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Job 24:13
13 They are of those that rebel [marad] against the light ['owr]; they know [nakar] not the ways [derek] thereof, nor abide [yashab] in the paths [nathiyb] thereof. KJV-Interlinear
13 'Others have been with those who rebel against the light; They do not want to know its ways, Nor abide in its paths. NASB
Light is a mechanism of illumination, the means of discernment, a way for a person to distinguish one thing from another.
Without light, or without some method or frame of reference to aid you in figuring out where you have been, where you are and where you are going, then you are lost.
Have someone pluck both of your eyes out, disable your hearing, touch, smell and taste, then drop you from an airplane into a jungle which is deep and dark and dense. How long will you survive?
Some won't last a single night. Others will wander along until they fall or trip over something. Still others will be caught by predators, and still others will catch some disease or simply starve to death.
That is life in total darkness, or life without light, light without any means of knowing anything about your environment and so forth. That is life without doctrine.
Of course doctrine is spiritual in nature, and life in this world is temporal in nature.
Centuries ago, people knew nothing about viruses or antibiotics, they knew nothing about atoms, or electrons, or genetics and such. Yet these things existed.
The spiritual realm is similar in that it is beyond our ability to detect or measure, but it still exists and it has a tremendous influence and impact on our life. Ignoring it, antibiotics for example as with an infection, will only bring you death. Learning about it and using it, the spiritual realm, will bring you more life than you can even begin to imagine.
As modern medicines evolved, there were groups who rejected them. There are still groups of people who reject medicines and medical attention. They suffer because of their stubbornness. They know of them, but ignore them.
And so it is with the spiritual realm. Unfortunately, the numbers of people who reject, or ignore, or simply don't take the spiritual life seriously, are large in number, worldwide. And just as they shake their heads at those who reject medical attention as being naïve, they too are naïve with respect to the spiritual realm.
We have been studying wicked people, in this chapter, and how they look at life and act in life.
Job adds another category of people to his illustration. The first group includes those who are otherwise law abiding, or those who use the law to their advantage. Certainly they abuse the legal system, and use it to crush others and get their way, but they do not have to hide in the dark alleys and hold people at gun point in order to apply the law, or societies norms. They use peer pressure, accepted standards even when prejudice, legislation even when obviously biased and corrupt.
There is another side of wickedness and that is the criminal or the socially unacceptable element.
These are folks who perform are deeds which are done behind closed doors, in dark alleys, in secrecy and so forth.
No matter what ones weakness is in life, all criminals, all sinners, all self-righteous types have one thing in common. And that is that they rebel against the light of truth.
They know of it, but their chosen lifestyle or pattern of life in inconvenienced by truth. People will expend barge loads of effort in pursuing life and getting nowhere, and yet pursuing the spiritual life takes virtually no effort, and it will get you everything and more, forever.
But people are tied to this world and their five senses and unless they see immediate results, they just do not take God, or Christ, or doctrine, or their spiritual life seriously.
Spiritually negative people will even invent their own version of a spiritual life by means of religion or philosophy or some other system of human belief.
But no matter whether you view yourself as law abiding, or living on the shadier side of life, then without God, Christ, doctrine and so forth in your life, this spiritual deficiency makes you wicked.
