Job 1:20-22: Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Through all this Job not sin nor did he blame God.
Job did what people did in those days when they were in mourning. He tore his robe, shaved his head and fell to the ground. Unlike our culture where we try to put on the brave front, keeping the stiff upper lip, pip pip and all that, in the oriental culture when a person suffers a loss or tragedy, they expressed it, they let it out. But with the story of Job there is one other little thing the Bible tells that he did that is a bit unusual. We learned that in the midst of his mourning and wailing he worshipped God.
The Hebrew word used here for worship is shachah. When you trace this word to its Semitic root you find that it has its origins in the idea of swimming or being surrounded by water. When the enemy came in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord lifted up a standard against him (Isaiah 59:19). Instead of being flooded by the onslaught of the enemy he was flooded with the love of God. The enemy was able to take Job’s possessions, his wealth, his status and his family away from him, but there was one thing the enemy could not touch and that was the love of God in Christ Jesus. When he was surrounded by the Love of God, knowing God’s heart, he was able to say: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away blessed be the name of the Lord, I will give thanks to the Lord.”
But just before that he says something a little curious: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return there. I shall return there sounds simple enough but this is really a loaded phrase. We do need to remember that this is one gigantic poem so we can excuse the rather strange Hebrew word that Job uses here which is generally rendered as simply there. Such a simple rendering of the word shamah as there causes us to really overlook the deeper nuances of this word. You see this word shamah comes from the same root word as the word that we use for heaven or the dwelling place of God. When you look at the word letter by letter which is Shin, Mem and Hei, you will find that these three letters when put into this order express the idea of being made complete in the revealed knowledge of God and His presence. Then the word which we render as return is shuv which is a returning in the sense of restoration.
What Job may actually be saying here is “Just as in my mother’s womb I had nothing but love and security so too with nothing but the love of God and His security I am returning or being restored to the dwelling place of God.”
Most translators will translate the next phrase as Blessed be the name of the Lord. Yet the Hebrew word used here for blessed is not the word you would expect. The common word used in Hebrew for blessed is baruch. The word used here is yahi. Now yahi carries with a wide range of meanings and many possibilities for translation. Yahi is sometimes use for Jehovah. It’s basic meaning is I am. You could translate it as The name of Jehovah shall be. However, it should be noted that yahi carries with it a sense of belonging and I believe in this context the best rendering would be I belong to Jehovah. That would be a nice slap in the enemies face. “I can lose everything, but I still belong to Jehovah or I am still Jehovah’s property.”
Finally we find the writer putting in a footnote by saying that in all this Job did not sin. Here the Hebrew word for sin is chatak which means sin, or missing the mark, it also has a secondary meaning of suffering no loss. Of course no translator is going to translate this as suffering no loss because it is a complete contradiction to the story where Job lost everything. Or is it a contradiction?
The Apostle Paul came from a background of wealth. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, one of the seventy elite to sit on the high Jewish court. To be a member he had to be married. Yet, after he met Jesus we find him in near poverty, living off the generosity of other believers, single, no longer a supreme court justice, disgraced and suffering physical affliction. Just like old Job got wiped out, Paul also got wiped out for just simply accepting Jesus as his Messiah. However, note what he says in Romans 8:38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. As long as he had the Love of God through Jesus Christ his Lord, he really didn’t lose anything. Like Job, when his world came tumbling down, when he crashed and burned, he rose from the ashes worshipping (shachah) God. When he did God came, met him at his point of his need and expectation and just surrounded the old boy with His presence and love such that nothing else mattered.
Last Sunday at the end of our church service our pastor asked if anyone who had a deep need would raise their hand. He then asked for those who did not raise their hand to go to someone with their hand raised and pray for them. When I looked around I was surprised to see three quarters of the congregation with their hand lifted and not ashamed to do it. You know it seems as if Christians are still coming under the attack of the enemy just like in Job’s days. Earlier in the service one woman confessed to losing her job and being forced to move from her apartment, but she was still praising God. Many have lost their savings and their homes. Our church runs a food pantry for many who cannot even afford to buy enough food to feed their family. I went to the basement of the church after the service where they had a Christmas tree filled with little paper angels for the Angel Tree project run by the Prison Fellowship. The tree was filled with the names of children who had a parent that was incarcerated, a parent who could to spend Christmas with his or her child or even purchase a Christmas present for their child. I realized at that moment that the story of Job was repeating itself over and over, that the enemy was still raging mad and engaged in his attacks on the believer.
Yet, just as the attacks of the enemy continues to this day, so does the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. There is one thing for which we can be certain that the enemy cannot take away from us, one thing he cannot touch and that is the Love of God in Christ Jesus. If we put all our eggs in that one basket of the love of God, those are eggs that the enemy cannot break. With the love of God in Christ Jesus we can be like Job and Paul where we will not chatak, suffer any loss for we will be shachah, surrounded by the love of God in Christ Jesus.
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