Reading: Transcendent Setting (Video Slides)

#5 Introduction to the Book of Job: The Transcendent Setting

 

Review

• Job is a rich man living in the ancient near east

• Job becomes the object of interest for both good and evil powers who are dialoguing together in heaven

• Job’s life is shattered through:

The destruction of his property

The deaths of his children

The diseases that wrack his body

 

But what about God & Satan?

Assumes a worldview like that of the Hebrew Bible:

• Creator deity (“Yahweh”) who retains final control
• Evil as an intrusion
• A collection of spiritual creatures (angels; demons?) who share oversight of the physical world (cf. Psalm 82)
• The possibility that “Satan” may have originally been an angel (cf. Isaiah 14:3-23)

How you have fallen from heaven,

    morning star, son of the dawn!

You have been cast down to the earth,

    you who once laid low the nations!

You said in your heart,

    “I will ascend to the heavens;

I will raise my throne

    above the stars of God;

I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,

    on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.

I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;

    I will make myself like the Most High.”

But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,

    to the depths of the pit.  (Isaiah 14:12-15)

 

What can we say about these things?

• The book of Job assumes the Creator God is always in control:

Even when Satan does evil, it happens by way of permission, not separate initiative

• The book of Job assumes that there are angelic beings who share in the supervision of creation (cf. Psalm 82 as a similar expression)

• The book of Job suggests that at least one among the angelic beings is corrupted and has become an opponent to God’s good ways
• The book of Job identifies this being as “The Satan.” The name, in Hebrew, actually means “the Accuser.”

This is a legal term

It can be used for witnesses to a crime

But it can also be used for what we would call the prosecuting attorney

• • • In this sense, the Satan is not necessarily evil, but deeply aware of evil, and has a responsibility to ensure that nothing false is allowed to survive
    • Like, in this respect, the “Devil’s Advocate” in the Roman Catholic process of identifying saints

• This name comes back several times in the Gospels

For instance, in Luke 10, where Jesus sends out the 72 as missionaries

They return excitedly, noting that even the demons obeyed them when cast out

Jesus replies that he has seen “Satan” falling like lightening from heaven (Luke 10:18)

• But it is probably most paralleled in:

Zechariah 3

Revelation 12

• What does it mean?

We live in a corrupted world, in which evil is overtly challenging, but God is in control

How will we live faithfully?