's right. That's right. When was this book written?
Last show we. Kind of established that the book was written post-flood, so somewhere about 2350 BC. Keep in mind, time goes backwards prior to the coming of Crisis. First century, second century, third, fourth, fifth, twenty-three fifty BC, going all the way back to creation, somewhere about 4000 BC, which would be. 6,000 years from where we are today.
So keep that in mind when we say those things. And some other things we looked at to help us understand that this is an old book. But that does not mean it's a primitive irrelevant book. It is very timely. In fact, just to kind of go over a couple more things that I wanted to cover.
Uh some people think that Because the poetry in Job You should read the poetry, unbelievable. And I know most of us will read it in English. But when you read it in Hebrew, It is archaic, but it is complex.
So Archaic in the sense that you can tell that this is written in a period prior. Give a modern example, it's like reading Beowulf. Oh, yeah. It's English, but it's hard to get through. Right, but it's not like, oh, somebody just wrote gibberish.
Right. No, the writer of Beowulf was apparently an educated person. Apparently he understood how to create good Poetry. And and You know, and and when was Beowulf written? according to best estimates, I mean it's an Anglo-Saxon war.
Anglo-Saxon came into Britain or in England about seventh century AD. Beowulf comes maybe in the eighth century. A. People often think that You know, back then Britain was just nothing but Just Tribespeople running around. Right.
Vikings and Nordic tribesmen and stuff. Yeah, and that's not true. Right. You had the Britonic people who were there when Rome ruled Britain for the first 400-some years. And then Rome left after the Roman Empire fell.
And then you had the Anglo-Saxons come in. Initially, they did not want to be part, I mean, they wanted to rule the people, but then. Eventually they became part of the the people.
So all that to say, We don't look at Beowulf as this is primitive, useless stuff. Caveman writing this. Caveman writing this. No, when you read it, you go, wow. How did they do that?
Well, when you study Britain's history and see what was happening, and you read, Others like Venerable Bede, who Who was an Anglo-Saxon monk? Remember, his people came into England just a hundred years prior. And they converted to Christianity. And he's writing the history of ecclesiastical history. And it's unbelievable how good it is.
We have to, again, My whole point, I know if somebody's wondering, is like how do we go from job to Bead and Anglo-Saxon and Britain. What I'm saying is. We have been taught a lot of wrong history. The evolution has really impacted how we think about people in the past. Yeah, and this is not a trivial conversation either.
Because I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but there are plenty of Christians who would discount Job completely. Because of how old it is and because of how mythic it might sound in seem. Yeah, and we need to shed all that evolutionary understanding of history and look at people in the past, whether it's. at the time of Beowulf's writing? Or at the time of Job's writing, which is much, much older than Beowulf.
That these were not primitive people living in caves. I think that's important because we neglect the implications of evolution sometimes. I think sometimes people just mistakenly think it's just like, yeah, we came from monkeys. But it's much more than that. I mean, we're having a literary discussion.
Yeah. A world history discussion, a development of civilizations discussion. Evolution plays a part in how you see all of those things. Yeah. Well, we talked about this as well when we talked about doctrine a couple days ago is like a lot of Christians will also try to marry the two.
They'll try to say, listen, God can still have created the universe and evolution could still have taken place. God could have orchestrated evolution.
So we don't need to discount it because, man, God can use millions and millions. Hey, look, it's all one day to him. But eventually, you are going to have to compromise somewhere down the road on some core doctrine. And that's why studying the book of Job becomes difficult for those kinds of people because they go. There's no way that this book is that old.
Yeah. There's no way, because back then people were just cave people. And what's very interesting is that Job talks about cavemen. Mm-hmm.
Remember, they just came out of the the ark. Just 20 through 50 BC. And Job may have been written twenty one hundred BC? To maybe 250 years after the flood, yeah, maybe. And he's talking about cave people.
That's a small window. And he is saying those are not good people. Yeah. It's kind of funny how, like, there were cavemen, and you don't want to be one of them.
Well, think about like civilizations starting completely from scratch, right? Just one family, Noah's family. And then you've got civilizations like Job, which are like on the right path, and everything seems to be like, man, these are civilized, articulate, intelligent, spiritual people. And you've also got cavemen living in caves at the exact same time. Yeah, they taunt him.
Yeah. We'll come to that later on in the book. That they're taunting him, and Job is like, how dare you? That's that's rough. You getting roasted by cavemen?
Cavemen are roasting you, bro. Like the guy called commercial. Yeah. He's trying to sell Job some car insurance. Job didn't want the insurance, so they start roasting him.
Look at this dude. Look at his boils.
Something else that is not mentioned in the book, and that tells us that it's not. you know, since the time of Moses and all is there is no mention of the covenants, no mention of the Torah, no mention of the tabernacle, no mention of the temple, nothing is there. Nothing about the Hebrew people and the nothing is there, which means if they were there, Something would have been mentioned, like I turn to the temple and I pray, or something, I keep your Ten Commandments, or the covenant that you made. Nothing. Yeah, it's not just a matter of, oh, they just forgot to include that.
If it was around, it would have been in the book. I mean, God's covenant with Abraham is pretty much what everything, the entire story of scripture is centered on. It weaves through every book of the Old Testament. I mean, it's mentioned maybe explicitly or implicitly in every single book other than Job. Yeah.
And again, the people who claim that this book is post-exilic, for those of you who know this. Know what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't, Some scholars believe that Job was written somewhere about the fifth sixth century BC. Yeah. After the Assyrian exile for sure, but also the Babylonian exile.
And why in the world would they say that? Because Job is so Well written. Mm.
So it really blows their assumption on how literature has developed.
So they go, no way. It has to be post-exitic. But then but so what would their what would their answer be for why there's no mention of the covenant, no Abraham, no temple? Oh, they're just like, well, I mean, uh, that was not as important to them. That was not as important to them, but post-exile, God's covenant with his people is not important, author, it was important to them, yeah, it's it is nutty.
Something else. Dinosaurs are mentioned in the book of Job. You hear about Leviathan, you hear about the behemoth. These are very big creatures. Most of the dinosaurs, we believe, died in the flood.
But I think there were some, they may have been on Noah's Ark. You said, well, come on, how in the world could a huge Tyrannosaurus rex get on the who says that they would have taken a full-grown dinosaur? Yeah, right. It could have been an egg. Could have been an egg.
Could have been a small one. Yeah. That eventually grew up. That eventually grew up. And then when they got off the ark, then it was available to, you know, propagate.
That's right. I saw Jurassic Park. They get pretty small when they're eggs. It was a hunk of amber. I could easily put that on them out of ship.
No problem. No, I know exactly what you're saying. Yeah. There's, there's, there's, I think this is where people, this one and the next one, this is where people will get tripped up and say, okay. Yeah.
And then there's the ice age that is mentioned. Job talks about the ice age. Mm-hmm.
And in Job 37:9, he says, From the chamber of the south comes the whirlwind, and cold from the scattering winds of the north. By the breath of God ice is given. And the broad waters are frozen. Wow So either Job traveled or the writer of Job travelled very well to be able to see Broadwater's frozen.
Now he is where he is sitting over there. In what is modern-day Jordan or Saudi Arabia, or even a little bit of Iraq. He is not close to the Mediterranean Sea. Yeah. He's not close to the Persian Gulf.
Or maybe a little bit of the Persian Gulf. How does he see the broad waters frozen? Right. And he's talking about the North. Right?
So maybe he did take a trip to the north and he saw. Here's another one Job thirty eight, verse twenty two. Have you entered the treasury of snow, or have you seen the treasury of hail? From whose womb comes the ice?
So this is not like a little frozen lake. Yeah. This is ice keeps going and going and going and going. Means wherever he's at, which we know where he's at, it looks like the Arctic. Right.
But he ain't in the Arctic. When he says things like broad water is frozen, like that's huge bodies of ice. The waters harden like stone, and the surface of the deep is frozen. Again, what is our purpose right now? To help you understand this book is worth studying.
Yes. And whatever assumptions you've had in the past. It's time to jettison them. Right. Chuck them over.
Right. And you can't start the book without doing that. You have to start with the right understanding, or else you're going to come to the wrong conclusion. Right. It's much more than just, oh, there's some crazy creatures in there, and Job was wealthy and then got picked on.
And then I don't really know how the book ends.
Well, it's a book that has to be wrestled with. And I think typically you find that the most. Impactful lessons that God teaches you are the ones that you have to kind of struggle through. And having to struggle through it doesn't mean, like, okay, I have to make this make sense. God will make it make sense to you the more that you wrestle with it, the more that you study it.
When did you first know or realize, Dr. Shah, that there was more to the book of Job than meets the eye? Years ago, I decided to study the book of Job. And I preached through it, not throughout the whole book. This is the first time I'm preaching the whole book from chapter one to chapter 42.
But previously, I had picked on certain passages like what happened to Job in the beginning, God gives, God takes away, or I need a mediator between God and man, someone who can touch God and man, or I know my Redeemer lives. I picked on certain passages. And I preached on them. Even one on uh his friends coming to see him. I preached a message on the importance of friendships in The Christian life because we think it's me and Jesus, and we're good.
No, God sent Sends people in our lives who help us. During difficult times. And Job had three who made an appointment to come see him. Right. and helped him sorta.
Yeah, I guess you could say that. They tried.
Sort of. Yeah. Uh going back to the book of Job for a quick second. The language of the book of Job. is very interesting.
It has so many different genres, from narrative to dialogue. Psalms Lament Debates So much is in there. And even the language is very interesting. It's kinda it has words of Aramaic and Arabic. But the word lion What is what is a lion?
A lion? Lion. Big cat, mane. Jungle, yeah, king of the jungle thing. In the book of Job, you find four different words for lion.
Hmm. Can you intend tell me in English four different words for lion? No, I don't. I just have lion. Big cat.
Yeah. Yeah. Cat maybe would be the only other feline. Yeah. But even that doesn't capture the idea of a launch.
And a big cat could be a tiger, it could be a cougar. Yeah. Also, snare. Like a trap. Six different words.
Wow. Darkness. Can you give me a couple more synonyms for darkness? Not really. Void, but that's not just darkness.
That could be anything else. Darkness, black, like. Yeah. Cloud, nothing. Right.
But here in the book of Job, you find four different words for darkness. What do we do with that? It helps us understand the sophistication of this book.
So when you read what he's saying, don't just go, Okay, he's just a man who's frustrated because his friends are telling him to check and see where you're messing up, Job. And Job is like, No, I'm not messing up. It's more than that. It's more than that. Did Job write his book?
I believe he did.
Some people believe Moses wrote it, according to tradition. But I think if Moses had written that book, He would have mentioned something about the Exodus. Nothing about the Exodus in there. Right. I mean, Exodus was a big moment in Moses' life.
Right. For him to not even say a word about it, or at least the Hebrews, or at least something about the promised land. Right. Nothing. There's none of that covenant language.
There's none of that, you know, God's people. Like you said, the Exodus. The language patterns, I mean, just when you're talking about being much closer to Aramaic, they're different than the way Moses wrote. Yeah. So.
It makes more sense for the book to be attributed to Job. Yeah. Yeah. And Job's authorship, you know, it kind of is one of these things that, again, we look at Job as a mythic work, but it's one of those ones that God is using to bring about a very specific truth and maybe multiple specific truths. Because I think when people do read Job, it's like, yeah, on some ways they can dismiss it, but they also can't deny the humanity of it.
I don't think anybody could read Job and not connect with it, either emotionally or spiritually. Yeah, absolutely. Even. you know, uh, when you look at, um, what Job talks about. What what he's talking about.
Suffering. Why do bad things happen to good people? I know we asked that question, has been asked for generations, for ages. About the same time as Job's Um Existence. And we talked about that in the last show.
When did he live? Post-flood? Prior to Abraham, so somewhere in that 2200 BC to 2100 BC time period. There were other texts From Mesopotamia and Egypt, that were also trying to answer that question. Which means this.
Again, we have to shed all our evolutionary ideas about history. that very early on after the flood, People were questioning suffering. You know, suffering because of sickness. Suffering because The idea was: God has just cleansed the world. And now, all bad people are dead.
All these demonic beings, the sons of God, coming to the daughters of men, all that is over. We have a fresh start. Oh, wait, no. Sin is still here. You know, we talked about that with Noah and Ham.
Yeah, we have the perfect storybook ending. And fortunately, in Sunday school, that's where the story ends. And so you think, okay, now we're smooth sailing. Generation Zero after the flood. We couldn't even make it a single chapter.
It gets bad. I mean, it gets really bad. It's not even like somebody stole something. I mean, it's like the worst thing. Or someone cheated on their spelling test, or something like that.
It's the worst kind of sin. Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, the whole point is that when you study the book of Job. Please take it very seriously. This is more relevant and more complicated, and not complicated, but complex.
than you may have heard growing up. And um and so You know, all that to say This is Very important. And Job, I mean, the name itself. People disagree over what does it mean. Is it the more the Hebrew enemy or enmity, or is it more the Arabic?
The penitent one, or repent, One scholar said it probably means where is my father? Wow. Wow. Yeah, a yube. That's...
The pronunciation. Where is my father? Is that like thematic to the question he's asking? Like, God, where are you? Yeah, because here I believe.
Father is really God. Wow. Where is God? Yeah. That's his name.
That's the central question, isn't it? Wow. And correct me if I'm wrong on this, Dr. Sha, but someone might be listening and said, okay, we've just spent two episodes going through reasons that Job is a book not to be taken lightly. We've talked about all this evidence that Job is as ancient as scholars say that it is.
But how is that going to help me while I'm reading it? And I think what you're saying is: if you go into this book cold, Just none of that. Just, I'm just going to read it as it is. You're going to end up asking the wrong questions. And, like I said in yesterday's episode, you might end up siding with Job's friends and saying, you know what?
I think Job probably did sin at some point. He's not perfect. He's not Jesus. And yet, he is a little self-righteous. And so I think what we're saying here is if you don't understand the context of Job, you're going to go into it incorrectly and you're going to end up at the wrong conclusion.
Yeah. Yeah. What you just said a few moments ago is very true. If you ask the wrong questions, you will get the wrong answers. People ask the wrong questions in the middle of suffering.
And most of the time, the question is: what have I done wrong? Mm-hmm.
And if you ask that question, not only will you get the wrong answer. But more than likely Satan's gonna answer for you. Yeah. And say, you are wrong, you have done wrong, you messed up here, here, here, and here. And if you base your life On what I did wrong in the past, and I am now suffering for that.
You for for one, your focus is no longer on God. Your focus is no longer on what God is doing and what He's bringing into your life. Your focus is now the past, which we know you cannot fix. Right. And it's also very me-centric, right?
Because it's like, all right, God, what did I do wrong? Just tell me and I'll fix it. I'll bridge this gap between you and me. I'll start going to church. I'll start listening to Christian music.
I'll start reading my devotionals and doing my prayers. Whatever this gap is between us, leave it to me, God, and I'll fix it. Right. And that is definitely not. The message of the book of Job.
Absolutely. Like, if you were doing right, God would be blessing you still. Or, or you being too self-righteous. You need to calm down. You need to come down, become humble.
Yeah. Yeah. And admit. And again, All of those things, and I want to, we need a whole show for this.
So, maybe the next show we can talk about this, which is a common misinterpretation of the book of Job. that God was blessing him because Job was checking all the boxes. Isn't it crazy that in 2025, people are still thinking that's the way that God blesses people? You said that in your message when you preached this, and it was a pivotal moment, I think, for everybody who was in the room. You're assuming that the blessings in your life or the blessings in Job's life were because he earned them, because he was righteous.
I didn't bless him because he was righteous. God bless him because God is God. Yeah, that's how the book starts, right? It says he's a blameless and upright man and one who feared God and shunned evil. It does not say, therefore, God blessed him.
God gave him all this stuff. But see, there's a deeper issue. And again, we don't have maybe a minute left to unpack this, so we may have to pick it up in the next show. the deeper issue was when Satan said to God, Because we're going to meet him very soon in this book. God Because God bragged on Job.
Have you considered Job? Mm-hmm.
By the way, it's like sometimes you want to say, God, please don't brag on me. Don't brag on me. Don't brag on me. If you get jammed up, don't mention me. But God brags on all of us.
Mm-hmm.
And the accuser of the brethren, he's right there. In heaven. We can look at that too. Because we often think Satan is somewhere in hell. No?
He has access to heaven. And day and night. He comes and accuses us before God. You say, Oh, I don't know about that. Read the book of Revelation chapter twelve verse ten.
The accuser of the brethren who accused them before God day and night has been cast down. That casting down hasn't happened yet. Jesus has broken the power of Satan when he rose from the grave. But he still has power. And one day he will ultimately be judged and cast into the lake of fire.
Until then, he's accusing you and me, and God is bragging on us.
Now, not everybody who follows Jesus Christ are going to have the same fate as Job. Right. But it's given to help us understand what is happening in the heavenlies. And so The question Uh the the the the point is, before our time runs out, God brags on Job. Satan says, Well, of course he loves you and serves you because you bless him.
Stop blessing him. And he will stop. Loving and serving you.
So, think about what is happening here. It's much more than. Whether or not you check the box and that's why God blesses you, or if you stop checking the box and God does not bless you, or God blesses you in spite of yourself, all that is true. There's something greater on the line. And what's on the line is, God, this humanity loves you only because you do things for them.
They don't genuinely care about you. They don't like you. That's a big slap in the face of God. That's right. Like, nobody likes you, nobody wants you in their life, but you know, they're.
They need blessing, that's why. And you know what? That's a great point. And when you are going through suffering, you start asking that question, God, what can I do? What can I do?
I'll get my life right. You're proving the enemy right. Absolutely. You're proving his point for him. Yeah.
So much for us to dig into.
So much for us. I know. I want to keep going. Lore in the book of Job. Guys, make sure you join us next time.
We're going to be diving into this topic a little bit further. Thanks to our sponsors for supporting today's episode. And if you're tuning in for the first time today, we're so glad that you're here.
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