READING:
One-year plan: Job 18-21
Two-year plan: Proverbs 1-2, 1 Corinthians 16:13-24
———
Job’s friends seldom got it right—particularly as they assumed that someone suffering must have brought on his own anguish because of his sin—but sometimes what they said had a layer of truth to it. In today’s reading, for example, Bildad speaks of what happens to the wicked. Again, his understanding is overstated and misdirected, but his understanding of the power of wickedness still speaks to us: “For his own feet lead him into a net, and he strays into its mesh. A trap catches him by the heel; a noose seizes him. A rope lies hidden for him on the ground, and a snare waits for him along the path” (Job 18:8-10).
Using six different images, the writer brings to light the fact that our sinful choices only ensnare us. Even when we might desire to go the other direction, our own feet lead us to destruction. We try hard, but still we walk into the snare. In the words of Matthew Henry as he considered these words from Bildad, “there is a great deal of certain truth [in these words], and which will be of excellent use if duly considered—that a sinful condition is a sad condition, and that iniquity will be men’s ruin if they do not repent of it.”* At a minimum, this text reminds me to:
- pray that I would be wise enough to recognize the snares
- pray for others I love who do indeed seem to keep falling into the trap.
PERSONAL REFLECTION: What traps have captured you in the past? In the present?
PRAYER: “God, make me wise to recognize realities and snares around me.”
TOMORROW’S READING:
One-year plan: Job 22-27
Two-year plan: Proverbs 3:1-4:9, 2 Corinthians 1:1-14
MEMORIZATION VERSE (June 1-15)
“Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing.” (Psa 143:10)
*Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume(p. 692). Hendrickson.