Job 29

Job’s children were crushed to death in a windstorm that blew over his oldest son’s house (Job 1:18-19).

Let’s hope Job was not literally washing his feet with curds. Curds are like cottage cheese, yogurt, or tofu, though all four go through different processes. Curds are fermented milk, made from the kind of lumps that we’ve seen develop when we leave the milk out too long. It has been a staple food among Middle Eastern herders for thousands of years. But not for washing feet. Used as a soap, curds would attract bacteria and draw microorganisms onto a person’s body.

This verse more literally says that streams of oil poured out of the rock. But this reads like a poetic word picture of what happens when farmers place layers of olives into a press weighted down by heavy stones. Olive oil drained from below the stones into a vat, where harvesters collected the olive oil into jars made from stone or clay.

The city gate was a popular meeting place. Village leaders often chose that busy spot to conduct business, settle disputes, and judge court cases.

Job wanted to live what the writer literally said is the lifespan of a phoenix. In ancient myths and fables, which were popular stories in Bible times, the phoenix reportedly lived for 500 years or more. When it came time to die, it would gather some twigs and tree sap and build its nest on top of the Temple of the Sun. The sun would ignite the nest, and the old phoenix would die in a blaze of glory. That does not sound like a description of Job, covered with skin sores all over his body.