At a meeting I went to last night, the biblical root of the talk was put down in Job 22:21-30. There are some wonderful sounding words in there, like “… if you remove unrighteousness far from your tent, and place your gold in the dust, and the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks, then the Almighty will be your gold and choice silver to you.” However, these are the words of Eliphaz and follow hot on his accusation that Job has been an unjust master and that his suffering must clearly be his own fault. We know that is wrong because we were privy to the prelude to story, where God tells Satan that Job is “… a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil” (Job 1:8).

Wanting to steer clear of Godwin’s law, I thought I’d have a read through Donald Trump’s recent tweets and see if I could find anything I could pass on. It took a while but I thought “The @CDCgov has published guidelines on http://CoronaVirus.gov to enable every American to respond to this epidemic and to protect themselves, their families and their communities.” (@realDonaldTrump, 14 March 2020). For what little it is worth, I could probably endorse that, even through a lot of what I trawled through to get there made me want to wash my eyeballs.

I wouldn’t be inclined to cite DT as an authority though and nor can I find any good reason to set store by the words of Eliphaz. The Bible helps us understand right and wrong but sometimes it does that by showing us misguided words. Not every type of stone is a good foundation; pumice has a purpose but it’s not for construction.