6“God has made me a byword to everyone, a man in whose face people spit.”
Benedict Arnold is a relative of mine. That’s right, the traitor is my relative. Benedict Arnold became a byword for traitor. Monica Lewinski and Bill Clinton make a pair of bywords. Bernie Madoff became known as the financial crook of the century. Hitler became a byword for a mass murderer. Bywords are never complementary. Mother Teresa could never become a byword. Trust me, you don’t want to become a byword. And yet, that is what Job said he felt like. He was becoming the object of discussions. Maybe when bad things happened, people were saying that they got “Jobbed.” Maybe when someone was thought to be hiding their sin they were “Jobbing.” Or when someone seemed too good, people would tell them that your “Job” is just around the corner, so be careful. We are not sure exactly what form the derision was taking, but it was happening. Job felt at the bottom, and his friends and others were pushing him further into the ground. They were kicking the downed man. They were taking pot shots at him. That is one of the problems with being at the forefront of anything. When you are at the front you are an easy target. Those around him were probably just thankful they were not Job. “If Job is getting punished, am I next?” So they are desperate to find a chink in Job’s moral armor. “There must be some reason, some huge hidden sin, for God to judge him so.” But there wasn’t! Job’s reputation, his name is in the balance. Instead of “the perseverance of Job,” it could have been “the deceit of Job” or any number of other derisive titles that followed him through history. What title will follow you?
The Arnold Journey 