Job 23:1-9

1) It may well be that Job is contemplating suicide. One thing is keeping him alive,k the thought of having a trial where god is on the defensive.

2) By the way, with the passing of william Safire, ntoe that he wrote a book on Job as dissident.
3) Job has just been told that he must have done something wicked to deserve all this pain, but he persists in his integrity.

4) Not submission for Job but a dispute contest, a rib, in hebrew.Job wants vindication.He is definat (meri) I don't know if that is close to the bitterness of mar, as in naomi, a female Job, wanting to be called marah, bitterness.Lament is insufficient.Job needs a contest to show justice. this is protest within a structure.

5) Surely God will give him a just verdict (v. 7) See Wiesel's The Trial

6) We worship an elsuive God, however. All religious people fluctuate between the revealed, accessible god, and the distant, mysterious, elusive God

7) So, if he can't find god, God certainly finds and knows him. the trial undercuts the hunter and prey aspect of God's sight into one of vision.

8) Job chooses a motif, of metal being tested, that is picked up in the NT struggle with suffering.

9) I don;'t recall if I mentioned last week that my favorite Job book is by Janzen of CTS in the Interpretation series. In Theology Today or Princeton Sem. bulletin, he goes over some of the arguments again.