An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 92: The wicked go unpunished because … God doesn’t care, apparently (Job 21-25)

Job 21-25
The wicked go unpunished because … God doesn’t care, apparently.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Job 21
“Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?”

Job contends that, in fact, the wicked do prosper and grow old and their families and possessions increase regardless. However, he then turns it around to say that, in fact, they will be punished in the afterlife, which seems to me to be a bit of a weak excuse but is pretty fundamental to this theology; it helps explain why bad people aren’t always punished in life.

If you ever want to silence hecklers with a biblical quote, by the way, the start of this chapter gives you some options. Not that they’d work, but you’re welcome to try if you want to appear erudite.

Job 22
“Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself?”

Eliphaz replies to Job, saying that is irrelevant to God if a man is good or not, but also that He cuts down the wicked, as evidenced by the Flood. Eliphaz also accuses Job of a variety of uncharitable deeds, and exhorts him to repent. This is kind of having things both ways, it would seem – it makes no difference to god of mankind is good, but He punishes them for doing wrong? I’m not sure that I find Eliphaz’s argument particularly coherent here.

Job 23
“Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me.”

Job’s response is to wish that he was able to speak to God and put his argument before Him, but wherever he looks, God is not to be found. The chapter gives what is probably the central point of Job’s argument, that his friends fail to comprehend, that Job believes that God would allow him, even strengthen him, to put his point across and not use His divine might to dismiss or destroy Job outright.

Job 24
“They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof.”

Job returns to his theme that the wicked often go unpunished in life, although will eventually be punished in death. There’s some nice dark/light metaphor work going on here, with various examples of how the wicked prefer to operate at night and in darkness, to hide their misdeeds. Light, literally and metaphorically, is anathema to them.

Job 25
“Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.”

A short little chapter of only six verses, where Bildad speaks. He ignores Job’s point about the wicked going unpunished, instead pointing out the distance between man and God, again metaphorically and perhaps literally. If God doesn’t even see the moon and stars as pure in His sight (although I don’t know where Bildad is getting this opinion from), how much less can man ever seem, even if he is righteous it is as much interest to God as a worm is to mankind. This seems to me to be putting much more distance between man and God than was previously expressed in the OT, where God was shown that He was interested in the affairs of man, at least as it pertained to the Israelites. Bildad’s almost like an ancient Greek philosopher here in his theory of God as utterly unknowable and alien to humanity.

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