book of job analysis essay

A Summary and Analysis of the Book of Job

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Book of Job is one of the famous and yet one of the least understood books of the Old Testament. ‘The patience of Job’ and ‘Job’s comforters’ have become proverbial idioms which emerged from the book’s popularity and ubiquity; and yet how patient was Job, and who were his comforters?

The Book of Job is an important part of the Bible because it asks one of the most commonly asked questions: if God is good, how come he allows evil and suffering to exist in the world?

Let’s take a closer look at the Book of Job, one of the most misunderstood episodes in the whole of the Bible.

Book of Job: summary

The Book of Job is generally analysed as being divided into five sections. The first of these, the Prologue, which forms the first two chapters of the book, tell us of Job’s prosperity and success.

We are then told of the misfortunes visited upon him, following God’s conversation with Satan (who, in this book, is not synonymous with the Devil but is merely one of God’s minions). Satan suggests that, if Job lost all of his worldly possessions, he would cease to be a pious and godly man. God rises to the challenge and sets about afflicting job with a series of calamities.

Job lost his property, including all of his livestock; his ten children all perished; and his wife lost her sympathy for him. He was also afflicted with a terrible disease involving boils on the skin.

This first section of the book concludes with three of Job’s friends – the so-called ‘comforters of Job’ – arriving at Job’s house to console him for his losses.

The second section, the Dialogue, forms chapters 3-31 of the book: by far the most substantial part. In this dialogue, Job and his friends discuss his condition and his attitude towards God. Eliphaz leads the discussion, rebuking Job for some unconfessed sins, while Bildad emphasises God’s justice and Zophar points out that God acts in mysterious ways.

The third section, chapters 32-37, is partly given over to a new character, a man named Elihu. Elihu chastises Job for his outlook. Job also offers a concluding monologue, and there is a poem in praise of wisdom.

The fourth section focuses on God’s addresses to Job. In these speeches, God reminds Job that He, as the Lord God Yahweh, is more powerful than Job, a mere man. Job responds to God’s speeches.

The fifth and final section is known as the Epilogue; this informs us that Job went on to become prosperous and happy once again, and to live a long and fruitful life.

Book of Job: analysis

Job is a well-known figure in the Old Testament, and yet the Bible tells us little about him. We don’t know who his ancestors or parents were, and the (precious) few references made to him elsewhere in the Bible tend to refer to his legendary patience (see, for instance, James 5:11 in the New Testament).

We do know that Job lived in ‘Uz’, as the beginning of the Book of Job tells us as much. But precisely where Uz was, nobody can quite agree. It has been suggested that it’s in Aram (in modern-day Syria and Israel) or Edom (in modern-day Jordan and Israel), but nobody knows for sure.

So, we know little of Job besides what we learn of him in the Book of Job itself. But even there, the story is far less well-understood than it perhaps should be.

For a start, Job wasn’t anywhere near as patient as he is commonly assumed to have been. During the length dialogues and speeches which form the majority part of the book, Job is seen as impatient with his suffering, and far less pious and trusting in God than the general perception of him usually allows.

He is, after all, only human, and he has undergone a great number of afflictions and losses. It’s understandable that he should start to doubt the goodness of God in such circumstances. He recovers his faith at the end of the book, following God’s reminder of his all-powerfulness, but before this point he doesn’t exactly have the patience of a saint.

Another common misapprehension is highlighted by the Dictionary of the Bible . As the authors point out, the common interpretation of the meaning of the Book of Job is too narrow: rather than being a story about the suffering of the righteous, specifically, the book is about suffering in general: the setbacks and afflictions every human being must face at some point.

Job’s righteousness is relevant here, of course, but the dialogues are more wide-ranging than his individual situation. The book is about the universality, the unavoidableness , of human suffering.

As the authors of Dictionary of the Bible point out, Job’s ‘comforters’ or friends are there to represent the orthodox theological views of the time. And we cannot say that the book’s author (or rather, authors: the book was probably the work of several hands) entirely disagrees with this orthodoxy: there is much wisdom in their comments, and they are trying to help Job to understand why he might find himself in such a predicament.

There are some noteworthy details mentioned in the Book of Job: details we don’t find in any other book from the Bible. For instance, Job 9:9 makes reference to several constellations and stars in the night sky: Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades. And later, in chapter 38, God refers to Arcturus again, when reminding Job of His might when compared with Job’s mere mortal powers.

And it’s also in this connection that the Book of Job makes reference to what are probably the two most famous monsters referred to in the Bible: Behemoth and Leviathan. Job 40:14 sees God mention ‘behemoth’, which is simply the plural of the Hebrew word for ‘beast’.

Which beast or animal this verse specifically refers to has been the subject of some debate, with perhaps the most likely candidate being the hippopotamus (Job 40:21-22 makes it clear that this large animal lives by water).

Conversely, ‘leviathan’, which is referred to in Job 41:1, is clearly a water-dwelling creature, since God asks Job (rhetorically) whether Job, a mere man, could draw leviathan with a hook (that is, out of the water). Although ‘leviathan’ is usually interpreted as being a whale, Isaac Asimov points out in his Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The Old Testament that the author of the Book of Job may well have been Egyptian, and that he may have had a Nile-dwelling animal, such as the crocodile, in mind.

We cannot say for sure when the Book of Job was composed, although the Dictionary of the Bible proffers a tentative date of 400 BC.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Book Review — Analysis Of The Book Of Job

Analysis of The Book of Job

Categories: Book Review Existence of God God

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Published: May 19, 2020

Words: 1496 | Pages: 3 | 8 min read

Works Cited

Alter, R. (2018). The Hebrew Bible: A translation with commentary. W. W. Norton & Company.
Bertrand, L. D. (2018). A reflection on the book of Job. Journal of Religious Thought, 74(1), 31-47.
Hamilton, V. P. (1999). Handbook on the historical books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther. Baker Academic.
Johnson, J. J. (2011). Suffering and the Book of Job. In The Absence of God: Exploring the Christian Tradition in a Situation of Mourning (pp. 87-95). Routledge.
Levine, E. (2010). The book of Job. Yale University Press.
Newsom, C. A. (2005). The book of Job: A contest of moral imaginations. Oxford University Press.
Ogbonnaya, U. I. (2016). A philosophical and theological critique of the book of Job: The struggle between order and freedom. Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Schreiber, M. (2013). The Book of Job: A Biography. Princeton University Press.
Smith, J. E. (2012). The wisdom literature of the Bible. Abingdon Press.
Stott, J. R. W. (2006). The cross of Christ. InterVarsity Press.

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Matters of Interpretation

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A Deeper Look at the Book of Job

I did some extra reading on the book of Job over the past month. Here’s what I learned:

Job is an unusually complex book, even for the Bible. It includes clear and possibly perplexing divisions in the text: the narrative prologue and epilogue in chapters 1-2 and chapter 42; the carefully structured speeches of the “counselors” and Job, but with the sudden disappearance of Zophar and the sudden intrusion of Elihu; the mystical interlude of the meditation on wisdom in chapter 28; God’s final whirlwind speeches, all in world literature quality poetry. All of this has given rise to multiple theories about the literary relationship of all of that text. There are suggestions that the poetry is the later addition, or on the contrary that the narrative portions are the add-on. Maybe Job was a familiar or traditional character before the book was even written, or maybe he wasn’t. … it’s hard for a non-specialist to reach a conclusion.

Similarly, the scholars take different positions on which part of the book really holds “the key” to the interpretation of the book of Job. Some say the poetry. Some say the narrative. Some say God’s speeches at the end. Some say Job’s speeches, which reveal his personal and psychological transformation through his ordeal. Some have even said the Elihu speeches, sort of, even though most everyone describes him as a pompous blowhard. (“If you read those, you’ll find they sum up the Reformed position on suffering.” I received from my Hebrew Bible professor what I hand on to you-all.)

Aside from the literary and structural complexity, the text itself is “corrupt” in places, creating numerous text-critical and translation problems. (“Everyone knows this,” if by “everyone” we mean Biblical studies specialists, especially those who specialize in the wisdom literature. The difficulties with the text don’t mean that we shouldn’t read Job, of course, or take the text to heart. But it does mean that we probably need to be cautious about building whole theologies or even daily devotionals around individual words or sentences. You know what I mean.)

Job is pretty clearly not “a theodicy.” Another thing “everyone knows” – and here “everyone” means something like “everyone who remembers anything from world literature” along with “everyone who ever did a certain kind of Bible study on the book of Job” – is that the book of Job is “a theodicy,” a Biblical response to the challenge evil in the world poses for faith in God.

“Everyone knows” the subject matter of the book of Job is “the suffering of the innocent.” Even more precisely, its subject matter is the problem of “bad things happening to good people.” Job is righteous, more righteous than anyone, or even more precisely “blameless.” According to conventional Biblical wisdom, God will reward a person like Job with prosperity and safety. All this is a given. And the very premise of the text is that this blameless figure becomes the victim of terrible tragedy, on purpose.

However, the problem with thinking of the book of Job as “a theodicy” – that is, an argument or defense of the affirmation of God’s goodness in the face of the evil we see in the world – is that the book of Job really doesn’t present anything like a defense of God’s goodness in the face of evil (understood as “things that make people suffer”). There’s no philosophical discussion. Job and his counselors don’t really explore arguments; instead, they present different views of reality.

One view is a kind of “authorized” view, in which God rewards the righteous and punishes the unrighteous. We could call this the “retribution” view. It’s fully compatible with the view of wisdom presented in the book of Proverbs. We could also call it the “Deuteronomistic” view, since it’s the basic understanding of God presented in the book of Deuteronomy and in the Deuteronomistic history (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, & Kings).

The other is Job’s experiential vision of reality, in which that’s OBVIOUSLY not how reality works in practice. This view is a lot more consistent with the view of wisdom presented in the book of Ecclesiastes. (“I’ve tried and tried to see the world as described in the book of Proverbs, to get my experience to add up that way, and to recognize that Woman Wisdom who cries out in the street and rewards the wise and penalizes the foolish, and you know what, folks – I’m just not seeing it.” Qohelet 7:23-29. My version.)

Neither Elihu nor God in the whirlwind speeches does any better at presenting a theodicy. Elihu offers additional rationales for how suffering can effect the improvement of character – but needing to improve his character wasn’t Job’s problem, according to the narrative introduction. The God of the whirlwind in effect refers Job back to God’s creative … God-ness. This was noticed perhaps most famously by Carl Jung in The Answer to Job , in which Jung says, more or less, “Erm, God, you didn’t really answer Job’s question …”

We won’t find a philosophically satisfactory theodicy anywhere in the book of Job. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Roland Murphy: “I can no longer treat the book of Job as a theodicy, a view held by many, in any shape or form” (130). (In fact, by insisting that the book of Job IS a theodicy, we could be making ourselves into something like the modern-day equivalent of Job’s counselors, denying the evidence right in front of our faces. We might want to think about that.)

There are other questions the book of Job does answer, perhaps. One of the shared characteristics of the book-length treatments of the book of Job I read this month was that each took a position on what the central question of the book of Job really is. Granted, they each take different positions. But that ability to read the book of Job and find many different profound questions addressed in the text probably tells us that the book of Job is the kind of profound, complex work of sacred world literature that deals with more than one profound spiritual question at once. (Great works of literature, even non-sacred ones, often have this feature, so this probably shouldn’t surprise us. People who talk as if some text of this kind has one and only one “true” meaning probably haven’t thought about this enough.)

So, Roland Murphy suggests that the main thing to notice about the book of Job is how it affects us when we read it. Gustavo Gutierrez says the main question is how to speak rightly of God, particularly when we are keenly aware of the suffering of the innocent. Philippe Nemo identifies the main question as that of the fundamental character of God, how God can be known beyond the conventional categories of normative social life. Susannah Ticciati finds the main lesson in the parallel searching out that both Job and God are doing, in which Job undergoes a personal transformation that brings him into intimate contact with God’s way of wisdom.

We ourselves, along with other readers, may notice that the book of Job also addresses other questions: how to listen to a sufferer, or rather, how NOT to listen; the problem of loss and restoration, and what counts as restoration (because do we seriously think that Job’s second family erased his sense of loss over those earlier children? Aside from the practical difficulty of how those children were related to Job’s wife); we could probably go on.

These reflections on the book of Job have been thought-provoking in their own right, and in particular Gutierrez and Nemo. In both cases, the authors turn our thoughts toward the idea of what our relationship to God is, or can be.

For Gutierrez, the question arises in the suffering of people who, themselves, have faith in God, and are committed to loving and following God’s instructions. How is it correct to speak of God, what is it correct to say about God? The insight comes from God’s statement to Job’s friends at the end of the book: “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7) So we have to look at how the speakers have spoken about God. From this, one thing may be clear: it is NOT correct to say, when we encounter someone suffering poverty, loss, illness and so on, that they must have done wrong, that God must be punishing them. This is the line pursued by Job’s friends – and it was “not what is right.”

It also seems incorrect to suggest that a person’s loyalty to God is justified by the material rewards they will reap from this loyalty. This is another implication of the friends’ speeches. It suggests that human loyalty to God is properly conditional; that people would be justified in withdrawing their devotion or loyalty if were not to be rewarded. [I will want to come back to this.]

For Gutierrez, part of the lesson of Job is that correct speech about God involves two forms of speech about God, that need to come together. “Prophetic speech,” speech that denounces unjust suffering, has to inform and be informed by “contemplative speech,” speech that reflects a vision of God’s freedom and grace. “Job has learned from the Lord that the language the prophets use in speaking of God must be supplemented by the language of contemplation and worship (91).” The source of both is the presence of the entirely free God that demands that human beings practice justice, that impels human recognition of God as the “presence that leads amid darkness and pain” (91), and that grants grace as an entirely free gift.

The world of retribution – and not of temporal retribution only – is not where God dwells; at most God visits it. The Lord is not prisoner of the ‘give to me and I will give to you’ mentality. Nothing, no human work however valuable, merits grace, for if it did, grace would cease to be grace. This is the heart of the message of the Book of Job (88-9).

For Nemo, the heart of the book lies in the poetic sections, read as much as possible without a prior religious tradition to guide, or skew, their interpretation. According to him, this kind of fresh reading allows us to recognize how perfectly the text describes Job’s anxiety , his nameless dread of what “exceeds” the conventional, predictable, controlled world envisioned by his counselors, the proportional world he himself once inhabited. Pursuing this vision of the “excess” of the evil that confronts Job in his warrantless suffering leads to a recognition that what confronts Job is utterly indeterminable, and this fundamentally involves his relationship to God, who is the source of this “excess,” if not the excess itself.

Nemo’s argument is careful, complex, delicate, and brilliant. My summary here can’t do it justice. But its conclusion involves a recognition that the specific relationship humans puruse with God, the way the person agrees to work with or against God, matters. Frighteningly, Nemo’s God could be capable of evil. Particularly if our understanding of God is limited to the justice procured through “Law,” and through the kinds of “technique” or instrumentality that procure human control and intelligibility in our “world”-ly situation. It is worth quoting from Nemo’s conclusion at length here:

The thing about God that is equivalent to the Law is in fact not God at all, but rather is equivalent to the world. Conversely, there is something which exceeds the world and which is God, the one whom Job addresses, and that is: – Evil, as an insistence beyond everything that technical thought can render reasonable, – Good, as an open possibility beyond every failure of technique. This ‘something’ wants to make itself recognized (which is why it insists), but recognized as that which our intention will not dominate so long as our intention is not engged in a resolute fight against evil (139).

For Nemo, God is a “soul” related to the human “soul,” and is found to be Good to the extent that the human soul chooses for the Good, and acts resolutely in that direction, on that behalf.

At least – that’s my understanding of Nemo’s discussion. I would probably understand it better if I read it again, once or twice. I understand this much, though: reading it again, once or twice, would be completely worth it. Nemo seems to have the conviction that being on the side of Good is an imperative for faith; that is, that faith cannot allow itself to be seduced by anything less than Good, even if it promises greater certainty or clarity. That’s my kind of continental philosopher.

If I could only recommend one of these readings of Job, however, it would be Roland Murphy’s The Book of Job: A Short Reading . That book is wonderful. It’s a concise, accessible commentary that lays out all the issues that confront the reader of the book of Job clearly and simply – but, it seems, not over-simply – with the measured confidence of a scholar whose understanding of the wisdom literature is unsurpassed. Murphy’s treatment is charitable and kind, open and warm, informed and informative, and ultimately practical and honest.

Since Murphy’s invitation is to focus on “what the book of Job does to the reader,” it may make sense to end with a comment on what reading the book of Job, along with these books about Job, does to this reader.

What concerns me at this point in my history with the book of Job is this matter of “indifferent faith” or the (wrongful) conditionality of humans’ love for God. On one hand, I can accept this idea, at least up to a point: if we serve God only for “what’s in it for us,” if we don’t hang in there with God for God’s sake rather than for the rewards’ sake, we human beings are simply being mercenary. This is one of the profound problems with the “health and wealth” theology that’s so popular all around the US these days.

But it seems that it must also be wrong to worship God in the absence of signs of care and concern. If a person’s experience of God is only or even overwhelmingly negative – if God persistently appears to people as arbitrary, or as demanding suffering for suffering’s sake, or in other words, as acting like a sadist, surely it’s monstrous to insist that there is something “good” about human acceptance of those terms of relationship. And if one advances the argument (as Job does) that there’s nothing human beings can do to affect the terms of the relationship that God offers humanity, that makes it worse, not better. The implicit argument there, then, is that God gets to do whatever God wants, just because God is the most powerful being in all of Reality. And while that may be Realistic, it does not seem to be what we mean by Good.

I understand that analogies can only go so far when it comes to God, so that it’s undeniably wrong to apply the logic of girlfriends and boyfriends to this theological situation. But still – we all know that if our best friend were in a relationship with someone who was never kind and often cruel, who was even actively punitive, who caused them extremes of suffering, without explanation, and who occasionally shows up and points out that they really shouldn’t say anything because they don’t know what they’re talking about – we would encourage them to break up. We would feel it our duty as their friend.

I don’t feel it’s my duty to encourage people to break up with God. Largely because I don’t feel God is “that way,” despite the objective evidence of bads in the world around us. Because there’s good here, too; too much good to ignore, it seems to me, on balance.

I do feel it’s OK to question the wisdom of taking the “indifferent love of God” too far, though. The question, “Does Job fear God for naught?” comes from the Satan, after all. It’s a malicious question, a question calculated to obscure the nature of Goodness, and what’s important about Goodness. And the malice of the question itself comes from a kind of ignorance about love, and goodness, it seems to me.

At some point, Goodness must show itself as Goodness. That’s how Goodness … is. If we had to think that would never happen, and that it would be better for it never to happen, so that people could love God with a “pure,” “disinterested” kind of love, and that in order to realize our own “good” we would have to persist into eternity in the absence of that revelation – well, that would be a lie, I think, a lie about the nature of love and of the Good.

Of course, in our current condition we might be confused in a lot of ways about the nature of Goodness. We may, no doubt, have it confused with things that are not, really, all that Good – with health and wealth and leisure and so on, for instance. And to the extent that we call our confusion pleasant and good, to that extent the experiencing of that fog lifting, and of our confusion dissipating, might initially feel unpleasant, like suffering, or even like death.

Even then, however, even with our confusion, it seems to me that we cannot honestly imagine anything other than this: that the closer we get to loving God with all our hearts and souls and minds for Godself, instead of for ourselves and our self-interest, the closer we get to that love ultimately being its own reward. But – if it’s a reward, it will feel rewarding. And then, there we will be, not having loved God for naught after all. Not even able to do that, in the very nature of the thing.

I don’t see a way around this.

I can’t imagine it being any different.

WORKS CITED:

The Bible. New Revised Standard Version.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent . Translated from the Spanish by Matthew J. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.

Murphy, Roland E. The Book of Job: A Short Reading . New York: Paulist Press, 1999.

Nemo, Philippe. Job and the Excess of Evil . Translated by Michael Kigel, postface by Emmanuel Levinas. PittsburghDuquesne University Press. 1998.

Ticciati, Susannah. Job and the Disruption of Identity: Reading Beyond Barth. London: T&T Clark, 2005.

abstract image painging of suffering Job

Best Resources on the Book of Job

July 27, 2021 by Brian

Earlier this year I worked on a project for Lexham Press that involved the book of Job. Since I had a deadline, there was a limit to the number of resources I could consult. These are the resources I utilized.

Talbert, Layton. Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job . Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 2007.

This is the first book that I would recommend to anyone beginning a study in Job. It’s not a commentary per se, and it doesn’t comment on detail on every verse (though see the endnotes for detailed interaction with the commentaries on key disputed points). Talbert’s book is a detailed, sequential guide to the book’s message and theology. It is the kind of book which the Puritans would have called experimental, meaning that Talbert desires for your study of Job to be transformative. Throughout he shows interpretative good sense—better interpretative sense than many of the commentators who wrote more detailed commentaries.

Ash, Christopher. Job: The Wisdom of the Cross . Edited by R. Kent Hughes. Preaching the Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014.

This is an excellent, accessible commentary on Job, full of good interpretive sense and gospel warmth. I found myself in agreement with Ash’s interpretations more often than with any other commentator except Talbert. I recommend anyone wanting to study Job to start with Talbert and Ash.

Andersen, Francis I. Job: An Introduction and Commentary . Vol. 14. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1976.

This is a helpful evangelical study of Job by a scholar skilled in Hebrew. He is honest enough to note when the Hebrew text is currently beyond our understanding. In general, his judgments are good, though I hold to a more positive view of Elihu. The condensed nature of the writing makes this commentary difficult at times.

Belcher, Richard P., Jr. Job: The Mystery of Suffering and God’s Sovereignty. Christian Focus, 2017.

I read this commentary along with the Job chapters in Finding Favour in the Sight of God: A Theology of Wisdom Literature , in New Studies in Biblical Theology. I found both the Job chapters in the NSBT volume and the commentary itself, which is very accessible, to be helpful guides to Job. I tended to agree Talbert and Ash over Belcher when they disagreed, but I still commend Belcher’s work.

Seow, C. L. Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary . Edited by C. L. Seow. Illuminations. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013.

This is a critical commentary, and the author is too willing to see Job’s theology as being at odds with orthodoxy. Nevertheless, it is a helpful commentary for the following reasons: Seow is attentive to cross references within Job and with other parts of the Bible, he documents the history of interpretation of book of Job as a whole as well as the history of interpretation of each individual passage, and he comments on the Hebrew text. This commentary is worth consulting with discernment for these three reasons.

Fyall, Robert S. Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job . New Studies in Biblical Theology. Edited by D. A. Carson. InterVarsity, 2002.

One common error in using ancient Near Eastern background materials as a tool for understanding the Old Testament is the insistence that the pagan worldviews of the cultures surrounding Israel are the hermeneutical key for rightly understanding the Old Testament. Fyall explicitly rejects this approach, even as he argued for the appropriation of elements of Ugaritic mythology for rhetorical purposes in the book. I still think that Fyall needed to do more to demonstrate that the author and characters of Job would have been aware of Ugaritic myths. Such an argument, while necessary to Fyall’s thesis, is difficult to make given the difficulty of dating the book of Job. However, Fyall’s argumentation was not limited to ANE background. He also did a fair bit of convincing intertextual work. In the end he shifted my thinking on Behemoth and Leviathan from being descriptions of natural animals (perhaps a dinosaur and a crocodile) to seeing something supernatural as being in view. Fyall links Behemoth with Mot, the god of death and Leviathan with the god Yam, which he links with Satan. For the reasons noted above, I think the links with Mot and Yam are dubious. I wonder if it is best to see Behemoth and Leviathan as two names for one beast, a dragon representing Satan. God’s speeches to Job thus conclude with a warning that Job is not capable of defeating Satan on his own. Only God can do that for him.

Lo, Alison. Job 28 as Rhetoric: An Analysis of Job 28 in the Context of Job 22–31. VTSup 97. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.

Job 28 and the surrounding chapters have become a playground for critical scholars. For instance, Clines proposes moving Job 28 to the end of Elihu’s speeches (and ascribing it to Elihu). He, and other scholars, think that if the speech is Job’s, the book comes to too early of a resolution. Many critical scholars also think that parts of Job 26 and 27 are more consistent with the speeches of the friends than with Job’s speeches up to that point. They propose rearranging the text to extend Bildad’s brief speech or to create a third speech for Zophar. Lo defends the integrity of the text as it stands. For instance, regarding chapter 26, Lo acknowledges that Job’s praise of God’s greatness echoes Bildad’s similar statement in chapter 25–right after Job has forcefully rejected Bildad’s position in the early part of the chapter. Lo argues that Job uses similar wording to make a different point, namely, that God’s greatness means that the friends are speaking beyond their understanding. Lo argues that chapter 28 is a speech of Job’s in which he reaffirms his fear of the Lord and of that as the path to wisdom. However, this does not resolve the problem for him since fearing the Lord and doing right did not prevent his suffering. Job 28 is thus an important transitional chapter in the book, but the resolution to Job’s struggle still lies ahead. All in all, this is a very insightful treatment of a key section of the book.

Robert V. McCabe, “Elihu’s Contribution to the Thought of the Book of Job,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal Volume 2 2 (1997): 47–80.

McCabe’s article is an insightful study of the importance that the Elihu discourses have in the book of Job. The Elihu speeches do several things. They delay the speeches of God, but in such a way as to prepare for them. McCabe thinks that Elihu has the same basic perspective as the friends. Thus his speeches summarize the friends’ position. Elihu also interacts with Job’s speeches directly, thus resurfacing his basic claims. Finally, Elihu anticipates elements of God’s speeches. In this way Elihu serves as an effective transition from the earlier speech cycles to God’s speeches.

Dunham, Kyle C. The Pious Sage in Job: Eliphaz in the Context of Wisdom Theodicy . Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016.

This book, a revision of Dunham’s ThD dissertation, surveys the history of interpretation related to Eliphaz, discusses him in relation to the Edomite wisdom tradition, and exegetes Eliphaz’s speeches.

Thomas, Derek. Proclaiming the Incomprehensible God: Calvin’s Teaching on Job . Mentor, 2004.

This book is a dissertation, and it reads like one. But it is a helpful study of Calvin’s treatment of Job.

Clines, David J. A. Job 1–20 . Vol. 17. Word Biblical Commentary. Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1989. / Clines, David J. A. Job 21–37 . Vol. 18a. Word Biblical Commentary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2006. / Clines, David J. A. Job 38–42 . Vol. 18B. Word Biblical Commentary. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011.

Clines’s massive three volume commentary on Job is considered a critical standard. He has detailed comments on the Hebrew text, and when key places or things occur in the text, the commentary becomes like a little Bible dictionary article. However, as I read the comments on the opening chapters I could tell that he was approaching the book from an Arminian theological viewpoint. As I read, I saw evidence of postmodern interpretive approaches at work. For instance, he interprets Job’s defense of his righteousness with a hostile, post-colonial hermeneutic of suspicion. Clines’s interpretation of the final chapters of the book hold that Job remained defiant to the end. My own sense was that Clines himself was angry with God. I can’t recommend this commentary and probably won’t use it again myself except to look at his grammatical notes on the Hebrew.

Dell, Katharine, and Will Kynes, eds. Reading Job Intertextually . New York; London; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Given that the introduction to the book and the introduction to most essays give a state of the play in intertextuality discussions, this is a good introduction to that topic. Notably, there is an emphasis on reader-oriented intertextuality. However, when dealing with canonical intertextuality, these authors neglect that there is a single Author of Scripture. Thus, some of what they identify as reader-oriented or synchronic intertextuality is in reality Author-oriented intertextuality. Non-canonical reader-oriented textuality often seems as mundane as the recognition that we read texts with other things that we have read in mind and that such previous reading can spark insights into the text that we are currently reading that we may not have otherwise had. I don’t think that reality need be spun up into a theory about reader-created meaning.

Since many of the authors in this collection do not function with a theologically conservative understanding of Scripture, the value of the essays varies considerably. However, I was able to glean from them quite a number of cross-references between Job and the rest of Scripture which will be useful for future study.

Walton, John and Tremper Longman III, How to Read Job. InterVarsity, 2015.

This book was already in my Logos library, and I read it to evaluate whether it would be worth buying Walton’s or Longman’s commentaries on Job. I decided not to purchase them. This may be a bit unfair to Longman as I found his Job chapters in The Fear of the Lord is Wisdom to be helpful and, interestingly, sometimes at odds with this book. In general, I find that of there is a wrong interpretive position to take, Walton takes it—and often with an air of condescension toward conservatives who hold to traditional interpretations. Traditional interpretations are not right because they are traditional, but oftentimes they are traditional because of their exegetical and theological soundness.

“Dialogue between a Man and his God,” “A Sufferer’s Salvation,” “The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer,” “The Babylonian Theodicy,” “Man and his God,” The Context of Scripture , 1:485-95, 573-74.

These are Akkadian and a Sumerian text about Pious sufferers. They are like Job only on the broadest strokes. Several have a pious sufferer who is restored to prosperity. One has a dialogue between a sufferer and a friend (which seems generally friendly), and several describe suffering in which there is some overlap with Job. However, none of these are of the length or the literary and theological sophistication of Job.

JeffreyO says

August 11, 2021 at 5:59 am

Hello Brian. I find your commentary book reviews very helpful and insightful. How about creating a category “Commentary Reviews” so readers can easily find your commentary reviews? In Christ, Jeffrey

September 21, 2021 at 10:54 am

Thank you for this comment. I’ve been thinking about creating a separate page recommended commentaries and links to my reviews.

The Book of Job

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The Book of Job in the bible tells the story of Job , a righteous man subjected to suffering. The objective of the story was to encourage people to overcome painful situations. Job is blessed with a beautiful family and material possession. Satan is jealous of him and appears before God to ask for permission to persecute him. God believes that Job is exceptional and no one on earth can be compared to him. When Satan is finally permitted to test Job’s faith, he robs him of his wealth and kills his children.

Job’s wife tries in vain to convince him to mock God. Additionally, his close friends blame him for his troubles. Despite many challenges and trials, Job is unmoved. However, he does not realize why God tolerates sufferings for righteous people. After difficult experiences of anguish, God finally restores Job’s prosperity and doubled his wealth. Therefore, he ended up having more possessions. The conversation between Job and his friends exposes the irony of his condition. Readers cannot understand why Job is drawn in a supremacy conflict between God and Satan.

Job is used as a victim of circumstances and suffers innocently. All this suffering is meant to clear the doubt of who is superior between God and Satan. When God restores his success, Job withdraws his initial demand to know the reason behind his suffering. Lastly, he concludes that God can do anything. The story portrays God as an omnipotent being whose actions are conclusive. Nobody should dare question God’s actions.

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The Book of Job Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Book of Job is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for The Book of Job

The Book of Job study guide contains a biography of The Bible, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About The Book of Job
The Book of Job Summary
Character List

The Book of Job in the Bible Essay

Introduction, dialogue between god and satan, the debate in covered in the book of job, significance of god’s speech.

Job is one of the Old Testament books in the Bible. It utilizes a combination of poetry and prose to explore themes of individual suffering and God’ justice. The main character in the book is Job, a staunch believer who loses wealth, friends, and succumbs to severe pain and suffering. He undergoes a dramatic transformation from wealth to poverty. Despite the loss, he does not lose his faith and continues to believe in God. Throughout the book, Job reiterates his innocence and rejects the argument that suffering is caused by sin. He is humble and faithful to God. However, his humility and faithfulness are tested when he loses his wealth and succumbs to suffering. The dialogue between Job and his three friends constitutes the greater portion of the book and covers 28 chapters (from chapter 3 to chapter 31). In the argument, Job’s self-defense, lamentation, and questions are responded to by a speech from God in a whirlwind.

The book of Job begins with a dialogue between God and Satan. Satan is asking permission from God to test Job’s faith. God validates Job’s righteousness by describing him as a righteous servant who is faithful and avoids evil. God challenges Satan by asking whether he has tested the faith of Job in the past. Satan responds by presenting a counterchallenge. He claims that Job will curse and stop believing in him if his wealth is taken away. God responds by telling him that Job’s wealth is under his power and he can do whatever he wants. As such, Satan is granted permission to test Job’s faith. However, God warns him not to touch his soul. He wants to prove to God that Job’s faith is weak and will vanish if he experiences suffering and pain. After being granted permission, Satan walks away from God’s presence.

The debate covered in the book focuses mainly on personal suffering and God’s justice in relation to Job’s life. These themes emerge in the debate that ensues between Job and his three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) who visit to comfort him. The debate starts when Job attributes his suffering to God’s injustice and unfairness. The friends are surprised because of his attitude. Traditionally, people suffer because of their sins.

However, Job does not agree with the proposition. His friends advise him to search his conscience to uncover sins he committed to warrant God’s punishment. However, Job declines their advice because he opposes the claim that suffering emanates from sin. He maintains that he is innocent. He accuses God of injustice and argues that he does not deserve to suffer because he is humble, patient, and faithful. Job argues that his suffering is more than he can handle because his friends have abandoned him and God is taking pleasure in his pain and suffering. He prefers death other than a life of misery, pain, and suffering. Job curses life and wishes that he had died the moment he was born.

Eliphaz tells Job that God does not punish righteous people. He argues that Job is wicked and deserves to suffer as a form of punishment. He accuses him of impatience because he accuses God without finding reasons for his suffering. He maintains that Job’s suffering is characteristic of what befalls wicked people who offend God. Eliphaz tries to console him by telling him that nobody is just before God and he thus deserves to suffer. He advises Job to turn to God for help because no one else is available to help him. Job responds and claims that his friends have betrayed him by abandoning him because of his suffering. He accuses God of injustice and wishes that his life would go back to normal. He tells Eliphaz that he is justified to complain because he does not deserve to suffer.

Zophar accuses Job of wickedness and advises him to repent in order to mitigate his suffering. He tells Job that people portray either submissiveness or arrogance before God. He says that Job is arrogant and thus deserves punishment. He tells the job that God’s wisdom cannot be quantified or measured. He says that to show Job that his suffering is proof enough that he has committed sin. He maintains that sinners are rewarded by suffering.

He advises Job to repent in order to reestablish his relationship with God. Job responds by claiming that many other people are suffering and he is not the only one. He pleads with God to come to his aid and have mercy on him. In addition, he rejects the idea of life after death even though he is aware that God controls everything that exists. He rejects Zophar’s arguments and tries to reach out directly to God.

Bildad reiterates Zophar’s accusations by stating that Job is guilty of injustice against God and that is why he is suffering. He reprimands Job for lamenting because he believes that God is just and fair and does not punish good people. He tells Job that God does not make exceptions when punishing wicked people. Therefore, he should not expect God to have mercy on him because suffering is a reward for sin.

He tells Job that God punishes people who argue against him. Zophar states that God’s fairness was the reason why he is suffering because he cannot be exempted from punishment. Job responds by blaming God for his suffering. He is convinced that God has refused to give him reasons for his suffering because it is without reason. He states that he needs a mediator in order to reach God. However, after failing to get one, he begs for mercy and forgiveness from God.

The three friends maintain that God is just and does not punish the righteous, and uses suffering as a way of reminding people to repent. However, Job does not agree with their arguments. He maintains that he is innocent and God is unjust. In his misery and desperation, Job demands an explanation from God for his great suffering. In response, God answers him in a speech through a whirlwind.

In the debate, God’s speech is significant for the position takes by Job because of several reasons. First, it teaches that people should avoid accusing God of injustice and unfairness. God works in his own ways and people should not question them. Job’s suffering was a test of faith and patience. However, he chose to blame and accuse God of injustice. God’s speech proves that he cares for everyone despite the presence of pain and suffering in life. Third, God’s speech is relevant for Job’s position because it reveals God’s mysterious ways, which humans cannot understand. Instead of accepting God’s mysterious ways, Job decides to accuse God.

God’s speech contradicts the stand taken by Job’s friends. They argue that Job is suffering because he has committed sin. However, Job’s suffering is not because of wickedness but God’s will. According to the speech, he is suffering because God is exercising his power and has good reasons for allowing it. Moreover, God does not bring suffering upon Job as a sign of the d for repentance as the three friends claim. With regard to the stand taken by Job’s friends, God’s speech shows that human beings do not understand why God allows some things to happen to people. In addition, they ignore God’s power and control over creation.

The debate presented in the book of Job between Job and his friends focuses on suffering and God’s justice. The debate ensues after job accuses God of bringing suffering and pain upon him despite his innocence. Job argues that God is unjust because he lets him suffer without a proper reason. He accuses God of injustice and unfairness. On their part, Job’s friends maintain that God is just and does not punish righteous people. As such, they maintain that job’s suffering is as a result of his wickedness hence need for repentance.

In his speech that is a response to Job’s complaints, God reveals that he is ruler over all creation and his power surpasses that of all creatures. On the other hand, the speech is relevant to the stand taken by Job’s friends because it shows a lack of understanding of God’s power. They think that Job’s suffering is God’s wrath for his wickedness. The speech reiterates God’s power over creation, and his mysterious ways of doing things.

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IvyPanda. (2020, July 6). The Book of Job in the Bible. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-of-job-in-the-bible/

"The Book of Job in the Bible." IvyPanda , 6 July 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-of-job-in-the-bible/.

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IvyPanda . 2020. "The Book of Job in the Bible." July 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-of-job-in-the-bible/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Book of Job in the Bible." July 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-of-job-in-the-bible/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Book of Job in the Bible." July 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-of-job-in-the-bible/.

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Book of Job

Everything you need for every book you read..

And Then Job Said Unto the Lord: You Can’t Be Serious

In a new translation of the Book of Job, the famously repentant hero gives God a piece of his mind.

So God says to Satan, “You there, what have you been up to?” And Satan says, “Oh, you know, just hanging around, minding my own business.” And God says, “Well, take a look at my man Job over there. He worships me. He does exactly what I tell him. He thinks I’m the greatest.” “Job?” says Satan. “The rich, happy, healthy guy? The guy with 3,000 camels? Of course he does. You’ve given him everything. Take it all away from him, and I bet you he’ll curse you to your face.” And God says, “You’re on.”

That—give or take a couple of verses—is how it starts, the Book of Job. What a setup. The Trumplike deity; the shrewd and loitering adversary; the cruelly flippant wager; and the stooge, the cosmic straight man, Job, upon whose oblivious head the sky is about to fall. A classic Old Testament skit, pungent as a piece of absurdist theater or a story by Kafka. Job is going to be immiserated , sealed into sorrow—for a bet. What is life? It’s a bleeping and blooping Manichaean casino: You’re up or you’re down, in God’s hands or the devil’s. Piped-in oxygen, controlled light, keep the drinks coming. We, the readers and inheritors of his book, know this. Job, poor bastard, doesn’t.

After his herds have been finished off by marauders and gushes of heavenly fire, and his children have been flattened by falling masonry, and he himself has been covered in running sores from head to toe—after all this happens to the blameless man, he cracks. He sits on an ash heap, seeping and scratching, and reviles the day he was born. “Let that day be darkness,” as the King James Version has it. “Let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.”

Howls of despair are a biblical staple, but Job’s self-curse—the special physics of it, the suicidal pulse that he sends backwards, like a black rainbow, toward the hour of his own conception—is singular. Dispossessed of everything, he is choosing nothing. That first prickle of my existence, the point of light with my name on it? Turn around, All-Fathering One, and eclipse it. Delete .

Edward L. Greenstein’s new translation of the Book of Job is a work of erudition with—as we shall see—a revolutionary twist. A professor emeritus of Bible studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, Greenstein is not going for the deep-time sonorities of the Authorized Version. His language is lumpy with scholarly fidelity to the text. But the shock of repudiation is undiminished. “Why couldn’t I die after leaving the womb—Just go out the loins and stop breathing?” his Job demands. “For what did knees have to receive me? For what were the breasts that I sucked?” And later: “Why have you made me your target?” This is where we moderns, we dopes marooned in the universe, love Job and find brotherhood with him. Because he’s been in us since the beginning, since the first germ of our separateness from everything else—a man confronting the mystery, as if there was a strand of our DNA in the shape of a question mark: Why?

Now some friends of Job appear and offer, one after another, the conventional pieties: God is great, Job must have done something wrong, how dare he question the ways of the Lord, etc. They’re hard to take, these friends—Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar, droning away. Job rejects their arguments, and it’s here, as the debate goes windily back and forth, that a 21st-century reader reaches for his phone. The stark, existential lines of the drama have gotten spoiled; the Kafka-voltage has dropped.

But then: enter God. “Up speaks YHWH,” as Greenstein puts it, momentarily folksy—a voice “from the windstorm.” “Bind up your loins like a man,” God warns Job, before stamping on the effects pedal and delivering perhaps the most shattering speech ever recorded. Question after question, power chord after power chord: “Where were you when I laid earth’s foundations? … Can you tie the bands of the Pleiades, Or loosen the cords of Orion? … Do you give the horse its bravery?” No explanation; no answer for Job; no moral or theoretical content whatsoever. It’s the interrogation of consciousness by pure Being, by the Logos, by the unstopping, unmediated act of creation itself. Do not try this at home. “Does the falcon take flight through your wisdom, As it spreads its wings toward the south?” The human intellect shrinks before the onslaught. The language is incomparable. God, it turns out, is the greatest poet; no one can touch him.

Read: A mind-bending translation of the New Testament

And it’s at this point, with Job reduced to a pair of smoking sandals and the divine mega-monologue still ringing in the vaults of the firmament, that Greenstein and centuries of tradition diverge. He has produced his new translation of Job, he tells us in the introduction, to “set the record straight.” Every version of the Bible that you have read puts Job, in the wake of God’s speech, in an attitude of awestruck contrition or reconversion. “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” he says in the King James. “I’m sorry—forgive me,” he says in Eugene H. Peterson’s million-selling plain-language adaptation, The Message . “I’ll never do that again, I promise!” Greenstein’s Job, however, stays vinegary to the end. “I have heard you,” he tells God, “and now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up.” The Hebrew phrase commonly rendered as some form of I repent , Greenstein translates as I take pity on . Dust and ashes , meanwhile, is for Greenstein a biblical epithet meaning humanity in general. So the line becomes “I take pity on ‘dust and ashes.’ ” Job’s last word: What a world you’ve made, God. I feel sorry for everyone .

What does it mean? This newly revealed Job, writes Greenstein, “is expressing defiance, not capitulation … If God is all about power and not morality and justice, Job will not condone it through acceptance.” Upon the scholarly merits of this approach, I am unable to pronounce; as an idea, I’ll consider it. We don’t read the Bible, it’s been said; the Bible reads us. It searches us. And here for us in 2019, right on time, with tyranny back in style and riding its behemoth through the streets, is a middle-finger Job, a Job unreconciled to the despotism of experience. He’s been shattered by life-shocks; then God, like a wall of terrible noise, fills and overfills his mind. His response: Thank you, but no .

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Gloria Dei est vivens homo , wrote Saint Irenaeus: The glory of God is a living man. Might not the Author of Life look with favor upon this brilliantly resistant creature, this unappeasable critical thinker, this supremely lonely and dissenting figure, this Bartleby with boils—unswayed by the sublime, scratching his scabs in the land of Uz? That might be the rankest heresy: Let me know, bishops. But consider what Greenstein’s nonpenitent, polarity-reversed Job has done to the ending of the book. As before, with the experiment over, Job is blandly restored to a state of health and wealth; as before, God upbraids the sententious friends, the Bildads and the Eliphazes and the Zophars, and sends them off to make some burnt offerings, “for you did not speak about me in honesty as did my servant Job.” The quality or valence of this honesty, however, has turned upside down. It has become a kind of white-knuckle existential tenacity, a refusal to disown oneself even in the teeth of the windstorm. Maybe that’s what this God, faced with this Job, is telling us: Bring it all before him, the full grievance of your humanity. Bring him your condition, loudly. Let him have it.

This article appears in the September 2019 print edition with the headline “Sorry, Not Sorry.”

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The rationality of the world: A philosophical reading of the Book of Job

Susan Neiman

X (formerly Twitter)

I am a philosopher who believes that Western philosophy begins not with Plato, but elsewhere, and earlier, with the Book of Job . That is because I believe that the problem of evil is the central point where philosophy begins, and threatens to stop. The experience of inexplicable suffering and basest injustice forces us to ask whether our lives have meaning, or whether human existence may be deeply incomprehensible. And if that is the case, then the urge to philosophy can seem to be a simple mistake.

Put more optimistically: if the task of philosophy is to show how the world is, or can be made rational, then it must address the presence of evil in the world.

Consider the classic statement of the problem of evil. It consists of three sentences which are impossible to maintain together:

God exists, and is omnipotent;
God exists, and is benevolent;
Evil exists.

Classically, the majority of thinkers dealt with the problem by denying the third claim. Evil doesn't exist, or anyway not really: you can't have light without having shadows; you wouldn't want to eat sugar all the time and nothing salty (these are Leibniz's examples.) Everything we take to be evil actually happens for the best, and if we knew all that God knows we would understand that too.

Though one still does hear versions of this view from surprising corners, it is the route we are least likely to take these days, largely since the mid-eighteenth century, certainly since the twentieth century. For it denies what we witness nearly every day: children are murdered in Syria or Florida, and the world keeps on turning, and not even the punishment of those responsible ― if it happens at all ― can make a dent in the cosmic flaw that is revealed when that kind of evil shows itself among us.

Before the eighteenth century, however, nearly every major thinker preferred to deny the evidence of his senses than deny the central theses of monotheism ― that God exists, and is omnipotent and benevolent. Perhaps it would have seemed a denial of hope. The Book of Job is matchless because it is unwilling to make the problem easier by dropping any of these claims, and makes us feel the force of all of them.

Note that the example I just used is an example of moral evil , which is different to what, up to the mid-eighteenth century, was called natural evil ― namely, the suffering that is caused through things like earthquakes, plagues and floods. One revolutionary turn of the Enlightenment was to make a radical distinction between these: there is a fundamental difference between what happens when a child is killed by a vigilante thug and when he is killed by an earthquake in Italy.

I am simply here pointing out that the distinction between natural and moral evils is not a distinction that is important for most traditional believers, and hence not for Job . The book notes no difference in the misery he feels when the suffering was caused by lightning or by marauding neighbours ― after all, both the lightning and the neighbours are all ultimately in the hands of God. So this book ignores a quintessentially modern distinction, but before you conclude that this makes the book less timeless, you should know that Sigmund Freud ― that profound atheist and demystifier ― held the distinction to be of little importance. From the perspective of the one who suffers, the source of the suffering ― earthquakes or vigilantes ― makes very little difference at all.

I want to begin by touching on an unresolved textual question about the Book of Job that I find most interesting: whether the text we know as the Book of Job is the product of more than one author. There is good reason, at first glance, to believe this. Even the best translations cannot obscure the incredible differences in language: the poetry of the main body of the text ― Job's outrage, and God's answer ― seems worlds away from the language of the prologue and epilogue, which is not only prosaic, but so wooden as to come closest to soap opera or slapstick.

Just consider the way in which Job's suffering is introduced: the first messenger appears with the announcement, "The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys grazing and the Sabeans attacked and took them and killed the servants and only I escaped to tell you." Before he had finished speaking another one came and said, "Lightning fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and servants and only I escaped to tell you." Before he had finished speaking, another one came and said, "Your sons and daughters were feasting and a great wind came out of the desert and they're dead and only I escaped to tell you." If you saw this on a stage, you might laugh, or sneer. You can do neither in the main body of the text.

Moreover, the weakness of the language of the prologue and epilogue seems to reflect the weakness of their content. The opening premise is clearly outrageous: God makes a bet with the devil? God allows someone He Himself describes as a man of perfect integrity to be tortured as a means of proving a boast about His own power? And speaking of power, in the second round of torments, the Almighty behaves like a sulky child, complaining to Satan that "You made me torture him for no reason". This is the God who speaks out of the whirlwind with a force and majesty unequalled in the Bible?

If the prologue can seem outrageous (one writer calls it the most brutal scene in all of Western literature) the epilogue can seem ridiculous. It looks like a tacked-on happy ending, straight out of Disney, which simply ignores all the questions that the rest of the book poses. Is there incomprehensible suffering in the world? Of course not, or not for long: at the end of the book Job has 14,000 sheep instead of 7,000, 6,000 camels instead of 3,000; the Lord doubles Job's possessions, and gives him just the same number of children he had before.

Moreover ― and this is perhaps the most crucial point ― the Job of the prologue and the epilogue seem to be a wholly different man from the one we see in the poem. There his rage and rebellion know no bounds; in the prologue and epilogue we only see the Job whose humble piety became proverbial, the man whose only response to the complete destruction of life as he knew it ― and all ten of his children ― was to utter the sentence: "The Lord gave, and the Lord took; blessed be the name of the Lord."

The sense that there are two Jobs in this book, as well as two Gods, has led many to conclude that there must have been two authors. In particular ― since this was one of the books of the Bible whose canonisation was hotly debated, for reasons I think obvious ― scholars have speculated that the epilogue was tacked on at the end in order to support conventional notions of religion and morality that are threatened by the body of the text. (How to do this with the prologue is rather harder to see.) So in order to make the book bearable the second author stuck on a little fairy tale: See folks? God is always just and comprehensible; be good and pious and eventually you'll be rewarded. If you happen to suffer along the way, just hang on and your reward will eventually double.

I am in no position to answer such textual questions, or evaluate the attempts made to argue for the unity of the text. I raise them just to say that scholars are still debating them, and if your initial reaction in reading Job was a sense of severe dissonance between parts of the book, you are not alone.

What we can say, however, that the text has been transmitted to us as a unity. Interpretations of Job have been given to us, usually, as interpretations of the book as a whole ― coherent or not.

Perhaps the most striking fact about traditional, pre-twentieth century literature on Job is just this: Job has preoccupied people for centuries, but what interests us about Job is not what interested them ― anyway, not explicitly. We are moved by this book because we accept, or begin by accepting, its basic premises. We take the text at face value because something about it seems true. Here is a good man who suffers the most horrible series of catastrophes, for no reason at all. Though he tries to bear them with humility and fortitude, he breaks down in a rage that we share: where is justice, and meaning in the world, when this sort of thing is possible?

A brief survey of the immense literature on Job reveals that Job's world is much closer to ours than the world of the intervening centuries; for every earlier interpretation sought to deny some piece of that picture we find undeniable. Some medieval Christian interpretations did this in the most straightforward of ways: they simply censored those pieces of the text in which Job expresses rage. If you leave those out, you get the figure of the patient Job, who remains humble and pious throughout every twist of fate; you get some bits of traditional theodicy about the mysteriousness of God's purposes for the feeble human mind; and Job's piety is rewarded in the end, serving nicely as an example for schoolchildren.

This is precisely what John Calvin did ― admittedly, I haven't read all 159 sermons that he wrote on Job , but in the sample I have taken he goes on to add that Job was actually fortunate to have his riches taken away, given how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, before rushing to add that the story also tells us that riches per se should not be despised. Hello, Max Weber! In sum, the lesson Calvin draws is that Job shows we should be patient until God discloses His reasons, for God can dispose of His creatures at His pleasure. Calvin doesn't mention the children.

Other Christian readings viewed the problems in the Book of Job to be problems within Judaism, which Christianity had resolved. Job was seen as a parallel or precursor to Jesus; one theologian wrote that Job is the question, and Jesus the answer. Moreover, some Christian theologians continued, the difficulties in Job stem from the failure of traditional Judaism to develop an adequate theory of the afterlife. On some views, that theory just is an answer to the problem of evil: the Jobs of the world land in heaven, where the infinite duration of their reward makes any problems they had in the world below seem fleeting and trivial.

Other writers, both Christian and Jewish, suggest that this begs the question: the Book of Job concerns the problem of evil in this world, not in the world to come. But traditional Jewish interpretations can deny the immensity of the problem just as surely as do Christian ones. Here we find no straightforward censorship; once a text has been canonised, it cannot be cut. As a text, it is sacred. If passages in it seem problematic, it is precisely the business of scholarship to explain them, by argument and analogy, by imagining details that were left out of the original text and make it explicable.

In short: Jews don't cut texts, we write more of them. One Midrash (a collection of sacred tales meant to explain problematic passages of Scripture) tells us that Job was punished for the sin of neutrality. Three non-Jews were asked what should be the fate of the children of Israel in Egypt. The father-in-law of Moses, Jethro, said they should be liberated, and he was rewarded appropriately. Pharaoh said they should be annihilated, and we know what happened to him. Job remained silent, undecided, neutral on a question of good and evil; hence the very peculiar nature of his torment.

Another Midrash tells us the following: as the children of Israel were trying to cross the Red Sea, Satan came along to try to stop them. In order to divert Satan long enough for the people to cross, God threw him Job, just as a shepherd may temporarily leave the strongest of his rams to battle the wolf while herding the lambs to safety.

Let's reflect the philosophical structure of these tales. In the first, what is claimed is that Job was guilty of something after all; therefore his punishment was deserved. (Indeed, a host of traditional interpretations accuse Job of a variety of sins, from self-righteousness to rebellion itself. Since God, knowing everything, knew that Job harboured rebellious thoughts, Job can justly be punished for having them even before he expresses them.) The neutrality story is interesting for its political implications, but however complex the sin it describes may be, its solution to the problems Job poses is very simple: Job was guilty, and God punished him.

In the second Midrash, what is being argued is that Job's suffering served a higher purpose, diverting Satan so that the children of Israel can escape to freedom. This turns Job into a kind of Hegelian resistance hero who, albeit unwittingly, is strong enough and righteous enough to plunge into the slaughterbank of history for the sake of other's lives or freedom.

Now consider at what is common to both of these readings, which can serve as typical ones. Both attempt to find meaning, or reason, in Job's suffering. For Job's friend Eliphaz is right to accuse Job of undermining religion, and crippling faith in God. If what Job says is true, our faith must be devastated. So traditional interpretations have sought to deny Job's claims by finding meaning, one way or another, in his suffering.

Without fully realising it, all these readings confirm the assumption that is the source of Job's outrage. That assumption is just this: there must be reason in the world, or Creation itself is unbearable . In particular, if misery occurs, it has to be explicable ― either as the consequence of some unknown transgression, or in the service of some greater good. Traditional interpretations fully accept these premises, and go on to try to discover the explanation implied in them.

This is a peculiar, back-handed vindication of Job himself, but it is about as helpful as the answers of Job's friends. Indeed, you may look at traditional readings of Job as variations on one or another of the friends' replies. And they do not address what contemporary readers find compelling in the book: the apparent and absolute meaninglessness of Job's suffering. Unlike earlier readers, we share Job's rage.

Just consider Job's tirade, in Stephen Mitchell's translation :

God damn the day I was born And the night that forced me from the womb On that day ― let there be darkness Let it never have been created Let it sink back into the void Let chaos overpower it Let black clouds overwhelm it Let the sun be plucked from the sky.

As the curse goes on it is easy to see this passage as an anti- Genesis , a demand to undo all that which has been created, almost in the order which is set out at the very beginning of the Bible. Though Job remains modest enough to confine his fantasy to obliterating only the day he was born, the terms in which he speaks mirror the Creation story. This is indeed blasphemy, but in view of Job's claims we can take it seriously, as a comprehensible demand: let Creation be undone if it makes no sense .

We see how hard it would be to answer Job's charges. The Prologue begins by telling us that Job "was a man of perfect integrity, who feared God and avoided evil." It doesn't give us much to go on in grounding that claim, but the texts of the speeches show us what Job's integrity really was. Comparing his speeches with those of his friends, and even that of God Himself, it is not hard to feel that Job's unbending wisdom ― I don't mean sheer intelligence, which he has too, in spades ― is a match for every answer he is given. To Zophar he cries, "I am not an idiot! Who does not know such things?" This is before acknowledging, as he does several times, that God's wonders are beyond our grasp, that the human mind is simple, that only God is truly wise. Job does not demand that everything be explicable, nor deny that only God really fathoms the universe He has created.

Nor is his complaint a self-centred one, reducible to the question, "Why me?" It is true that he begins with his own case, which is natural enough ― it is his pain and his suffering, after a lifetime of decency, which cause him to doubt. But here it should be pointed out that it is not only the physical and emotional pain which drive him; Job's suffering is compounded by the fact that he is a man of integrity, with a strong sense of justice, and that sense has been violated. Perhaps a lesser man would have suffered less precisely because his pain was self-centred: however awful it may be to confront the loss of your wealth, and health, and even your children, it is not as awful as losing all of that and your belief in the justice and sense of the world as a whole.

As his rage and pain continue, Job generalises his own case, in terms that seem undeniable. In the starkest of terms he outlines the reasons for his impatience and horror: the wicked prosper, secure in their houses; not even their cows miscarry, and their grandchildren play like lambs. All this while the poor people shiver, picking up scraps for their children, and breaking their backs for the rich. This is, we will say, the way the world is; and only Job's friends, who cling to their dogmatic theorising, are able to ignore it. So their answers, Job says, are empty lies. It is just this weaving between his own case and others, between the particular and the universal, which gives his speech such power.

Nor will many of us be tempted to understand this text ― as some writers have done ― by seeking passages which show Job to be guilty, not quite of some secret sin, but of something we might call moral simplicity, even obtuseness. There is indeed one passage in which he sounds arrogant; another talks about settling of accounts like a businessman, which could seem to justify William Blake's idea that Job's initial piety and righteousness were superficial.

Yet the beautiful and genuine defence Job gives of his own decency, in his last speech, shows that this is a man who knows what goodness is about. Indeed, it must be the very fact of this speech that finally moves God to answer:

If I ever neglected the poor, or made the innocent suffer If I ate my meals alone, and did not share with the hungry If I did not clothe the naked, or care for the ragged beggar If his body did not bless me for the warmth of my sheep's wool If I ever abused the helpless, knowing that I could not be punished Let my arm fall from my shoulder, and my elbow be ripped from its socket! If I ever trusted in silver, or pledged allegiance to gold If I laughed when my enemy fell, or rejoiced when suffering found him If I ever covered my crimes, or buried my sins in my heart Afraid of what people thought, shivering behind my doors ... If my land cries out against me, its furrows weep together May nettles grow there instead of wheat; instead of barley, stinkweed!

The text is at an end, the author unable, or unwilling, to say anything further. He has shown that Job knows what righteousness is, if anyone does; he has shown that Job can see the world more clearly than any of his friends; that his mind is keen enough to answer any theoretical attempt they offer to justify God's ways. And just to make certain that we do not dismiss Job's charges, the author calls up God Himself as a witness to their truth. Twice, in the epilogue, God chastises Job's friends: you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.

Before returning to this statement, the most compelling defence of Job, I want to address a modern indictment of Job which, some will argue, should lead us to reject Job's questions entirely. On this view Job is seen as lacking, not righteousness or humility, but maturity : Job's questions, and outrage, are based on naive, misguided assumptions about reward and punishment. For why should we think that the universe is just? Modern psychology explains how we come to share such assumptions: our parents raised us with sticks and carrots, so we project this pattern onto the universe at large.

Now there is no denying that some version of these claims is true. Some of us were raised in traditionally authoritarian homes where the connections between good behaviour and rewards, or bad behaviour and punishments, were made brutally clear. But most of us have, on becoming parents, concluded that some such connections are unavoidable, even if they are as simple as a sentence like: "If you pour the juice on the floor again, I'm taking away the cup." There are interesting and controversial studies on the psychology of moral development, showing how children get from the phase where good behaviour can only be connected with the desire for a reward, to the phase where they learn to act rightly for the sake of a principle.

Here there are many questions, and much work remains to be done. Still, the fact is that all of us were raised this way from our earliest, preconscious moments: so our deepest assumptions are connected with the expectation that if we only please mama and papa sufficiently, we'll get the story or the cookie or the hug. (Or, if you were particularly unlucky, the expectation that if you didn't please mama and papa sufficiently, you'd get a slap or a lash.) And all of the images of God as father that permeate most religions develop with, and through, these assumptions.

But to say that all this is true is not to bring us to the conclusion some have suggested: that Job's questions are meaningless, little more than a naive projection of a set of expectations onto a universe which we, as grownups, have learned cannot fulfil them. The conclusion that once you have described the origins of something you have accounted for it, or explained it, is what philosophers call the genetic fallacy . What is important is that understanding how we learn to have certain expectations of justice does not, by itself, invalidate them.

To see this, consider two things. First, few if any thinking theists ― and Job surely belongs to these ― have operated with naïve notions of God as the rewarding father. Job knows that things are at best murky, and that much is beyond his understanding; to expect that God provides instant or clear connections between behaviour and reward would be simply blind. Sometimes the friends talk this way, but we know they are the fall guys of the story, and even they admit that God's ways of meting out justice are mysterious. So no good theist uses as simple a notion of reward and punishment as the psychological objection supposes.

Second, you do not have to be a theist to expect justice from the world. Here is a quote from Max Horkheimer: "Reason rebels against the thought that the present state of reality is final, and that undeserved misfortunes and wrongdoing ― and not the self-sacrificing deeds of human beings ― are to have the last word." Immanuel Kant tells us that reason has a need to find, or create, a connection between happiness and virtue. The fact that we may have good psychological explanations of how this need develops ― of why reason rebels ― does not mean it isn't true. I believe that all our deepest, most immediate moral reactions presuppose just this need. Our despair when innocent people suffer, our indignation when wicked people flourish, presuppose reason's need to find a connection between virtue and happiness.

Up to this point, I have been defending Job's charges, just as he stated them. Pre-modern readers sought to reject them as impious or impatient; postmodern readers seek to dismiss them as childish. I have tried, very briefly, to sketch answers to them which show that Job's indictment is just as compelling as it ever was: the world, as created, is intolerably unjust.

But once we find Job's statement of the problem to be defensible, what do we say about the answer? It is hard to avoid feeling that if Job's charges are coherent, the answers given in the text are not. And because both the charges and the answers come close to exhausting the ones that can possibly be given, it is hard to avoid concluding that either there is no problem of evil, or there is no answer.

Let us take the friends' answers first. We know they are wrong, and not just because God says so. It is striking to watch how thoroughly they sink. In the beginning they are all that friends can be: they come immediately (there is a Midrash that tries to explain how they knew what had happened to him instantly, in an age without text messaging); they sit with him for seven days and nights and "said no word, for they saw that his grief was great." Unfortunately, they begin to talk. They begin with dogmatic and pious assertions. God's justice and omnipotence are undeniable, therefore Job must have sinned. And as they go on their answers get worse. No longer attempting to argue, they simply state:

It is true: the sinner is snuffed out His candle flickers and dies.

Or they descend to the cruellest kind of ranting: "Your crimes must be inconceivable!" It is interesting to see that as the friends get weaker, Job rises to new heights. Where he may have begun with a curse and a cry of pain ― which does look simply like a particularly poetic version of the question Why me? ― what he ends with is a universal indictment.

But however horrible the friends may seem by the end, the beginning of their arguments deserves some attention. In particular, they make two claims that look very close to those made by the Voice from the Whirlwind. Eliphaz says:

[God's] workings are vast and fathomless His wonders beyond our grasp.

Then further on:

When disaster strikes he will rescue you ... You will see your family multiply Your children flourish like grass You will die at the height of your powers And be gathered like ripe grain.

Is this not precisely what happens in the epilogue? Claims like this get repeated throughout the friends' early speeches; so what's wrong with them? How are they different from God's answer?

One suggestion is made by Job himself: "Your answers are dusty answers." One way of understanding this was offered by Kant, who said that Job's friends were like the dogmatic metaphysicians Kant was out to attack ― roughly, the Dr Pangloss whom Voltaire ridicules in Candide . What could this mean? The friends are content to theorise, they seek no personal encounter ― either with Job or with God. If you take this far enough you can even call them blasphemous, taking God's name in vain. What God wants is not mumbled piety, but deep and direct engagement.

Another reading of the phrase "dusty answers" could be: they are merely prose. A good translation makes them good prose, but the difference between the language used in their answers and that used by the "Voice from the Whirlwind" is vast. One thing this could mean is that answers to the problem of evil, if there are any, can only be given in poetry. Something about prose is too superficial, inadequate, even, again, blasphemous, because it is disrespectful ― insufficiently awed by the task.

I find something right in these suggestions, especially if you think about connections between poetry and music, and Job's connections to that. But they are not entirely convincing. I am still left feeling that there is not enough difference between the friends' answers and God's. And while we expect to be disappointed by the friends, I suspect that even atheists expect more from the voice of the Lord.

So let's now turn to the "Voice from the Whirlwind." At first glance, God's seems to be completely beside the point. "Where were you when I planned the earth?" is no answer to the question Job asked, for God's power was never at issue. Job questions His justice, not his omnipotence; and God's response seems to be merely a detailed description of His power. Even worse than begging the question, God's speech seems to be not only an assertion of power, but an assertion so brutal it amounts to absolute tyranny.

This is how Thomas Hobbes read the book ― a book Hobbes loved so well that he named his two major books after the creatures with which God's speech ends: Leviathan and Behemoth . Hobbes read the speech from the Whirlwind to make the sort of point for which he became famous: a kind of might-makes-right view in which the created world is so chaotic that submission to an absolute sovereign is the only wise course of action. And there is no doubt that this is the easiest way to read the speech, which then becomes less of an argument than an assertion of power.

Stephen Mitchell sums up most of our reactions well in saying that God's answer seems nothing but an angry "How dare you question the Creator of the world? Shut up now, and submit!" while Job's final response looks like a meekly uttered, "Yes, boss, anything you say." The brutality of that reaction is saved perhaps only by the very Jewish device of showing that God, provoked by Job's questions, replies with nothing less than a series of questions of His own.

There are, of course, other ways to read God's speech, and I want to sketch the most promising. When God begins by asking, "Where were you when I created the earth?" and then goes on to describe the wonders of Creation, He is not simply asserting His power. The point of going through all the details about the wild ass and the antelope is not to assert that, because God knows and does all kinds of things Job cannot do, He therefore has a right to absolute, unquestioned sovereignty. Nor is it the case, as some commentators have it, that God lists all these things in order to point out the weirdness of the world; to show that Creation is fraught with mysteries which humans cannot understand, so that Job, in particular, should stop troubling his head about this particular mystery.

Rather, one could take God's answer as precisely an assertion that there is order in the world, in exquisite detail. So if Job's question can be phrased thus: If grave justice occurs, is there no order/meaning/reason in the world? Then God's answer can be read as saying not Shut up, you weakling , but: You want order? I'll show you order .

There is support for this reading in a passage of Talmud, which suggests that Job said to God, "Perhaps a tempest passed before you, and caused you to confuse Iyob (Job) and Oyeb (enemy)." In other words, Job says: "Hey God! It's me, Job, your friend, not your enemy!" A partial quotation of the answer the Talmud gives to God is this:

"Many thunderclaps have I created in the clouds, and for each clap a separate path, so that two claps should not travel by the same path, since if two claps travelled by the same path they would devastate the world. I do not confuse one thunderclap with another, and shall I confuse Iyob and Oyeb ? The wild goat is heartless with her young. When she crouches for delivery, she goes up to the top of a mountain so that the young shall fall down and be killed, and I prepare an eagle to catch it in his wings and set it before her, and if he were one second too soon or too late it would be killed. I do not confuse one moment with another, and shall I confuse Iyob and Oyeb ?"

One thing this passage proclaims is the extraordinary system God has created, and continues to keep in motion. If Job's fear is that his own case shows that God makes mistakes, and hence that we may live in a world threatened by overwhelming chaos, God's answer is to reassure him of the incredible order which permeates the universe, and all its pieces.

A problem with this way of reading is that it may work for the first part of God's answer, but not the ending. Why does He end with the descriptions of the monsters? If the first part of His speech can be read as a glorious description of the wonderful order in the world, the second set of images is so horrible that it does look as if God is bludgeoning Job into submission, and in truly heartless ways.

But there are answers to this problem, too. One is that the Creation must include the horrible and the grotesque. God is not, as Leibniz would have it, a master watchmaker, nor is the world a place of simple order ― but it is order nonetheless, vast and awesome enough to include horror as well.

A possible counterpart to this comes from that part of Jewish tradition that denies God's omnipotence. God, on this view, created the world from primordial chaos. Elements of that chaos are still there and God is constantly working to keep them at bay, to maintain order against the threat of monstrous chaos. While this does something to explain the appearance of the monsters at the end of the monologue, it does so at the cost of turning God into a bit of a Jewish mother, whose answer to Job is: "You're coming to me about justice when I'm working day and night just to keep this total chaos from overwhelming us?" But better a Jewish mother, perhaps, than a more incomprehensible kind of tyrant ...

The biggest problem with this kind of reading is another one entirely. Job is not simply asking for evidence of order in the world; he is asking for evidence of moral order. And it is just that evidence which God refuses to give. Thus His answer becomes an old one: there is order, and reason, in Creation as a whole, but it is stupid or blasphemous to try to define that order in human categories, particularly human moral categories. This brings me to what I take to be, philosophically, Job's strongest and most provocative claim. He says:

Man who is born of woman - How few and harsh are his days ... And must You take notice of him? Must You call him to account? Since all his days are determined and the sum of his years is set Look away; leave him alone Grant him peace, for one moment.

I take Job to be saying here that God cannot have it both ways. If the message we are to learn from all this is not to see things in merely human terms; to recognise that God has a plan for the whole universe ― of which we are only a tiny part ― then Job's answer is: fair enough, but if that is the case, why not just leave us alone? If You are going to notice us at all, then make things comprehensible, but do not try to have it both ways.

If we are merely insignificant pieces of a much larger picture that we are foolish to try to understand on our own terms, then God should leave us alone ― leave us alone meaning, without moral categories . Let us be part of nature and be torn apart like the vulture's prey which feeds its children, but do not tear us apart with the peculiarly human pain of guilt, and moral outrage, and all they imply. On the other hand, if You are going to give us those categories, and demand that we maintain them, then You have to be fair by reflecting them, somehow, in the structure of the universe. This could be called a covenant .

It is perhaps for this reason that God tells us, twice in the epilogue, that Job has spoken the truth about Him. In the speech from the Whirlwind, God's claim is put more paradoxically: "Am I wrong because you are right?" Thus three times in this book, the truth of Job's claims is asserted by none other than the One who should know. It is curious that this fact is not noted as often as it should be in many traditional interpretations. Or perhaps it is not so curious, for God's own testimony in favour of Job seems to undercut most interpretations, which in one way or another try to defend God's answer by showing Job's questions to be wrong. So we are left with the question: what could God mean by asserting that Job has spoken the truth ― or more provocatively, "Am I wrong because you are right?"

Let me conclude by sketching an answer inspired by Kant, who wrote a little essay on the subject entitled, "On the Impossibility of All Future Attempts at Theodicy."

I begin by accepting Kant's own claim that Job's friends represent the voice of pure reason, untainted by experience. The claims they assert are reasonable ones: the universe is ordered, its Creator is just. The problem with these claims is not their content but the fact that they are uttered without a bit of concern for experience: they are repeated blindly, dogmatically, refusing to look at the world as it is. Indeed, Kant goes so far as to accuse the friends of dishonesty: they are not speaking the truth, but speaking the words they believe God wants to hear ― just in case He might be eavesdropping.

The look at reality is provided by the Voice from the Whirlwind, whose speech is simply description ― glorious description, to be sure, but description all the same, of the way the world really is. The lack of moral categories, of a defence of just that universal justice which seemed to be called for, is what can make that speech seem inadequate.

If the Voice from the Whirlwind is meant to stand for the sheer assertion of reality, and the friends represent the claims of reason, what is the voice of Job? He is, in this picture, nothing other than the claim that the two ought to be brought together. Knowledge may depend on the recognition that the world does not exhibit the moral categories we demand, but justice depends on the recognition that it should . Here we would have to assume that God is not omnipotent, for His Creation as it stands is not final. Righteous people, like Job, are needed to make it whole. Abandoning traditional claims of divine omnipotence will be problematic for many, but that may be what facing reality requires.

As Kant would later put it, two things fill the mind with awe and wonder the more often and more steadily we look upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. They are both awesome and wonderful, but entirely separate ― the one stands for a cosmos described by the Voice from the Whirlwind, a cosmos so vast and impersonal that it strikes down our self-conceit and makes us feel, as Job put it, that we are but dust. Yet the moral law within me, which Job so beautifully upholds in his darkest hours ― he may wish he had never been born, but he never once wishes he had behaved anything less than righteously ― that moral law reveals our power to step in and change a piece of the world if it seems to be gone wrong.

Thus, while the book as a whole is a warning against arrogance, it is also a reminder of the need for moral action. Of course, this is explicitly denied by traditional readings, which suggest that passive acceptance of Creation, not an active attempt to change it, is the only wise attitude for human beings to hold. But then, as I mentioned at the beginning, traditional readings usually censored, or tried to read away crucial pieces of text. On the reading that I have been sketching, God Himself asserts the need for human moral vigilance, and action: "Am I wrong because you are right?"

Viewing Job's claim as the claim that reality should become reasonable is one way of seeing how both God and Job could speak the truth: the one a truth about the way the world is; the other, a truth about the way it should be. It is this that we call moral clarity, when we have the good sense or good fortune to achieve it.

Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher and director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. She is the author of Evil in Modern Thought , Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists , Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age and the forthcoming Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil .

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Essay about Exegetical Analysis Of The Book Of Job

The Bible, from its inception, has already been translated into many languages and is being interpreted in an increasing number of ways, some of which interpretations are contradictory and some are complementary. But which method is most appropriate is a hot debate in Christianity today. This paper is an exegesis study that analyses the celebrated book of Job from the Old Testament, which historical account, or perhaps moral folktale, is set in the period of the Patriarchs around the time of Abraham that makes it one of the oldest books of the Bible.

The Book of Job, which is named after the main character of the text, questions the justice of a God who was expected to offer protection in return for loyalty. It addresses the important and difficult question, “Why do good people suffer? ”, through the story of a righteous, God-fearing man who lost everything, and wrestles with the question, “Why? ” He puts this question to God, but gets no satisfactorily answer, but eventually finds peace in his experience of suffering.

Christians might argue that suffering helps purify, test, teach or strengthen the soul, and our responsibility to God is to obey Him, to trust Him and to submit to His will, whether we fully understand it or not. Exegetical Methods The two exegetical methods used in this analysis of the Book of Job are feminist interpretation and Catholic exegesis. Selecting the feminist method seemed most appropriate given the story most unfairly ignores Job’s wife who was with him thoughout his troubles. However, the second method of exgesis came down to a choice between historical-critical, narrative criticism and the Catholic interpretation.

I opted for the latter since it is open to the use of a variety interpretation techniques and would thus, I reasoned, make for a more comprehensive analysis. Feminist interpretation of the Bible is important in terms of women’s rights and equality of the sexes, whereby women should be treated as intellectual and social equals to men. However, the concept of feminism was unheard of when the Bible was written. Indeed, Jesus selected only men for the role of apostle, presumably influenced by the social custom of his day, an example sometimes cited as the rationale for excluding women from leadership positions in the church today.

The Bible and its texts are clearly male centered, and reflect a view in which males are dominant. Until recent years, the only voices that were heard when describing the experiences of biblical personalities, including women, were the voices of men. Passages about women were interpreted from the male perspectives. Thus, feminist biblical interpretation asks questions such as: •Does the text show gender bias? •Does the text portray women as equal to men? •How is the meaning of the text affected if read from a feminist view?

Evaluation of the feminist exegesis method. Feminist biblical criticism is now an established method of inquiry. It is a postmodern method of interpretation that poses an important challenge to many of our assumptions about the Bible, which relegates women to second-case status. Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong tell us, “There is no doubt the Bible is biased against women. Both the religious and ethical directives of the Bible were formulated out of a patriarchal understanding of life, with the interests of men being primary.

Samantha Gerstein, author of “Feminist Biblical Interpretastion” states in her publication, “For many years, the only voices that were heard when describing the experiences of biblical personalities were the voices of men. The experiences and perspectives of men were used to extract messages from biblical passages. Even passages about women were interpreted from the perspectives of men. When a biblical woman’s experience is deciphered by a male, there is a chance that the experiences can be interpreted in a way that the original writer did not intend.

Moreover, the woman’s experience can be depicted in such a way as to justify her subordination. ” So are we meant to ignore about that 50% of the population that in the Bible are often abused, sidelined and undermined? I don’t think so. In particular it is very hard to find feminist readings in the book of Job, which is why this story can benefit from this feminist exegsis. However, it is acknowledged some of the bible, such as the Book of Ruth, a classic love story, is more positive with regard women, and of course, Mary,

Mother of Jesus, holds special significance for Catholics. Catholic exegesis is a recent method of biblical analysis, which is “characterised by openness to a variety of analytical methods and approaches. Although the historical-critical method is prime, literary methods and approaches based on tradition, the social sciences, or particular contemporary contexts can also yield important insights into the meaning of the Bible.

However, the value of these insights will correspond to their harmony with the fundamental principles which guide Catholic interpretation. (Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture: ISBN 88-7653-617-5) Evaluation of the Catholic exegesis method. Catholic exegesis freely makes use of scientific methods and all approaches that allow a better understanding of the meaning of texts in their literary, socio-cultural, religious and historical contexts. In addition to a broad interpretation, I favour Catholic exegesis as it is carried out in a manner which is as critical and objective as possible and actively contributes to the development of new methods of exegesis.

Also, Catholic exegesis requires that interpretation of a biblical text be consistent with the meaning intended by the authors, placing biblical texts in their ancient contexts, thus helping to clarify the meaning of the biblical authors’ message for their original readers and for us too. And although Catholic exegesis employs a historical method, it is not historicist or positivis and is open to a variety of methods and approaches.

As mentioned above, although the historical-critical method retains its primacy, the Catholic Church maintains that literary methods and approaches based on tradition, the social sciences, or particular contemporary contexts can also yield important insights into the meaning of the biblical word. However, as a relative newcomer to the methods of exegesis, Catholic exegesis is not immune to the “presuppositional problem” where in this instance presupposing means that the Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought and the Bible is interpreted in the light of God’s revelation.

Nevertheless, Catholic exegesis seemed the most appropriate method by which to interpret the Book of Job given the broad nature of such exegesis, despite any presupposition issues, which I’m sure is a bias that the experts in exegesis I quote in this paper, including Thomas Aquinas, would be well aware of and guard against. Feminist Exegesis of Job “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die! ” (Job 2:9) – the only words spoken by Job’s long-suffering wife throughout the book.

The following feminist exegesis of the Book of Job paraphases the work of Roger Scholtz given at based http://www. cielo. org. za/scielo. php? pid=S1010-99192013000300016&script=sci_arttext. Roger Scholtz is a lecturer in Old Testament studies at the Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The other main text used in this exegesis is “Job: Questioning the Book of the Righteous Sufferer” by Christl Maier and Silvia Schroer, which essay is contained in “Feminist Biblical Interpretation”, edited by Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres, and published at https://books. google. co. nz/books.

Christle Maier is professor of Old Testament at Yale Divinity School, and Professor Silvia Schroer’s is an editor and writer whose area of specialisation is The Old Testament, feminist exegesis and hermeneutics. She is the founder and editor of the first Internet journal for feminist exegesis in Europe, the “Lectio Difficilior”. The Job story gives little space to women, rather it silences Job’s wife in a brief paragraph and devotes the remainder of the book to men. Women, their world and experiences, appear in patriarchal perspective only in a very peripheral way.

While the story concerns a man who experiences considerable misfortune and shows great patience, in their compendium “Feminist Biblical Interpretation” edited by Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres Wacker, the essay analysing the book of Job argues that the story considerably tests the patience of female readers given the book’s preoccupation with men who speak and perform in all 42 chapters. Also, to add insult to injury these are all rich and educated men, and of course God is depicted as male.

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The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations

Professor of Old Testament

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From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of the divine speeches, this book provides an intense encounter with the aesthetic resources of Hebrew verbal art. In this brilliant new study, the author illuminates the relation between the aesthetic forms of the book and the claims made by its various characters. Her innovative approach makes possible a new understanding of the unity of the book of Job; she rejects the dismantling of the book by historical criticism and the flattening of the text that characterizes certain final form readings.

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Essay on Job Analysis

Introduction

Job analysis is the process of identifying and determining the tasks and duties of a given job. A job analysis is done to craft a good job description. it also helps to prepare the employees on what expectations to have about the job by defining clear tasks and objectives to avoid misunderstandings and provide the employee with a sense of direction. Job analysis helps determine the right fit for a job, to access the performance of the employee, and to evaluate if the employee is delivering a specific job (Hoffmann, 2018). It helps establish that job tasks, level of experience, specify the performance level and the working conditions. Well-structured job analysis helps create a detailed description of the roles and responsibilities for the employees and the entire organization. Job analysis helps employers qualify the candidate and review the expectations and the outcome required for the job. This activity is carried out to determine the placement of jobs and the context of job performance.

Principles and Purpose of Job Analysis

Job analysis helps in identifying particular skills and requirements that are necessary for a certain position. The purpose of a job analysis is to establish what entails the job at hand as well as the duties and conditions of the job. It is a fundamental resource for the management including performance evaluation, compensation, and training. It also establishes and documents job-related competencies, establishing a legal basis for the assessment and selection of the candidate. (Hoffmann, 2018). Job analysis helps determine the nature of the individual required to perform a certain position, it also checks whether the duties or objectives of a certain job are being met or not. A job analysis is also used in analyzing the production of an employee and qualifies accordingly. The vital role of this activity is to deciding the worth of the job and streamlining the human efforts hence increasing the output.

Compare and Contrast Methods of Job Analysis

A job analysis can be conducted using different methods. Some of these methods are observation, questionnaires, and interviews. Questionnaires are mailed to the respondents to be answered in a specified manner since a questionnaire consists of questions in a written format either open-ended or close-ended while an interview is a to one communication where respondents and the interviewer participate in a question and answer session directly, this questions administered in an interview are always open-ended (Semmer,& Zapf, 2017). While questionnaires can collect information from a large number of people, the interviews collect information from a small number of individuals compared to questionnaires.

On the other hand observation method involves the researcher makes themselves as a part of the community doing the observation, this method can help the job analyst learn more about the job at hand over a specified amount of time. In observation, it is allowed to use some tools like include a video which is best for recording non-verbal interaction. An interview is subjective while a questionnaire is objective (Semmer,& Zapf, 2017). All these methods collect information about certain research. These methods can be used to gather, analyze and measure information on variables of interest. These methods are used to provide fact-based information about a job including both the internal and external factors. They also help obtained first-hand information about the job being analyzed.

Job Analysis Plan

For the purpose of conducting an outstanding job analysis, I will have to follow the latter various effective steps which start gathering effective data through the use of questionnaires. The questionnaires will be distributed and answered by the employees which will require them to answer various questions concerning their job descriptions. That will help in comparing the results of the employees based on the questions and expectations of the organization. Then I will have to conduct an interview that will involve the workers for the purpose of asking specific questions. The questions will be based on their job duties and specific responsibilities which they have been given to them by the organization. Apart from that will have to demand an effective log sheet from the workers. The log sheet will have to contain information based on every task there have been involved in, the period they have spent to finish it and it should cover at least two weeks of full-time working (Nenoff, & Mowry, 2015).

Apart from that, I will have to effectively gather more information but through the observation method. That will help me to complete the desk audits via observing the workers in the process of working as I record everything they are doing which is helpful either positive or negative. That will help in noting the time they take to complete their task, the skills and knowledge which they have, areas which they are better in and areas which they are poor in. on the other hand I will have to conduct another interview but have the organizational leadership which will include the managers and supervisors as well as clients and employees who have been interacting directly with the managers and supervisors. After that, I will have to compare the jobs based on the job family and grades for the purpose of determining the area where it falls in terms of payment scale (Nenoff, & Mowry, 2015).

Job Analysis

In terms of the actual job analysis, I had to conduct a meeting with the leadership of the organization for the purpose of getting to fathom the goals and objectives of the organization. Apart from that, I also used that opportunity to grasp the manner in which they have aligned the employee’s goals and objectives with those of the organization. After grasping the expectation of the organization towards the workers, I had to conduct an interview with an incumbent for the purpose of getting more information about the employee, supervisors, managers, and the entire organization before making my conclusions (Hofer, 2018).

I had to ask the incumbent various questions that he answered best to her knowledge. The first question was, for how long have you worked for this organization, and how many positions have you worked since joining the employee’s team? She said that she has been working for the organization for the last six years and she has been changed to two different positions but under the same working level. What are the greatest challenges have you faced since you joined the organization? She was able to be open and talk about personal decision-making when it comes to additional creativity without consulting the line managers or supervisors. What is your greatest weakness? In terms of the weakness, she said she was weak in solving conflict which involves her leaders since she feels she does not have enough courage to correct her leaders due to fear of creating grudges with her leaders (Hoffmann, 2018).

Interpretation and Recommendation of the Job Analysis

The entire process of job analysis went well from the first to the last step. I was able to gather more information showing the strength and weaknesses which is available in the organizational departments among different employees and also with the management of the organization. That was based on the skills and knowledge which the employees portrayed when performing their tasks in the organization. With that kind of information, the organization can be made better and become effective when it comes to competition with its rivals in the market. That is because it will be able to gain a competitive advantage after correcting various mistakes which it has hence mitigating any arising challenges in the organization (Brooks, 2021).

Due to that, I would like to recommend the organization to consider rewarding the employees in different ways such as offering prizes, and mostly promotion of the employees since it shows a sign of growth to them which also enhances their courage to do better and feel valued. Apart from that, the organization should also consider the autonomy of the employees when it comes to the application of creativity and innovation for the benefit of the organization without making mistakes or lowering the level of production or the quality of products. That is because it helps the employees to have positive internal competition based on creativity and innovation which help in making an organization more unique and outstanding compared to its rivals in the market. Through that, the employees feel to have a sense of belonging and the organization can easily gain a competitive advantage over its competitors (Brooks, 2021).

Job analysis in an organization is very significant due to the effectiveness of the role which it plays for the benefit of the organization, clients, and employees. That is because it helps in making an organization better, helps the employees to get what they expect from the organization, and has a comfortable working environment (Nenoff, & Mowry, 2015).On the other side, it helps the customers in terms of ensuring their needs are met and their voices are listened to. That is because it helps in correcting mistakes and combating challenges in an organization in terms of solving effectively the problems which are being faced by the employees, customers, and the employer.

Brooks, N. (2021). How to undertake effective record-keeping and documentation. Nursing Standard , 36 (4), 31-33. https://doi.org/10.7748/ns.2021.e11700

Hofer, E. (2018). Step 6: Present the analysis and interpret its results. The Uncertainty Analysis of Model Results , 265-271. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76297-5_7

Hoffmann, A. (2018). Purpose is a direction – and the power of ‘job-crafting’. Purpose & Impact , 115-120. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351048941-9

Nenoff, T., & Mowry, C. (2015). Develop plan for analysis of the effluent from GCM production. https://doi.org/10.2172/1213493

Semmer, N., & Zapf, D. (2017). Validity of various methods of measurement in job analysis. Recent Developments in Job Analysis , 67-78. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315213712-6

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A Summary and Analysis of the Book of Job
The Book of Job is generally analysed as being divided into five sections. The first of these, the Prologue, which forms the first two chapters of the book, tell us of Job's prosperity and success. We are then told of the misfortunes visited upon him, following God's conversation with Satan (who, in this book, is not synonymous with the ...
Analysis Of The Book Of Job: [Essay Example], 1496 words
In The Book of Job, the main character Job has to endure physical as well as mental pain that God had put upon him. This was a test that tested Job's faith in God and belief that his actions were just. God believed that Job valued him more than the possessions he owned in his human life. He wanted to prove to Satan that faith was true and ...
The Book of Job Critical Essays
Critics divide The Book of Job into three sections: a prose prologue (1:1-2:13), a poetic dialogue (3:1-42:6), and a prose epilogue (42:7-17). The prologue provides an idyllic picture of a semi ...
A Deeper Look at the Book of Job
Job is righteous, more righteous than anyone, or even more precisely "blameless.". According to conventional Biblical wisdom, God will reward a person like Job with prosperity and safety. All this is a given. And the very premise of the text is that this blameless figure becomes the victim of terrible tragedy, on purpose.
The Book of Job Analysis
As the book of Job states that, after all the pains the man of God, Job Underwent, he rose mightier than before. This is one of the best spiritual Motivators ever and will remain the greatest example. Man can accomplish commendable principal life through suffering. Indeed anguish has a reason for someone of devotion.
Best Resources on the Book of Job
Job 28 as Rhetoric: An Analysis of Job 28 in the Context of Job 22-31. VTSup 97. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. ... Given that the introduction to the book and the introduction to most essays give a state of the play in intertextuality discussions, this is a good introduction to that topic. Notably, there is an emphasis on ...
Book of Job Study Guide
In 1826, William Blake published a successful book, Illustrations of the Book of Job, containing 22 engraved prints he made depicting the events in the biblical story. The best study guide to Book of Job on the planet, from the creators of SparkNotes. Get the summaries, analysis, and quotes you need.
The Book of Job Study Guide: Analysis
The Book of Job in the bible tells the story of Job, a righteous man subjected to suffering. The objective of the story was to encourage people to overcome painful situations. Job is blessed with a beautiful family and material possession. Satan is jealous of him and appears before God to ask for permission to persecute him.
Book of Job by Anonymous Plot Summary
Book of Job Summary. A "blameless and upright" man named Job lives in the land of Uz with his large, wealthy household, including many children, servants, and livestock. Job has always worshiped God and resisted evil. He even regularly offers sacrifices to God on his family's behalf. One day in heaven, God and Satan have a conversation.
The Book of Job Further Reading
Essays and criticism on The Book of Job - Further Reading ... Presents a critical analysis of The Book of Job and argues that the book is the work of a single author. Sparks, George Downing. "The ...
The Book of Job in the Bible
Job is one of the Old Testament books in the Bible. It utilizes a combination of poetry and prose to explore themes of individual suffering and God' justice. The main character in the book is Job, a staunch believer who loses wealth, friends, and succumbs to severe pain and suffering. He undergoes a dramatic transformation from wealth to poverty.
The Book of Job Criticism
Essays and criticism on The Book of Job - Criticism. Voltaire (essay date 1764) SOURCE: "Job," in Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, Volume III, translated by William F. Fleming, 1903. Reprint ...
Book of Job Chapter 28 Summary & Analysis
Active Themes. Only God knows where wisdom can be found. In fact, he sees everything under the heavens. He gave the wind its weight, portioned out the waters, and established the weather. God also said to humanity, "the fear of the Lord […] is wisdom.". Job concludes this part of his dialogue by making it clear that only God knows where ...
Bible: The Old Testament Job Summary & Analysis
A summary of Job in Literature's Bible: The Old Testament. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Bible: The Old Testament and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
The Book of Job in a New Light
In a new translation of the Book of Job, the famously repentant hero gives God a piece of his mind. So God says to Satan, "You there, what have you been up to?". And Satan says, "Oh, you ...
A philosophical reading of the Book of Job
The rationality of the world: A philosophical reading of the Book of Job. If the task of philosophy is to show how the world is or can be made rational, then it must address the presence of evil ...
Analytical Essay: The Book Of Job
1750 Words7 Pages. The Book of Job is undoubtedly a great literary work of art. It is poetry bracketed by a prologue and an epilogue written in prose. Its structure is relatively straightforward. The prologue introduces Job as being a righteous and worthy man of God whom Satan seeks to test. Job's test includes a number of trials that include ...
Book Of Job Analysis
Book Of Job Analysis. The book of Job is the first poetic book in the Old Testament that addresses the problem of God's justice through the suffering of Job who goes from having a life filled with joy, happiness, and blessings to having a life filled with pain, sorrow, and suffering. This shift in Job's attitude towards life is a ...
Essay about Exegetical Analysis Of The Book Of Job
Exegetical Methods The two exegetical methods used in this analysis of the Book of Job are feminist interpretation and Catholic exegesis. Selecting the feminist method seemed most appropriate given the story most unfairly ignores Job's wife who was with him thoughout his troubles. However, the second method of exgesis came down to a choice ...
The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations
Abstract. From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of the divine speeches, this book provides an intense encounter with the aesthetic resources of Hebrew verbal art.
Essay on Job Analysis
Published: 2021/12/02. Number of words: 1684. Introduction. Job analysis is the process of identifying and determining the tasks and duties of a given job. A job analysis is done to craft a good job description. it also helps to prepare the employees on what expectations to have about the job by defining clear tasks and objectives to avoid ...
Book Of Job: Film Analysis
Andrey Zvyagintsev's 2014 film Leviathan, is a reinterpretation of the biblical book of Job that explores this link. ... Essay on Film Analysis of the Italian Job. Our analysis is on the film The Italian Job. While we view the movie and determine the various norms, behaviors, roles and interaction between group members, as well as individuals ...
Book Of Job Analysis
The "Book of Job," written in the period between the 7th and 4th centuries BC, is one of the most remarkable pieces of literature ever known to humankind. It also is a moral tale of leadership. It tells the story of Job, who retains his trust in God, in spite of the series of horrific trials he is exposed to.
JEE Main 2024 Paper: Memory-Based Questions and Analysis of 5th April
Aspirants who are appearing in the JEE Main 2024 exam and want a good score, download this 'JEE Main 2024 Paper Analysis: 5th April Evening Shift PDF" which will give you in-depth breakdowns of the Physics, Chemistry & Maths sections. This E-book covers memory-based questions and an overall analysis of the paper which were asked on April 5 (Evening Shift) JEE Main 2024 paper. Uncover the ...