Jesus called the people to notice the image on their coins’ obverse, and then see the image on them!
I was just a boy when I was introduced to the word “obverse.” My grandfather explained that the side of the coin I called “heads” was actually the obverse. Growing up in Canada, that meant the coin held the image of Elizabeth II, our monarch. The “tails” side is the reverse. Job’s friends, in the strongest terms, tried to convince him that the evidence in his life was clear: either he was a counterfeit (Zophar’s position) or the image of the King on his life had been badly defaced (Eliphaz and Bildad), and he was being removed from circulation. The horrible damage done to him followed the pattern seen everywhere. “Do you not know this of old, since man was placed on earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment?” (Job 20:4-5). No, said Job, the opposite is more often true. “Why do the wicked live and become old, yes, become mighty in power? Their descendants are established with them in their sight,…Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.…They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance” (21:7-11). By and large, it’s the wicked who prosper. Asaph in Psalm 73 felt the same. “I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (v 3). But it isn’t time that tells; it’s eternity. How rich are the wicked a moment after death? Unwilling to bear the image of the King, their reverses finally arrived: “It was too painful for me,” Asaph concluded, “until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I understood their end” (vv 16-17). We—and Job—need a peek into the sanctuary, and our envy of the wicked will turn to pity. On the obverse, the trying of our faith is making clear the image of the King on our lives.