Monday, April 21, 2008

If Your Soul Were In My Soul's Stead

Job 16:4 KJV
I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.
I find the phrase "if your soul were in my soul's stead" to be an intriguing one. Not that Job wished it on his friends. But the plain truth is that most of us are at one time or another in life in a time of affliction. In those times, as Barnes Notes says, "...that there is no difficulty in finding arguments to overwhelm the afflicted..."

Job argues this point from the position of disadvantage. It would have been a far more weighty argument if he were able to make it as the one whose soul was not afflicted, then to say, "But I would strengthen you with my mouth."

Coming home from a half week of preaching meetings to the inmates at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Ft Leavenworth, KS it would be wise for me to consider what “….if my soul were in their soul's stead"? If I were in the place they are, how could I be most helped? My affliction may never be the same as these men, some of whom are sitting in a death row cell and others who are facing life without the possibility of parole. But I can be assured I will face some sort of afflictions. May God help me to do for the afflicted as I would desire would be done for me in my times of affliction.

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