The ancient book of Job fits naturally into the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, complementing the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. It is an important book but is also a difficult one. It is not for the faint-hearted!
The book asks the important question, "Why do good people suffer evil?" If you think you have a good answer to that question, you either have not spent enough time in Job and your answer is simplistic or you have worked deeply in Job and you are not comfortable with your answer.
There are no shortage of examples of evil in the world around us. And these evils force this hard question upon us. As I worked through the book, Hamas terrorists massacred Israeli citizens on October 7, 2024, abusing, raping, cutting up women and children. In the response to this massacre, Israel bombed the Gaza strip and thousands of people died, many of them children and families who had no real link to Hamas. Meanwhile Russia continued to bomb hospitals and schools in the Ukraine. And my wife went through a long series of eye surgeries that left her weak and worn out. (Indeed, at one point I suggested -- half jokingly -- that I needed to stop studying in this book! The issues were too real!)
The Setting
The book begins with a supernatural setting, at the throne of YHWH, where His supernatural attendants come together. We are privy to a conversation hidden from mortals. This scene is important for the rest of the book, as, beginning in chapter 3, the mere mortal Job and his mortal friends attempt to understand why God acts as He does.
In that throne room scene, one called The Accuser (Hebrew satan) speaks against Job. YHWH points out the righteousness of Job. The Accuser responds by accusing Job of merely being comfortably religious. That accusation is that Job is not really righteous but is, instead, relying on what we might call the Axiom of Retribution, of Principle of (Moral) Cause and Effect:
We all get what we deserve.
If we act righteously we get success.
If we act wickedly, we experience suffering and defeat.
(In some settings, this rule might be called Karma, but a cause and effect that take place in this life, in contrast to the Hindu belief of righteousness/wickedness affecting a later life.)
As the righteous Job is pummeled by The Accuser, as he suffers, three men gather first to support him and eventually to challenge Job's claim that he is righteous and does not deserve his suffering. The three friends of Job give advice that many of us would agree with. Indeed, it is common to hear this advice in church settings! The challenge for the reader, given insight into conversations between The Accuser and God, is to identify the error in the "good advice" of the friends. This is not easy.
Job's friends argue that since Job is suffering, he has acted in evil. They make these claims in various ways, always in elegant Hebrew poetry to which Job responds in kind.
Repeatedly we should notice that there is nothing distinctly wrong about the comments of Job's friends. Their error is in their arrogance that their simple principles are always true, without exception.
Outline
The book begins with the Throne Room scene and ends with YHWH answering and then blessing Job. But the main part of the book is poetic dialogue between Job and three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. (None of these people are Israelites. Job is from an unknown land of Uz; the others are identified as a Temanite, a Shuhite and a Naamathite.) A fourth companion, a young arrogant Elihu, enters the dialogue at the end. The first three friends provide three rounds of questions and challenges to Job. (Strangely, Zophar does not weigh in during the third round.) Each challenge is answered by Job, so in these 2 2/3 rounds we have eight challenges and answers. Finally, Job says that he has no more to say and Elihu appears to express his young, somewhat naive opinion. And then Job gets what he has wanted, a response from God.
Here is my outline of Job:
- 1-2, Setting in Heaven
- 3-14. Round One
- 15-21, Round Two
- 22-27, Round Three
- 28, Ode to Wisdom
- 29-31, Job's Final Plea
- 32-37, Elihu's Opinion
- 38-41, The Creator Steps In
- 42, Resolution
Resources and References
My practice is to read through the text from the New International Version (NIV), copied into the blog and italicized in blue. At the head of each blue paragraph of text I place a short title; after the text I place my thoughts or comments in black. I begin this process with my own reactions and thoughts and then supplement these comments with gleanings from a commentary or two.
The real goal of this blog is to force me to read every verse thoughtfully. I hope that you, too, read the passages thoughtfully! Feel free to disagree -- or to react in other ways! (I place hyperlinks in pink, created so that one can click on a link and see the linked site open in another window... and go down a rabbit hole if you wish!)
For the book of Job, I have relied mainly on one commentary,
Book of Job, New International Commentary on the Old Testament by John E. Hartley.
There are other resources online.
- Amongst the online commentaries provided by EasyEnglishBible, is an online commentary on Job. (The Easy English Bible commentaries are easy to read, with deliberately simple language intended for those for whom English is a second language. The Old Testament text is included in the commentary.)
- The Gospel Coalition now has a set of online commentaries. Here is their commentary on Job.
I highly recommend the Bible Project
video on Job. After spending six weeks carefully working through the book of Job, this video is by far the most insightful summary I have seen. The Bible Project also has something close to a course on Job that begins
here.
There are a number of good blogposts or online articles that I have found helpful. Here are four.
Final comment
This book allows the English speaker one silly old Vacation Bible School joke:
Q. Goliath is the tallest man in the Bible. But who is the shortest?
A. Bildad, the shoe-height!
(Now, aren't you glad you read this blog?? 😆)
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