Prayer 11: The Great Prayers of Scripture

(Our group was honored today with the participation of Nafe, a visitor from Bethlehem and a boyhood friend of Michael who also comes from that famous town; and of Patrick.)

Don: A discussion of the great prayers of scripture—the prayers of Abraham, Jacob, Hannah, Gideon, of Solomon for wisdom, David’s prayer of penitence, the prayer of Job, Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the fish, the prayers of Daniel and Jesus and several others—might help us understand prayer.

We’ll start with Job, because it addresses an issue just raised by Harry in a comment on the Interface blog. It’s often used to explain why bad things happen to good people. The prayer is not a request—it is an acknowledgment, a confession.

Job is introduced in the scripture as a wealthy man with many earthly blessings. But he is accused by some “adversary” of taking bribes from god to honor him (god). Of course, this accuses god also of offering bribes. God therefore gives the adversary the opportunity to reverse the blessings Job had received, and Job ends up losing his wealth, his children, and his health. In Job 2:9, his wife says to him: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” He replies (verse 10): “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” Verse 10 continues: “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

His adversity elicits the support of three of Job’s friends, who are so terribly distraught to find him in such bad shape that they are unable to speak for a week. Perhaps they should have remained silent, because they go on to give a series of lectures in an attempt to console him. The essence of their lectures is: “Job, god is punishing you because you are a sinner. Confess, and god will restore everything to you.” Job responds, essentially: “I am good, I am not a sinner. God is treating me unfairly. Something is wrong, but it is not because I am a sinner.” He tells them if god were not so powerful, he (Job) would win a suit against god in a court of law. Job 13:15-18:

“Though He slay me,
I will hope in Him.
Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him.
“This also will be my salvation,
For a godless man may not come before His presence.
“Listen carefully to my speech,
And let my declaration fill your ears.
“Behold now, I have prepared my case;
I know that I will be vindicated.
“Who will contend with me?
For then I would be silent and die.

He continues the legal language in Job 19:28-29:

“If you say, ‘How shall we persecute him?’
And ‘What pretext for a case against him can we find?’
“Then be afraid of the sword for yourselves,
For wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
So that you may know there is judgment.”

In Job 23:4-5…

“I would present my case before Him
And fill my mouth with arguments.
“I would learn the words which He would answer,
And perceive what He would say to me.

…he shows he is confident of his innocence, yet he perceives that with god as judge, jury, and executioner, he cannot win. But yet again, he senses (Job 16:19) that god is also his defense counsel:

“Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
And my advocate is on high.

So while the court is stacked against him, paradoxically, it is also on his side.

God himself weighs in (Job 40) on the argument between Job and his friends. His narrative is majestic yet dripping with sarcasm as he compares himself and his awesome might to insignificant little Job. But he never addresses Job’s question about why bad things have happened to a good person like him. Like Harry (see his recent comment on The Interface), Job was disturbed by the randomness of life. Why was there no order to it? A little bit of order would prevent bad things happening to good people.

Eventually, Job reaches a spiritual point beyond this expectation of order in life, as his prayer reflects (Job 42:2-6):

“I know that You can do all things,
And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
‘Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will ask You, and You instruct me.’
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.”

Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Job recognizes that god’s will alone will be done. Perhaps even more dramatic is the very next passage (Job 42:7), in which god chastizes Job’s three friends for misrepresenting him as a god of retributive justice :

It came about after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, that the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has.

So while god did not address his question about why bad things happen to good people directly, Job nevertheless received enlightenment.

Kiran: This new understanding of the scripture is very humbling. How many of us have shared the view of Job’s friends?

Patrick: We’ve been taught all our lives that god will bless us if we do good. We are not taught what Job taught his wife: That even if god were to kill him, he would still love god. It does not matter what happens: god loves us, and we must love god.

Michael: We tend to think that god punished Job at the behest of “the adversary” in order to test him, but it seems that he wanted to elevate the issue to a higher level.

Don: Indeed, after making his accusations against Job and god, the adversary’s role is finished and he disappears from the story.

Jay: There is a big connection between faith and prayer here. In Job’s prayer he makes a faith statement: “It’s too much for me to understand, so I must rely on faith. It doesn’t matter who did what to me, all that matters is that whatever happens is god’s will.” His faith even becomes strengthened, advances to a higher level: His faith was based on hearsay, but now he is enlightened and has faith based on what he can see.

David: Yes, the implication is that Job saw the light. He began by thinking that he is not a sinner; that he is pious. His example reinforces that we too need to dispel that notion about ourselves and to accept that we cannot possibly know or measure up to what is truly Good (or Bad) unless and until we are enlightened; and to be enlightened, we must seek it through prayer.

Don: Job’s confidence that with his piety he could win his case in court is tilting at a windmill and is completely undone when he recognizes that he is almost nothing before god. Job is like a child asking its parent incessant questions about why things are the way they are, and almost like an exasperated parent god yells back “Because!” and elevates the topic to a new level.

Jay: The transition is clear in Job’s prayer. It means that all our efforts to understand god are doomed to fail. There is nothing but faith.

Kiran: God is all powerful. We are so arrogant in our piety. It is the same with Hindus and Buddhists and Moslems. We tell people they must have done something bad to become afflicted with a disease. We Christians are misinterpreting our own scripture.

Michael: We perhaps are arrogant because we can claim the only god who sacrificed his own son for the sake of humankind.

David: To me, Job is just another instance of a scripture so needlessly complex and confusing that it was and remains almost guaranteed to be misinterpreted by the majority of people who read it and report it. Its underlying message is simple and could be clearly and simply stated, but instead we are foisted with something that might almost have been designed to lead us astray, away from the truth. In any event, the story of Job does not add anything, it seems to me, to what we have learned of the purpose and method and outcomes of prayer that we have been studying in recent weeks.

Rafe: God is good, so even if bad things happen, god will eventually put things right.

Don: Indeed, the story of Job ends up with his lands and wealth restored to him.

Kiran: The point is that we are not to bother about that, but to accept god’s will in the here and now.

Patrick: God’s goodness is strikingly evidenced and exemplified through the compassion Jesus showed for us when he was suffering on the cross. Everything god has made—the entire universe—he made for us. He made a womb, so that we might be born.

Robin: God not only wanted to teach Job to have blind faith, but also to teach his friends who he really is.

David: But on Judgment Day, when the friends are asked what they did for their fellow man, they can point to Job and say “We took considerable trouble to go and comfort our friend in need, and for our compassion we got a tongue-lashing from god!” What’s wrong with that picture? And where are Job’s wife and kids in all of this? They have suffered most cruelly, but they turn out to be mere foils for the star of the show, Job. It’s all very unsettling.

Don: Next week we’ll try to settle it by looking at another great prayer.

* * *