Commentary on Job

3.0 Commentary on Job

The verse by verse commentary has yet to be written. Part of the reason is that the global perspective material (part II) turned out to require a lot of topical verse analysis, and took more time; partly because a verse-by-verse makes no sense unless it is put in a bigger perspective; and partly because so many people have attempted a verse by verse commentary. Its a bit like physics, many people think that the truth can be found by "divide and conquer" so they chop things into smaller and smaller pieces until they are talking about quarks. But imagine a physicist trying to describe why dogs are friendly and cats are not. Divide and conquer will never get you there. Some things "are greater than the sum of their parts", and cannot be understood by reductionist logic.

So I didn't want to write a verse-by-verse commentary in the usual way. I've been toying with the idea of numbering my perspectives and then giving a "paragraph-by-paragraph" commentary from each of these perspectives. An entry might look like:
Job 2:1-3

This conveys that many can attain God's favor.
This presents the main characters of a tragedy.
This shows that despite God's favorable outlook he permits Job's punishment.
This shows that Man can never attain perfection.
This shows the source of suffering may be God himself
The problem of evil transcends human experience and begins in heaven itself.
God himself begins the dialogue, the problem is formulated by God and must be solved by God.
God is given in the masculine and he addresses Satan in the masculine and refers to Job this way, showing that men have inherent tendencies to abstract relationships and turn friendships into warfare with no provocation.

If this approach is workable, I will start the commentary when I am satisfied that I have a decent number of perspectives to speak from.

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