AP

ob 28:28  And [God] said to the human race, “The fear of the Lord – that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.”

Job 28 may be a continuation of Job’s final speech in Chapter 27.  However, while this is possible, its place in the whole book remains an enigma among scholars.  It seems more likely that it is a summarial editorial interlude inserted by the storyteller.  (I note that NIV 1984 makes the same assumption I did originally, whereas NIV 2011 treats it as a separate interlude, with Job’s final speech continuing after Chapter 27 in Chapter 29).

I now have the opportunity to correct previous errors!

Be that as it may, throughout this chapter the reader is called on to pause and reflect on man’s amazing achievements in his world.  Mankind has been able to mine the depths of the earth, drawing out treasures from its storehouse to provide him with riches and beauty and useful resource materials to improve his lot in the world.  These great achievements mark him off from all other living creatures that inhabit the earth with him, giving him a measure of superiority that animals, in spite of their greater prowess in other areas, could never hope to attain.

We see this same truth still working itself out today, millennia later, as we benefit from the mining boom at the beginning of this century in our own land.

But Job also draws their attention to the fact that, in spite of man’s ability to keep on winning such benefit from what God has hidden for him in the ground, he cannot find wisdom there!  True wisdom is only found in God himself – in having a worldview that places and keeps God at the very centre of everything in which man involves himself, every field of study and inquiry, every development of machinery and technology, every endeavour to improve his place in the world.  We may gain unimaginable knowledge and wealth, but without the ‘fear of the Lord’ we have not even begun to gain wisdom and understanding.

The Psalmist agrees: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.  To him belongs eternal praise” (111:10).  Perhaps the reason man is so reluctant to pursue this ‘treasure’ is because of its ‘flip side’: ‘to shun evil’!  Does your lifestyle, in every part, reflect Job’s worldview?  Jesus asks us, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36)

– Bruce Christian