Job 1:20-22: Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and he fell to the ground and worshipped. 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. He deeply felt his loss. But he did one other thing, he worshipped, (shachah). In an earlier study I showed that this is a word also used for swimming, being surrounded by water. The enemy was able to take his possessions, his wealth, his status and his family away from him, but there was one thing the enemy could not touch, the love of God. 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.”
But just before that he says: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return ‘there.” This is written in poetic style and would explain the rather strange word used here for there. It is the word shamah. This is the same root as the word for heaven or the dwelling place of God. The Shin, Mem and Hei expresses the idea of being made complete in the revealed knowledge of God and His presence. The word return is shuv and this is a return in the sense of restoration.
What Job may actually be saying here is “Just as in my mother’s womb I had need of nothing so too with nothing 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 word blessed is yahi. This has many possibilities for translation. Yahi is sometimes used for Jehovah. It’s basic meaning is I am. You could translate it as The name of Jehovah shall be. However, yahi has the 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.”
In all this Job did not sin. The word for sin is chatak which means sin, or missing the mark, but it also means suffering no loss. 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?
The Apostle Paul came from a background of wealth. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, one of the 70 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. Like old Job got wiped out, Paul got wiped out, for just simply accepting Jesus as his Messiah. 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 has the Love of God through Jesus Christ his Lord, he really didn’t lose anything. Like Job, he could enter that “shachah” and just be surrounded by the presence and love of God and nothing else mattered.
In seems like so many Christians have been under attack the last few years and faced losses like Job and Paul. They have lost jobs, their savings, the stress is tearing their families apart, many are losing their homes in foreclosure and there is not one of us who within 24 hours could not be in the same mix. Man and the enemy can take away our jobs, our homes, our families, our finances just like Job and Paul, but there is one thing they can not touch, there is one thing that no person, spiritual power, situation, circumstance, government etc. can take away from us, and that is the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. If we have that, like Job and Paul we will not chatak, suffer a loss.
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