Today's Meditation
Read Job 42:10-17
10And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 11Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. 12The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. 13He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. 16After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations. 17And Job died, old and full of days.
Since we've been spending the last month in the daily meditations on Job, I've decided to do a sermon about this passage for Sunday, so I want go into a great bit of detail here about this text. There are a few things I want to point out that I may or may not cover on Sunday. First, and the most important aspect of this part of the book of Job, after suffering Job finds new joy in living. Second, his daughters are named. This is highly unusual in the biblical record, unless they are part of the family tree that produces Jesus or do something important in the story. Often, women go unnamed in scripture. Third, these daughters of his get an equal share of the inheritance. That NEVER happened in biblical days. Think about the significance of that. Job has questioned God for being righteous, blameless and upright. God agrees and blesses him again. And Job goes that one step further and provides equality to ALL his children, even those (women) who were once considered only property. Maybe there's a lesson just in that for our day.
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