Daily Devotion for Lent 2025, Day 12

Today's Reading: Job, Chapter Twelve

When the exile came to Judah, the leadership was taken away to Babylon.  These were the wealthy and the esteemed.  They had been in control of their own destinies.  Once they were taken away, they were no longer in charge.  They must have felt like laughingstocks.

Their culture was one of shame and honor.  Within this mindset, to have others mock you would be a true low point.  Job feels that those who are less honorable such as thieves and those who provoke God are better off than he is.  And now society at large sees Job as being shamed by God as if he were worse than these shameful categories.

If we can see Job as a stand-in for the country of Judah, today's prose makes a lot of sense.  They would have seen others who didn't seek to follow God as doing better.  You who tried to follow God - even though you sometimes got it wrong - have known greater shame than those who followed after other gods.

We see Job as Judah in that God is the one who "looses the sash of kings" and "leads the priests away stripped."  This is the exile.

How must the people of God have felt during this time?

Some would have given up their faith.  Others would have stayed true.  It's likely that the majority would have been somewhere in the middle.

The final verses indicate how the people must have felt: God "strips understanding from the leaders of the earth and makes them wander in a pathless waste.  They grope in the dark without light; he makes them stagger like a drunkard."

To lose one's composure - like a drunkard - would be shameful indeed.  

When one is dealing with these emotions, how can one see?  We may want to help but they may be in such a dark place that they are unable to see the light we offer.  When this is the case, it may be better just to hold onto the person as best we can.

Prayer for the day:

Jesus, my feet are dirty. Come even as a slave to me, pour water into your bowl, come and wash my feet. In asking such a thing I know I am overbold, but I dread what was threatened when you said to me, “If I do not wash your feet I have no fellowship with you.” Wash my feet then, because I long for your companionship.  Amen.

Prayer by Origen of Alexandria, 3rd century

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

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