4 - Chronology
Tracing the age in which Job lived has always been an item of discussion. But with what we have seen on the previous pages there is to make some conclusion. There has been an epoch in which stars and planets did play a dominant role!
As I tried to explain on The Genesis Site the disaster of Babel was caused by a solarsystem disaster. Several myths around the world seem to confirm this vision. In their Dreamtime-stories the Australian Aboriginals for instance talk about a period in which the sun didn't rise. The Maya said in their Popol Vuh how strange it was to hear all that different languages. And in that context they told about a period of darkness and the birth of Venus. And that is where we find a link in the book of Job too. Because there also a time of impressive and unforgettable darkness is mentioned! In Job 38:19-21 God says to Job:
- And where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great!
Job, born in a time of darkness! This is really striking! Job, mentioned an old man (as far as I can see he must have been at least 80 years old that very moment - see table below), is being remembered of a time he cannot remember. Simply because he was born then. But it means this time of darkness is still talked about in the days of Job's trial. Mankind had not forgotten yet what happened in the days of Job's birth.
It's interesting to see the similarity between the Popol Vuh and Job for this matter. The Maya's said:
- There came to be many peoples in the blackness; they began to abound even before the birth of the sun and the light. When they began to abound they were all there together; they stood and walked in crowds, there in the east.
And there were mountain people. They didn't show their faces, they had no homes.
[Remember what is said on page 2 and 3 about living in caves!] They just traveled the mountains, small and great. "It's as if they were crazy," they used to say. They derided the mountain people, it was said. [1]
And in Job 12:23-25 we read:
- He makes nations great, and destroys them; He enlarges nations, and guides them. He takes away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth, and makes them wander in a pathless wilderness. They grope in the dark without light, and He makes them stagger like a drunken man.
So: could Job have been living soon after or even be born during the disaster of Babel?
Another argument that pleads for this idea is Job's age. As I said above Job must have been at least about 80 years old during his trial (perhaps even older because God said he was "old"). What could have been the total years of Job's lifetime? Consider next table:
| Event |
Duration |
Total of years |
Notes |
| Job's birth. |
|
0 |
|
| Birth of his first child. |
30 |
30 |
See Genesis 11 for this average age of becoming father. |
| Birth of his last child. |
20 |
50 |
According Job 1:2 Job had ten children. I take an average of one child in two years. |
| His last child grown-up. |
30 |
80 |
Job 1:4 says his children had their own houses. I am going from this perspective they leaved their father's house at the age of thirty. |
| 140 Years after his afflictions. |
140 |
220 |
According Job 42:16 he lived another 140 years. Some scholars argue that (according 42:10) Job was about 70 years old during his trial. So his total age should be 210.
Jewish legends say his afflictions continued 7 years - John Gill's Expositor on Job 42:16. |
What does this mean? Let us consider some other ages of men, taken from Genesis 11:18-26:
| Name |
Age |
Years born after
the Babel disaster |
| Peleg |
239 |
Born during the disaster. His name means "division", "because in his days the earth was divided" (Genesis 10:25). |
| Rehu |
239 |
30 |
| Serug |
230 |
62 |
| Nahor |
148 |
92 |
| Terah |
205 |
121 |
| Abram |
175 |
191 |
Men living before the Babel disaster became twice as old as the men mentioned above (see Genesis 11:10-17). After Babel we see how lifetime decreases. So Job, with an age of about 220, fits very well in the period following very shortly after the disaster. In a biblical chronology this means he is born about 2250 B.C.
[1] Popol Vuh, the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, p. 168, translated by Dennis Tedlock (New York, 1986).
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