IYOV 6

Good morning boys and girls!!!! So when I left you: IYOV had just brought forward the new question of why evil people gain. So Elifaz was the first to answer that evil people don’t really enjoy the things they get from their evil because of their constant evil.

Now in perek 16 & 17 is very uncharacteristic he doesn’t actually answer elifaz’s point, he is saving it in order to answer all three at the same time, he does talk about one or two minor points like the eternity of the soul, gods interaction with the world, the meaning of life and the secret to immortality but I don’t reckon you guys are interested so I left it out.

Now along comes Bildad, Firstly Bildad tries to argue the eternity of the soul saying, If not what is the difference between man and the animals, why did god make us in his image with the ability to think and understand if not for a purpose above the simple animal world.

With this he leads on to apply the same logic to the rosha he says true success is spiritual success as that is the main thing, so you see a rosha gain property in the world all that physical success means nothing, as spiritually he will be punished, he will not get the eternal bliss of the next world, his children will be cut off and he will leave no legacy in this world.

Now Tzofar would like to give the same argument as before about never know if someone is a true tzadik or rosha but last time IYOV made a joke out of it. So instead he holds back a bit but does mention that just because you see a man suffer in this lifetime doesn’t mean in other lifetimes he had a good life.

Now IYOV comes back to answer them all in one swoop. First he answers that you do see many reshoim who live perfectly happy lives, die a fast painless death (What iyov wishes for), and then their children are successful in continuing their estate. And so what if they get punished after death that is something we can’t see to judge and shouldn’t g-d show us what he sees as bad, and even if g-d does punish their children so what if a man does evil he should get the punishment. All these point are good points I would even add one myself, even if spirituality is the main thing, no matter how small it is physicality is something and if a man is a rosha why should g-d give him even the smallest physical pleasures.

Finally in today’s perek Elifaz stands up to give one answer for all these questions. Bechirah, this is something we have all heard many times, if g-d punished you the second you sinned and rewarded you the second you did a good deed, we would have no choice everyone would serve g-d out of purely selfish reasons and there would be no test (the point of the world). This is a comen idea many of you have heard of.

Ok i wish you all a lovely shabbous, and just to compare to this weeks sedra how Avroham is given many hardships and doesn’t complain and always has faith even when things are tuff.