Category Archives: Biblical Theology

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

You’ve read that many times. But have you stopped to think about what it really means? John 1 says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

God in the form of the Word spoke, and it was. Light before the sun. Plants before photosynthesis. Sea creatures before any net was cast to catch them. Man from the dust of the ground, with the breath of God in his lungs, placed in a garden where every tree was for food except one.

And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

The Hebrew: Vayyiqra Elohim la’or yom velachoshekh qara layelah vayehi-erev vayehi-voker yom echad.

You see the word yom. Everywhere in the Hebrew Bible where yom appears with a number — first day, second day, forty days — it means a 24-hour day. Over 350 times outside of Genesis 1, not one exception. When Moses wrote “the first day” and “the second day,” he meant exactly that. A morning and an evening. Twenty-four hours. The same way you’d read “three days’ journey” or “on the seventh day” anywhere else in the Old Testament. So we can be assured that God, the Word, created all that we know in six days. Light. The firmament to divide the waters. Heaven. Dry land. Vegetation. Lights in the sky. The swarm of living things in the sea and the sky. The beasts of the earth and every creeping thing.

Then He said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” And He gave man dominion over the birds of the sky and every living thing.

Elohim — God — declared it all to be very good.

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The Law of Information

But a point needs to be made about the creation itself. We run into something called the Law of Information. It states that information does not arise from matter by natural processes. Information comes from a mind. It always has. It always does.

Norbert Wiener founded the field of cybernetics at MIT. He was not a theologian. He was not a creationist. In 1948, he wrote: “Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.”

That is not a Christian saying that. That is one of the founding fathers of information theory, stating what his own field proved: information is not matter. It is not energy. It is its own category. And it does not spontaneously generate from dead chemicals. DNA and RNA — the master codes for how living things are built — are information. Code. The question is not whether the code exists. The question is who wrote it. Every code anyone has ever found the origin of came from a mind. Not one has been shown to arise from matter alone. Look around your house. Everything you see was made by someone — from an idea in someone’s mind.

Now look at Romans 1:

That which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

God made His creation evident within us. We have all seen His attributes. A beautiful forest. A patch of flowers exquisite in their beauty. The dogs and cats we love. Every living thing carries the code — DNA, RNA — the master plans for how living things are built. Not one of those codes wrote itself. Not one arose from dead chemistry. Information comes from a mind. Always has.

So when the evidence of creation is this plain — written into every cell of every living thing — what do some people do with it? Paul says they suppress it. They hold it down. Romans 1:18: “Who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Not that they didn’t have the truth. Not that it wasn’t available. They had it, and they held it under. Scientists who deny the Creator are not different in kind from the Pharisees who denied Christ. They have worked long and hard to attain their titles, as did the Pharisees. They were all educated in the same worldview, as were the Pharisees. They love the prestige of their education, as did the Pharisees. And when they come to evidence that tells them plainly to change their worldview, they are loath to do so — as were the Pharisees.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, in John 3:3-5:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” He couldn’t see past his framework. But Nicodemus did eventually change his worldview — along with Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man and a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews (John 19:38). They both had a change of mind, and it cost them in this life. But they attained salvation, which is more than worth the loss of stature among their friends. There were others who were offered the same change. I’ll let you find them on your own. Consider it homework.

We are without excuse. But we continue.

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The Fall

Adam, who is made from the dust of the ground — God breathed life into him (Genesis 2:7) — is told he may eat from every tree in the garden, except one. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam is then given a helper, taken from his rib. She is called Woman because she was taken out of Man (Genesis 2:23). And Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”

This will become important later.

The Bible does not say how long Adam and his woman had before a visitor showed up. We are told in Scripture that satan and the angels who rebelled were cast down — Revelation 12:7-9:

And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

So we don’t know how long Adam and his woman had before the serpent showed up and started asking questions. Why Adam was not out in front of his woman, we don’t know. Perhaps, going back to Genesis 2:24, he was cleaving to his wife. Whatever the reason, his woman was the one talking to the serpent. 2 Corinthians 11:3: “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” Cunning. Not smarter. The word is panourgia — craftiness, shrewdness, trickery.

Genesis 3:1 — The serpent said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

Genesis 3:2-3 — The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, ‘You shall not eat from it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.'”

Adam had conveyed the command from God to his woman, and she repeated it back to the serpent.

And the serpent said to the woman, Genesis 3:4-5: “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Have you ever been offered something so good it couldn’t possibly be true? It is a temptation, to be sure. Adam’s woman thought what the serpent said sounded pretty good. What Adam thought, we don’t know. Before this, before he was missing a rib, God had run all the animals past him so Adam could name them (Genesis 2:18-20):

Then Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” And out of the ground Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and He brought each to the man to see what he would call it; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

Now that he has a helper, does he delegate and run the show from the back? We don’t know. We do know from the dialog with the serpent that the woman had never encountered craftiness and deceit before. Previous to this, God and Adam had been honest and without guile. The serpent brought something new into the world: deception.

To summarize: God creates the heavens and the earth and everything else. It takes six yom, six 24-hour days. God declares His workmanship to be very good. Sometime later — we don’t know how long — one of His creations makes an error in judgment. Genesis 3:6:

Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, so she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

Adam was with her. He was not deceived — he ate willingly. Genesis 3:7:

And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

Paradise became something other than what it was designed to be.

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Sources

1. Yom with a number = 24-hour day: James Stambaugh, “The Meaning of ‘Day’ in Genesis,” ICR Impact No. 184, 1988. Over 350 instances of yom with a number outside Genesis 1 — every one means a 24-hour day. Zero exceptions.
2. Law of Information — Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948), p. 132: “Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.” Wiener was not a theologian or a creationist — he was the founder of cybernetics at MIT. For the corollary that information originates from a mind, see Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information (Christliche Literatur-Verbreitung, 1997).
3. Women initiate ~69% of divorces: Michael Rosenfeld, “Who Wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples,” Social Networks and the Life Course (Springer, 2018). Data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey, 2,262 adults, nationally representative. Presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, 2015.

I came across a video last week that caused me to think, a lot. What did I know of the main character and what did I really know of who he was and his situation? The more I looked into it, well, that caused more thoughts. I am talking of Job, from the Bible. The man that God spoke to satan about, and all of Job’s suffering, but proving God was right. “Curse God and die,” his wife told him to do. I have to think at that moment in time, Job was wondering about his life’s choices.

What do we know of kings back then? Kings usually had wealth. In the Legacy Standard Bible translation I use, it helpfully tells me that Job was “greatest of the sons of the east.” In the KJV, they told me of Job’s character and wealth. Both of these translations deal with wealth, and the KJV also speaks of his character. In the Septuagint, written 200 years before Christ, it has this to say:

“And it is written that he will rise up again with those whom the Lord raises up.
This man is described in the Syriac book as dwelling in the land of Ausis, on the borders of Idumea and Arabia; and his name before was Jobab; and having taken an Arabian wife, he begat a son whose name was Ennon. He himself was the son of his father Zara, a son of the sons of Esau, and of his mother Bosorrha, so that he was the fifth from Abraham.
And these were the kings who reigned in Edom, which country he also ruled over. First Balak the son of Beor, and the name of his city was Dennaba. After Balak, Jobab, who is called Job: and after him, Asom, who was governor out of the country of Thaeman; and after him, Adad, the son of Barad, that destroyed Madiam in the plain of Moab; and the name of his city was Gethaim.
And the friends that came to him were Eliphaz of the sons of Esau, king of the Thaemanites, Baldad sovereign of the Sauchaens, Sophar, king of the Minaeans.”

It is my understanding that Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible, and written by Moses, before the Law. Why it is in its place in the Scripture — that was the Holy Spirit’s realm.

So from the video, Jobab was a king. The Septuagint says it, and also says his friends were kings too. Eliphaz wasn’t just a Temanite — he was “king of the Thaemanites.” Bildad was “sovereign of the Sauchaens.” Zophar was “king of the Minaeans.” Four kings sitting in the dust together.

Kind of puts a whole new look to the life of Job.

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You have read Job your whole life and nobody told you he was a king.

The book opens with a man in ashes. His children are dead, his livestock stolen, his body covered with sores. His friends arrive and sit with him in silence for seven days. Then they open their mouths and make everything worse. God shows up in a whirlwind and answers questions Job never asked. Job repents in dust and ashes. God restores everything double. The end.

It is the oldest story in the Bible and most people read it as a patient man enduring a test. That is not wrong. But it is not the whole story.

There is a note at the end of the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament, completed in the third century BC, the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures we possess. It is not a later gloss. It is not a medieval commentator guessing. It is Hebrew scholarship, preserved in Greek, that identifies the man:

“His name was Jobab. He reigned in Edom. His father was Zerah, from Bosra.”

Jobab. Son of Zerah. King in Edom.

Genesis 36:33 records the kings of Edom before Israel had a king. The second name on the list is Jobab, son of Zerah, from Bosra. The Septuagint note ties the suffering servant directly to a throne that already existed when Moses wrote Genesis.

This is not a fringe reconstruction. The geographic evidence is embedded in the Hebrew text itself. Job’s three comforters are Edomites — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite. Teman is in Edom. Shuah is Edomite territory. Naamah is in the Edomite hill country. Elihu, the fourth voice, is from Buz — also Edomite. The names are not random. They are a map.

And when God finally answers Job, He does not come from Sinai. He does not come from Jerusalem. He comes from the south. From Seir. From Teman. From Paran. The theophany in chapters 38 through 41 opens with a voice from the same region where God appeared to Israel at Sinai — but this time He is answering a king, not giving a law. He is vindicating a man, not establishing a covenant. The geography is not decoration. It is the same land, the same God, the same whirlwind.

Every other time the Bible describes God coming in a storm from the south, He is coming in power to deliver His people. Deuteronomy 33:2: “The Lord came from Sinai, and dawned from Seir upon us; He shone forth from Mount Paran.” Judges 5:4: “Lord, when you went out from Seir, when you marched from the region of Edom, the earth trembled.” Habakkuk 3:3: “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.”

Teman. Seir. Paran. Edom. That is where Job was sitting in ashes. That is where the whirlwind came from. The comforters are Edomite. The land is Edomite. The God who answers comes from Edomite territory. And the Septuagint says the man was Edom’s king.

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Now set that next to the Exodus.

The short chronology of the sojourn — 215 years from Jacob’s entry into Egypt to the Exodus — places Moses in Midian at the same time a king named Jobab sat on Edom’s throne. Midian and Edom share a border. The same mountainous country. The same God moving through the same landscape. Moses shepherded Jethro’s flocks in the same region where Job lost everything and was restored.

Job’s vindication and Israel’s deliverance are not two stories. They are the same pattern, on different stages, for different audiences.

A ruined king, sitting in the dust of the kingdom he once ruled, says: “I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth.” He has no Torah. He has no covenant. He has no priest, no prophet, no temple, no sacrifice. He has nothing but the memory of what God showed him and the conviction that the One who took everything will be the One who restores everything.

A few hundred years later, a nation of slaves in Egypt — also ruined, also sitting in dust — watches the same God do exactly what Job said He would do. Stand up. Show up. Vindicate.

Job is not a philosophical puzzle about why bad things happen to good people. That question is what his comforters asked, and God ignored it. God answered something else entirely. He answered with Himself. Not an explanation. A presence. The same presence that later split the sea and shook the mountain and led a nation through the wilderness on pillars of fire and cloud.

The man in the dust was a king. The God who answered was the same God who would answer again. And the words Job spoke — “I know that my redeemer lives” — are the oldest declaration of resurrection faith in the canon. He said it before the Exodus. He said it before the Psalms. He said it before the prophets. He said it without a single verse of Scripture in his hands, because there wasn’t any yet.

What did he have?

The ancient names. The memory of what God had shown his fathers. The witness of creation — which God Himself used as the answer. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” is not a rebuke. It is an invitation. It says: you know Who I am. You have seen My work. The wind that is blowing your ashes across your skin is the same wind that divided the deep on the first day. The same God. The same power. The same mercy.

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Jobab lost his throne, lost his children, lost his health, lost his reputation among men. And in the lowest place, with nothing left but the memory of God’s work in creation and the ancient names passed down from his fathers, he said the truest thing anyone in the Old Testament ever said about the living God:

He lives. And He will stand. And I will see Him for myself.

Not “He might live.” Not “I hope He lives.” Not “I have a theory about whether He lives.”

Know. The Hebrew is yada — to know by experience. Not speculation. Not probability. Certainty born from the only source that can produce it: a God who reveals Himself to a man who has nothing left to cling to but the revelation itself.

That is the whole book. Not “why do bad things happen to good people.” The book never answers that question. It answers a better one: what do you have left when everything is taken, and is it enough?

Job’s answer: God. Just God. That is enough. And the Septuagint tells us that the man who said it was not a random sufferer on a hillside. He was a king. He had known power and wealth and respect. He knew what he was losing. And he said: my redeemer lives.

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The Septuagint note is not Scripture in the Protestant canon. It is an ancient witness preserved by the oldest complete manuscript tradition of the Old Testament. Whether the specific identification of Job as Jobab is correct is a legitimate question. But the Edomite setting, the theophanic geography, the pattern of a ruined king vindicated — these are embedded in the Hebrew text itself, and they are the stronger argument regardless.

The identification adds something. The geography and the pattern are already there.

A BLK SHP video called “A Hidden Note at the End of Job Reveals His True Identity” brought the Septuagint identification to our attention. The exegetical work on the Edomite connections is his. What follows is our own path through the same Scripture — the same data, the same text, our own words, the same God. Credit where credit is due. The proclamation is ours to preach.

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Job sat in the dust of a kingdom he used to rule. The God who answered him came from the same mountains where He would later meet Moses. The same whirlwind. The same voice. The same refusal to explain suffering and the same determination to be present in it.

And the earliest resurrection confession in the Bible came from a man with no Scripture, no covenant, and no priest — only the ancient names, the memory of creation, and the living God who showed up in person.

That is the God of Job. That is the God of Israel. That is the God who later still would empty a tomb on a Sunday morning in Jerusalem — vindicated, alive, standing on the earth, just like a king in Edom said He would.

I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God. — Job 19:25-26