Michael L. Thompson earned his B.S. degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, his Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, and his M.A. in Ancient Near Eastern Languages from Catholic University of America. He currently serves as Executive Vice-President of Chafer Theological Seminary, where he also teaches Hebrew and Old Testament. His e-mail address is mthompson@chafer.edu.
Job presents difficult theological and ethical questions regarding the relationship of the believer’s faith to situations involving suffering and the believer’s approach to God during difficult times. Most of these questions come up very early in the text, within the first two chapters of the book. We will endeavor to point out some of those issues and show that they are consistent with difficulties and crises that believers encounter today.
The main theme of the book centers on Job’s exercise of faith as he interacts with his circumstances, the other characters, and ultimately God Himself. Through it all, Job becomes the model of the “believer-for-all-ages” who deals with life by faith in his omniscient, omnipotent, and caring Creator (1 Peter 5:6–7).
Introduction—The Man and His Circumstances
Opening Comments
Job is a book foreign to most Christians, even those who have read it several times. The story and plot are easily mastered. Even the methods of the writer, whoever he was, are not that difficult to discern. But questions about the message of the book, the author’s intent, and his purpose will produce as many different answers as the number of people you ask. Is it a book about human suffering or about the human condition? Is it about the necessity of man to accept the hand that is dealt him, whatever it is, or is it rather about the spiritual realities behind all suffering? Could it have to do with the purpose (or lack of purpose) behind suffering? What does the book say about God’s involvement in suffering?
The questions go on and on. They build. They escalate. And if we follow them, our course may be set until we arrive at some conclusion about ourselves or God that we find either extremely distasteful or impossibly wrong. If we have been particularly precise in our logic and reasoning without paying much attention to where we are headed, we may find ourselves thoroughly convinced of some notion that is utterly unbiblical and contradictory to obvious facts. After all, it is logical, isn’t it?
The Book
The Outline of the Chapters 1–2 is simple:
Round 1, Chapter 1
Introduction to Job’s character and station (1:1–3)
Example of Job’s godliness (1:4–5)
First interaction between Yahweh and Satan (1:6–12)
Job’s loss of property and family (1:13–19)
Job’s godly reaction to his loss (1:20–22)Round 2, Chapter 2
Second interaction between Yahweh and Satan (2:1–7)
Job’s godly reaction to his physical calamity (2:8–10)
Job’s three friends arrive to comfort Job (2:11–13)The most significant questions in the book are raised in the first two chapters, the first prose section of the book. Surely, there are life issues raised in the rest of the book, but they are mostly corollary to those raised at the beginning. This book contains basic wisdom about man's relationship with God, righteousness and evil, life and death, fortune and misfortune, and it explains how this wisdom works in practical terms for the God-fearer. It is no accident that Job predates even the Torah as our written record of God’s interaction with man. [1] With an understanding of the principles found in this book, we are much better equipped to handle the exceptional events of life, good and bad.
The Man and His Circumstances
As the book opens, we quickly find out some things about Job, and we feel we have a little insight into his character. But who is this man? Where did he live? When? What kind of life did he have? The prose of the first two chapters is immensely compact and purposeful in providing us only with certain information and details that will lead us in the direction the author wants us to go. People are there and events simply happen. Explanations are scarce and cryptic, leaving us with questions. The author wants us to be satisfied with the information he is providing, but our discomfort with the details compels us, drives us to want to go beyond.
The first two chapters start out by telling a story—a story that quickly turns into a nightmare. Questions fly through our minds almost uncontrollably as we try to deal with our vicarious shock and imagine the trauma Mr. and Mrs. Job must have dealt with. To cap it all off, there’s a spiritual dimension: a Deus ex machina “in reverse” is thrown into the mix as we see both the Lord Yahweh and Satan working behind the scenes to engineer a calamity without Job’s knowledge or permission.
It is really just a terrible situation all around for everyone involved. Many people die apparently for no reason whatever. Job’s ten children are crushed when a house collapses, and his servants are almost all killed in a matter of hours or days. Job is ruined financially as his life’s work is destroyed. Then his health is attacked in a most vicious manner. Job’s wife, who we must remember is also an injured party in all this, does not prove to be particularly helpful as a “valued team member.” Her only recorded comment to Job reveals her own despair and yet elicits a measured gentle reply from her mate, considering his obvious discomfort. [2] He is left as an outcast. This man who had been a ruler is reduced to ruin.
The obvious question at this point is, “Why?” Yet that question is neither posited nor answered in the opening chapters of the book. The characters are nowhere close to dealing with it. They are still in shock. To go down that path at this point is a dead end. This comes out as the writer carefully interjects into the narrative of the first two chapters the words about Job continuing to cling to his righteous behavior (1:22; 2:10) and correcting his wife's admonition to “curse God and die” in 2:9.
If we look at how people deal with grief in terms of the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—we can easily identify several of them in the interactions that take place. As far as Job is concerned, we cannot find any traces of denial, and I do not believe that he shows any overt signs of fist-shaking anger in the first two chapters. However, it is quite obvious that Job is willing to engage in some aggressive bargaining with God over his situation as the book progresses. He spends most of the poetic section of the book in a deep depression (cf. Job 14) and seems quite resolved that the next logical event for him must be his inevitable demise. In fact, his words could almost be those of Qohelet when he speaks in Job 7:1–10:
Is there not a time of hard service for man on earth?
Are not his days also like the days of a hired man?
Like a servant who earnestly desires the shade,
And like a hired man who eagerly looks for his wages,
So I have been allotted months of futility,
And wearisome nights have been appointed to me.
When I lie down, I say,
“When shall I arise,
And the night be ended?”
For I have had my fill of tossing till dawn.
My flesh is caked with worms and dust,
My skin is cracked and breaks out afresh.
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle,
And are spent without hope.
Oh, remember that my life is a breath!
My eye will never again see good.
The eye of him who sees me will see me no more;
While your eyes are upon me, I shall no longer be.
As the cloud disappears and vanishes away,
So he who goes down to the grave does not come up.
He shall never return to his house,
Nor shall his place know him anymore. [3]
Job’s Three Friends
The visit of Job’s three friends, while mentioned in the concluding section of chapter two, does not play a primary role in the set-up of the book. The author introduces them here to give insight into their character and to place them into the overall structure of the book. Their role is to provide a foil and a continuing irritation for Job in chapters 3–31. Their combined life experience is great. They are men of means and social stature. They all mean well, and I believe they are God-fearers who come to Job wanting to do the “right thing” concerning him. In fact, their first act when they come to Job is to simply sit with him in silence for a full week. They appear to be just what Job needs. They all sit silently until, out of his grief and pain, Job is the first to speak in chapter 3 with a bitter, depressive denunciation of his own birth and life. Once Job has spoken, his friends evidently feel free to speak as well. Here is where they are at fault: they take it on themselves to correct what they perceive to be Job’s incorrect view of himself and God. [4]
They want Job’s view of God to comply with their own highly flawed self-protective view. To that end they doggedly pursue two errant lines of argument over and over throughout the three cycles of speeches in the book. They set up a simple syllogism: “If this, then that.” The first argument is that God always punishes the wicked and protects the righteous. Since Job has suffered such an extreme calamity, they are led to their second argument: Job must have committed some sin that he has not confessed. If he would confess it, God would forgive him and bless him as before. This could be construed as the ancient predecessor of the “health-and-wealth gospel.” But this is only a subtheme of the book. Their pursuit of these arguments in the face of what the opening chapters make very clear about Job’s character put the lie to their limited, self-serving “God-in-a-box” theological model. The fact that Job is able to tolerate their incessant badgering and hounding over something he has not done, on top of all that he has already suffered and is suffering, surely must make their presence seem like added torture to him. Instead of being friends, they become his assailants.
The Character of the Man
The Opening Verses
The first two chapters of Job are literarily tight. There is an uncommon economy of words in which every detail is purposeful, with absolutely no extraneous information included. However, there are repetitions, and where information is repeated, it is for emphasis. The things that are repeated are not only important for the prose story, but they are meant to be the points that the reader is to burn into his mind as he slogs through the poetic arguments in the central section of the book. They are statements dealing with Job’s character.
The first verse of Job contains a phrase that is repeated three times in the first two chapters. [5] Within that phrase is a word used specifically to describe Job’s character, and that word occurs two more times in the book. [6] The verse reads as follows:
אִ֛ישׁ הָיָ֥ה בְאֶֽרֶץ־ע֖וּץ אִיֹּ֣וב שְׁמֹ֑ו
וְהָיָ֣ה׀ הָאִ֣ישׁ הַה֗וּא תָּ֧ם וְיָשָׁ֛ר וִירֵ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים וְסָ֥ר מֵרָֽע׃
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. (emphasis mine)
The book presents a description of Job’s character even before it gives any other details about him. At this point he could have been a shepherd or a sailor or a farmer. In fact, the description of Job’s immense wealth and high station only comes into play as a backdrop against which to contrast the degree of his fall. The phrase in Job 1:1, תָּם וְיָשָׁ֛ר וִירֵ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים וְסָ֥ר מֵרָֽע (blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil), also occurs in 1:8 and in 2:3, where God Himself makes this claim of Job when He draws Satan’s attention to this special person. Thus, both the narrator and God have this view of Job’s character.
The word תָּם (tam) is difficult to translate into English. The lexica present some dry conversions to English approximations that, while very helpful, are probably less than exact. I doubt that there is an English word that exactly conveys the field of meaning contained by this word. HALOT and BDB both offer up “complete,” “wholesome,” “sound,” and “having integrity” as viable options depending on the context. Properly, the word is characterized in this case by the four descriptions of Job that follow it in the same phrase: יָשָׁר (“upright”), יְרֵא אֱלֹהִים (“a God fearer”), and finally סָר מֵרָע (“one who turns from or avoids evil”). These four descriptions together define Job’s character so that from the beginning of the book, we know that this is who Job is. In this instance, תָּם becomes what is probably one of the best short descriptions of a Christlike godly man that we have in the Old Testament Scriptures. He is a mature man of faith, a man of absolute, undisputed integrity in all his dealings. No one, not even God, finds fault with him. In addition, he is a man whose motives are pure; his relationship is right with his God. Verses 4 and 5 provide an example of the lengths Job would go to in order to make sure that he always fulfilled all of his godly duties and responsibilities to his family before God. There we see Job fulfilling the priestly role for his family. [7]
What Others Say about Job
What God says about Job trumps the opinions of all others, or at least it should. In verse 8, what God says about Job is essentially a repetition of verse 1. Both in 1:8 and in 2:3 God initiates a conversation with Satan concerning Job, and the first thing God mentions about Job in both places involves his character. Verse 1:8 is interesting on several levels, but God’s question focuses on that which He values most in the man.
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָה֙ אֶל־הַשָּׂטָ֔ן הֲשַׂ֥מְתָּ לִבְּךָ֖ עַל־עַבְדִּ֣י אִיֹּ֑וב
כִּ֣י אֵ֤ין כָּמֹ֙הוּ֙ בָּאָ֔רֶץ אִ֣ישׁ תָּ֧ם וְיָשָׁ֛ר יְרֵ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים וְסָ֥ר מֵרָֽע׃
Have you set your heart on my servant Job, because there is no one like him in the world, a man who is blameless and upright, fearing God and turning from evil? [8]
Satan’s response to God both here and in chapter two, while not disputing Job’s behavior, questions Job’s motive for obedience. That is, Satan accuses Job of only giving God his allegiance because God has been good to Job and because it gets Job what he wants and needs. In other words, Job has selfish, utilitarian motives for serving God. If God would simply remove His special treatment from Job, then He (and everyone else) would find out that Job is really no different from any other man who just tries to manipulate God to get what he wants. When the destruction of Job’s children and wealth fails to bring about the desired result, Satan raises the level of his accusations by saying that Job is only interested in saving his own skin. Chapter 2:4 makes this explicit:
וַיַּ֧עַן הַשָּׂטָ֛ן אֶת־יְהוָ֖ה וַיֹּאמַ֑ר עֹ֣ור בְּעַד־עֹ֗ור וְכֹל֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר לָאִ֔ישׁ יִתֵּ֖ן בְּעַ֥ד נַפְשֹֽׁו׃
And Satan replied to Yahweh and said, “Skin for skin! Indeed, all that a man has he will give for his life!” [9]
This is an amazing statement, since now Satan accuses Job of not caring for anyone but himself. He says that when we get right down to it, a man will always give up his family and all he has, if he must, to save his own skin. If his life is threatened, then Satan believes Job’s true selfish character will come out. Satan knows that circumstances reveal character.
The dialogues between God and Satan in Job 1:7–12 and 2:2–6 are obviously engineered by God to achieve the outcome that occurs. God is in control; He initiates the discussion about Job on both occasions. When God points out Job’s righteous character to Satan before the convocation of the sons of God, Satan cannot help but take that as a challenge to prove God wrong. Satan’s error is that he does not believe God’s estimate of Job’s character. He believes that Job is no different than anyone else, and his obsession to prove that leads him into the trap God sets for him. Therefore, since the interaction between God and Satan is contrived with a predictable outcome, Job’s calamity must likewise be seen as engineered and predictable.
In the first two chapters we find not two witnesses to Job’s character, but three who make specific testimony to his תָּם. In addition to the author and God, Job’s wife also recognizes Job’s blameless character when she questions him, “Do you still cling to your integrity/blamelessness?”
In 4:6, at the end of his first speech, Eliphaz alludes to Job’s integrity as well.
הֲלֹ֣א יִ֭רְאָתְךָ כִּסְלָתֶ֑ךָ
תִּ֝קְוָתְךָ֗ וְתֹ֣ם דְּרָכֶֽיךָ׃
Is not your fear (of God) your confidence?
Even the integrity of your ways your hope? [10]
Job speaks of his own integrity in chapter 9:20–22, and it is a major portion of his defense in chapter 27.
Yes, Bad Things Happen to Good People
It may seem almost trite to point out after reading the first two chapters of Job, yet it is still necessary because many people, dare I say most of us, at some point have fallen into the trap of thinking that if a person is good enough, then he should be to some degree insulated from life’s calamities. It seems a reasonable enough inference based on the way we think God and the world should work. But, of course, that is neither the way God nor the world functions. So we continually find ourselves adjusting our world model to match what we hope is a truer resemblance of God’s reality. The interaction brought on by the introduction of the fall of mankind into God’s perfect creation precipitated both overt and subtle changes in the way things work so that none of us is fully able to grasp the scope or impact of the damage.
One of the major points made by the first two chapters of Job is that events are bigger than they seem. There is a heavenly scope to our struggle that our mundane experience does not immediately reflect. Paul was only restating what earlier believers already should have known when he said in Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” It is quite clear from Job 1 and 2 that things are happening around us that we are unaware of. We already know that is true on a natural level. This book makes it clear that it is also true on a spiritual level (1 Corinthians 4:9; 1 Timothy 5:21; Hebrews 12:22).
The Resolution of Some Issues
Many Questions without Answers
For all the book’s complexity, the answers to its most difficult questions are relatively straightforward. The answer to the question, “Why?” demands a level of knowledge that is impossible for anyone to achieve. That is the gist of God’s challenge to Job in Job 38:2:
Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?
What follows in Job 31:2–40:1 is a long litany of questions from God to Job—questions that no man can possibly answer. These are intended to shock Job from his self-absorbed funk. They are aimed at showing his absolute inability to comprehend God’s reasoning or the intricate workings of the Creator’s mind.
Then in chapter 40, God continues with a second challenge to Job followed by a series of illustrations designed to show God’s power and Job’s inability to control what God has made. In Job 40:6–8 God resumes:
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said:
“Now prepare yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer Me:
‘Would you indeed annul My judgment?
Would you condemn Me that you may be justified?’”
Thus, just as the book began with two addresses by God to Satan, it concludes with two addresses by God to Job. The point of these is to show Job’s unworthiness to challenge God. It is as if to say that he must have God’s knowledge (chapters 38–39) and God’s power (chapters 40–41) before he will have the right to ask God the kinds of questions he has been asking or make the kinds of challenges he has been making. If he is unable to engage God on these things, then how can he claim any ability to comprehend how God directs the affairs of men? Job is duly shaken and immediately understands God’s point after God finishes His first challenge. In chapter 40:4–5 Job answers:
Behold, I am vile;
What shall I answer You?
I lay my hand over my mouth.
Once I have spoken, but I will not answer;
Yes, twice, but I will proceed no further.
By the end of God’s second challenge, Job is totally confounded and reveals a complete attitude adjustment. Job 42:2–6 states:
I know that You can do everything,
And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
You asked, 'Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?'
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Listen, please, and let me speak;
You said, 'I will question you, and you shall answer Me.'
I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,
But now my eye sees You.
Therefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.
Job’s loss, pain, and the continual argumentation with his friends did affect him negatively, but those things did not accomplish the total repudiation of Job’s faith, the outcome that Satan had predicted it would. The dust and ashes he has been sitting in now have another purpose: that of a place for a repentant sinner.
Summary Issues
So what are the “big” issues, and are there answers to complex questions in Job?
Godly people who are living righteously before God may suffer terrible things. In Job’s case it had nothing to do with any sin in his life. In fact, it appears that God singled him out because He knew Job could and would make it through this trial successfully. Of course, no one else knew that at the time, and many people suffered. Fortunately, we can draw added encouragement from passages like Romans 8:18: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” This verse has to do with our sufferings in Christ. As we see in Job’s case, he was rewarded with as many children as he lost and with twice the goods that he lost. Thus, we see that rewardability for faithfulness is not only a New Testament concept, and rewards are not always limited to the next life. It seems that the clear implication of the last chapter is that God made up for Job’s losses and then went further to show his approval of Job as a righteous man in order to counter the loss of his reputation resulting from his misfortunes.
When bad things happen to “good people,” it does not necessarily mean they did something wrong. It was the staunch conclusion of Job’s three friends that if Job was suffering, then he was harboring some secret unconfessed sin. Of course, the converse is not necessarily true either. When bad things happen to “good people,” it may be because they did do something wrong. Perhaps they are reaping the consequences of their actions. We may not be able to know from the outside. Job, on the other hand, was quite aware of his own personal character, and it is important for us to note that he was very specific about what he wanted from his friends:
Oh, that you would be silent,
And it would be your wisdom! (Job 13:5)
On a different note, the intrusion of a spiritual element into the story brings both meaning and chaos to Job’s predicament. It raises a host of issues for the reader while presenting few answers to the questions it invites. We are ushered into the middle of the third act of a play with very little indication of what has gone on before. We think we know who the characters are, but we do not know why they are there. We do not know what has brought about the gathering of the “sons of God” in 1:6 or again in 2:1, and especially why Satan is present on both occasions. [11] God’s selection of Job is clearly intentional, and Satan is clearly ignorant of what the ultimate outcome of his efforts will be. God knows what Satan will seek to do to Job and gives him direct, specific permission to wreak havoc in Job’s life—destruction that brings much sadness.
An odd comment is found in Job 2:3, where God is speaking with Satan the second time. While God is not the direct cause of Job’s suffering in chapter 1, He does not avoid taking full responsibility for it.
וְעֹדֶ֙נּוּ֙ מַחֲזִ֣יק בְּתֻמָּתֹ֔ו וַתְּסִיתֵ֥נִי בֹ֖ו לְבַלְּעֹ֥ו חִנָּֽם
And still he holds fast to his integrity though you incited me to destroy him undeservedly. [12]
The last word of the verse, חִנָּם (hinnam), translated “undeservedly,” takes on the notion here of “without cause” (so NKJV). This makes perfect sense in the larger context, since God has twice stated that Job is “blameless.” Thus, Job does not deserve what befalls him. This is important, especially in the light of the accusations that are thrown against Job by his friends throughout chapters 4–25, when they repeatedly insist that he has somehow brought this calamity on himself by some sinful behavior.
According to the statement in Job 2:3, God has no problem owning His complicity in the circumstances that befell Job. These events were orchestrated for a particular purpose and for a particular individual or group of individuals. Those individuals were completely unaware of the larger spiritual dimension involved in the sordid nastiness that was happening around them. To them it simply seemed that their entire world had fallen apart. They were alone, and they had nothing left. However, it is worth noting that nowhere in the book does Job ever look anywhere else but to God as a possible source of relief or salvation from his circumstances, even though Job frequently states that he is convinced that God is the author of his misfortune. One example from Job 12:9 will serve to illustrate the point.
מִ֭י לֹא־יָדַ֣ע בְּכָל־אֵ֑לֶּה
כִּ֥י יַד־יְ֝הוָה עָ֣שְׂתָּה זֹּֽאת׃
Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the LORD has done this.
Job is aware that Yahweh Himself has sanctioned what has happened to him because nothing happens without His knowledge or permission. Job’s theology is flawless on this point. On the other hand, he does have a problem with its application in his own life.
So the question remains as to who is responsible for the bad things that happened to Job: is it God or Satan? Of course, Satan is the immediate cause. However, there is no way to avoid saying that God is the ultimate cause. There is ample evidence to show that He engineered the entire situation from beginning to end to accomplish a purpose greater than Satan, Job, or anyone else could have imagined. Job’s lonely tragedy and experience on the ash heap have influenced and encouraged believers for thousands of years. On those two occasions in heaven, if Satan had known what the outcome of his efforts would be, he might have stayed silent when God pointed out Job’s godly character to him.
The implication of saying that God is the ultimate cause only makes sense in the context of a worldview that also says that we are not our own, that we cannot comprehend all that our loving God is doing around us and that we are ultimately His to do with as He pleases. In the end God forces Job to admit that his ability to understand life is completely inadequate to comprehend the complexity of what is happening even in his small environment, much less in the larger world around him. He must trust God based on what he knows to be true about Him.
Satan suggests that man worships God for selfish, self-promoting reasons (Job 1:9–11). Therefore, according to Satan, no worship is truly voluntary but rather coerced by God. According to this logic, it is inevitable that men will crumble when they undergo undeserved suffering.
Satan twice predicted that Job would deny God (Job 1:11 and 2:4). Job’s attitude did, in fact, deteriorate throughout the book. However, he stopped short of turning away from God and never actually denied his faith. No one questions that Job wanted God to show a more beneficent side. In fact, he continually sought to engage God and always saw God as the one who would vindicate him in the end. In spite of all Job’s frustration and prideful challenges to God, he still manages to say, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15).
So what is the attitude that adequately rationalizes what we know about our loving God with what we see happening in this book? It is summed up in the image of the potter and the clay found in Isaiah:
You turn things around!
Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay,
That what is made would say to its maker,
“He did not make me”;
Or what is formed say to him who formed it,
“He has no understanding”? (Isaiah 29:16)
and
Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker—
An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth!
Will the clay say to the potter, “What are you doing?”
Or the thing you are making say, “He has no hands”? (Isaiah 45:9)
Also,
But now, O LORD, You are our Father,
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all of us are the work of Your hand. (Isaiah 64:8)
And finally, as Paul echoes Isaiah,
Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? (Romans 9:20–21)
Conclusion—The Nature of Righteous Job’s Faith
One of the first mistakes anyone can make in studying Job is to conclude that it is just a book about suffering. The circumstance in which the story takes place is suffering, but that is not what the book is about. The practical subject is really no different than the subject of many other biblical character studies in the Old Testament. It is the study of how faith works in a believer’s life as life happens. Job is one of the most mature believers we could ever hope to meet in either testament, and he went through a particularly awful experience. We have a very condensed, yet vivid account of his afflictions and have a privileged glimpse at a little of how he and those around him dealt with that burden.
Notes
- The dating of Job is difficult. Martin Luther and Hugo Grotius, as well as Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 20–26, and F. I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1976), 63, either attribute it to Solomon or place its writing in the time of Solomon. However, the traditional dating, based on the language of the book, as well as the customs and religious practices attested to in the book, place the original writing of the book at a much earlier time.
- Job’s comment to his wife has often been taken as a harsh reproof for her admonition to him to “curse God and die.” However, the actual tone is actually more of a gentle correction than a harsh reproof. Job is not calling her a foolish woman, but rather saying that her comment is like one that the foolish women would make and therefore unworthy of her.
- Translations throughout this article are from the NKJV except where noted.
- In response to Zophar’s assault on Job in chapter 11, Job tells his three friends what he needs and expects from them. In Job 13:4–5, Job cries out, “But you forgers of lies, You are all worthless physicians.Oh, that you would be silent, And it would be your wisdom!” Their silence is to be preferred over their faultfinding.
- Job 1:1; 1:8; 2:3.
- The word is תם (tam). See Job 1:1, 1:8, 2:3, 2:9 and 4:6. Also see 8:20 (indirectly of Job), 9:20–22 (by Job, hypothetically of himself).
- תם does carry a juridical meaning as well as a religious and ethical meaning, which provides an intentional double entendre. The poetical section from chapters 3–31 gradually develops into a ריב, or legal/courtroom drama between Job and God as Job repeatedly challenges God to justify the pain and suffering he is being forced to endure. This motif is suddenly ended in chapter 38, when God begins his rapid-fire series of questions to Job. However, there is an acknowledgment of Job’s “legal” challenges in the language of 40:2: “Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it.” Of course, God does not wait for Job’s answer. For further discussion of this, see Gregory W. Parsons, “The Structure and Purpose of the Book of Job,” Bsac 138 (April, 1981): 148, and Sylvia Huberman Scholnick, “Lawsuit Drama in the Book of Job” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1975), 103–104.
- Translation mine.
- Translation mine.
- Translation mine.
- Three different terms are used for angelic beings in Job. The first, “sons of God” (בני האלהים), shows up in 1:6; 2:7; and finally in 38:7. Oddly enough, the only other place this particular phrase occurs is in Genesis 6:2, 4, where it mentions that “the Sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves.” The second term is the one normally translated “angel” if it speaks of a supernatural spirit being or simply “messenger” if it is human (מלאך). This one occurs in 4:18 and 33:23. The last word, (קדשׁ/קדשׁים), may either refer to people or angels and is normally translated “saint(s)” or “holy one(s)” when people are in view. It appears that Eliphaz is referring to angelic beings in 5:1 when he says, “And to which of His holy ones will you turn?”
- Translation mine.
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