May my enemy be like the wicked, my adversary like the unjust! – Job 27:7

Today's Scripture Reading (September 6, 2024): Job 27

Joan Jett released "Pure and Simple" on June 14, 1994. I must admit that I have listened to Jett since her days with "The Runaways." But on "Pure and Simple," there was an intriguing song that might have gotten lost among the other songs. The song was written by Joan and Kathleen Hanna and was titled "Rubber and Glue." Jett and Hanna directed a childhood rhyme at Jett's audience. Joan Jett opens the song by speaking about being trapped in a photograph. She is caught by the words that are spoken about her, in the tracks and grooves of a recording that doesn't change and often only reveals a snapshot in time instead of the vibrancy of life. Hearing Jett speaking directly to her critics doesn't take much imagination. You think you know me; you believe that you have me cornered, but you don't. You have produced a misleading picture of me and are trying to sell that picture, but your image does not reflect me.

Then, Jett moves on to the childhood rhyme. Jett and Hanna phrase the rhyme this way:

I'm rubber, you're glue
An' whatever you say
Bounces off of me, yeah, yeah
An' sticks to you.

Maybe you remember the rhyme from your childhood. The adage often goes hand in hand with another saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." The second of the sayings is obviously false. But the first remains aspirational. We want it to be true, but often, that hope seems small and unlikely.

Job is in an awful situation. In every way that we can imagine, he is suffering. In every meaningful way, Job is a loser. And his friends are piling on, insisting that this is the penalty he needs to pay for his sins. Job is exasperated. And finally, he prays that he will be rubber and they will be glue and that the accusations of those around him will bounce off of him and stick to his accusers.

Job didn't know this, but it would become the practice of Jewish law. The penalty for making a false accusation is that the one who accuses would bear a penalty equal to that of the crime. (I wonder what it would be like if we held our politicians to this expectation. Your accusation that I am not fit for office means one of us won't be running. If you are right, it will be me, but if I am innocent, it will be you. Such an understanding might change politics as we know it.)

Job's message is clear. I am innocent of the charges, so shouldn't you have to pay the penalty for the crime you think I have committed? If that were how we really thought, it would change the frivolous charges we make almost every day.     

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Job 28