Job 28 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 28 Short Summary:

Job 28 is a unique chapter in which Job contrasted the mining of precious gems to the uncovering of the wisdom of God. Minors go to great lengths to search out riches in the earth, and they uncover hidden treasures. In contrast, God’s wisdom can never be fully uncovered. It is hidden in a place only God knows. God is the author of wisdom, and no human being can every fully comprehend the mind of God.

Job 28 Bible Study

SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

• Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan

• Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution

• Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.

• Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost

WHEN:

• The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).

• I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.

• Job’s Friends – Three men who were determined to accuse Job of sin. They were convinced Job’s suffering was God’s judgement on him for his hidden sin.

WHERE:

• Job lived in the land of Uz. Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.

OUTLINE:

• MINING FOR GEMS (28:1-11):

  • Having acknowledged that some of the words of his friends contained threads of wisdom, Job makes it clear in this chapter that a full understanding of God’s providential working and outpouring of judgement is hidden from humans. Humans can uncover many things, like gold, silver, and gems in the deep earth, but they’ll never mine out all the wisdom in the mind of God.

  • Job begins this chapter discussing the pursuit of mining for rare earth materials. He described the minors of his day who went searching for gems in the forgotten places of the world.

  • They went to great lengths to find riches. They moved mountains of earth and carved through solid rock.

  • They bored tunnels into the earth, reaching places that no man or animal had ever laid eyes on to dig up sapphires that glowed like fire and rivers of gold.

  • They were very industrious, and they found many precious things.

• THE UNDISCOVERABLE GEM, GOD’S WISDOM (28:12-28):

  • Though men had made many discoveries on earth, they would never fully uncover the wisdom of God, which was a gem of greater value and greater elusiveness than all the others.

  • No treasure seeker could find it. God alone knew where it was kept.

  • Job said, “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its worth, and it is not found in the land of the living” (28:13).

  • Job talked about how God’s wisdom is worth more than all the riches in the world. He said, “It cannot be bought for gold, and silver cannot be weighted as its price” (28:15).

  • Wisdom was established by God when He created the world, before any human existed. He is the author of wisdom and the One who established it as a virtue on earth.

  • These ideas reinforced an important point of discussion in Job’s debate with his friends. God’s wisdom was beyond a human’s capacity to understand. Humans shouldn’t expect to understand everything God does. No matter how much wisdom they obtain, it is just a small drop in comparison to God’s pool of wisdom.

  • Job didn’t understand why he was suffering, but he knew it was better to accept the unknowable complexity of God’s mind than to oversimplify God to try to make Him fit into the human mind (like Job’s friends were doing).

APPLICATION

• Think about the extent that people go to mine precious materials from the earth.

• The huge machinery, the manpower, the time, the difficulty of drilling into the earth, and the risk of explosions and cave-ins.

• What if God hid Bibles in the earth like gemstones, and the only way to get one was to expend the same energy and time in takes to find a ruby in the ground? Would you be mining for one?

• Truth is, we are all mining for something.

• We are all expending our energy and time somewhere, whether in a career or a hobby or a passion project.

• How much time are you spending mining out the wisdom of God in His word?

• For those of you who are studying Job 28 with me, I want to commend you!

• The non-committed minors usually don’t make it past Job 5 or 6. If you’re here, its because you’re committed to finding the gems in every part of God’s word.

• I want to encourage you to keep digging and never be satisfied in your pursuit of the wisdom of God.

• While we will never fully understand all the wisdom God possesses, we can follow veins of gold that lead us closer to understanding the heart and mind of God.