Today in our journey along Route 66 we are visiting the book of Job.
Author
As with the authors of most of most biblical books, the author of Job is anonymous and unknown.
Date
There are many allusions in the book of Job to the exilic and post exilic Isaiah (chapters 40-66). Furthermore, the book of Job uses the Hebrew word, Satan (Adversary), a word that is only used in one other book of the Old Testament, the postexilic Zechariah. Therefore, most modern scholars agree that the book of Job was composed sometime during the period from the mid-6th century to the mid-4th century BCE.
Despite this late date of composition, there are affinities between the language of this book and earlier biblical literature. Perhaps the author was trying to make the language of this book sound older to suggest a setting from long ago.
Themes
The book of Job deals with the problem of pain which, simply put, is this: If God were good, he would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, he would be able to do what he wished. However, human beings are not always happy, therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.
Part of the biblical answer to this dilemma is to point out that God, in his goodness, has given to human beings (and to angels) free will, thus, in some sense, limiting his own power. All evil and pain may then be a result, in some fashion, from the abuse of free will. However, it is problematic at best to draw a one-to-one correspondence between a particular person’s suffering and the abuse of free will. Conventional wisdom, in the book of Job and in some religious circles even today, suggests that if a person is suffering it is because of their own sin.
The book of Job spends forty-two very eloquent chapters refuting this notion. We are told numerous times at the beginning of the book that Job was about as good as a human being could be. The point of the prologue, in part, is to show that Job’s suffering is not a result of his own sin. Rather, his suffering is the result of an action that Satan wishes to carry out. And God allows Satan to inflict pain upon Job. Thus, Job’s bit of pain is a result of Satan abusing his own free will. God presumably allows this pain for Job’s own good. As a result of his suffering, Job comes to know God more personally by the end of the story than he does at the beginning. This suggests that pain, while not part of God’s original purpose for humanity, is used by God to draw humanity closer to himself.
Structure
I. Prose Prologue (1-2)
A. Job’s happiness (1:1-5)
B. A wager in “heaven” & Job’s testing (1:6-2:13)
II. Poem (3:1-42:6)
A. Dialogue/Dispute (3-27)
1. Job’s opening lament (3)
2. First cycle of speeches (4-14)
3. Second cycle of speeches (15-21)
4. Third cycle of speeches (22-26)
5. Job’s closing discourse (27)
B. Interlude on Wisdom (28)
C. Monologues (29:1-42:6)
1. Job’s plea for vindication (29-31)
2. Elihu’s speeches (32-37)
3. Divine discourses (38:1-42:6)
III. Prose Epilogue (42:7-17)
A. God’s verdict (42:7-9)
B. Job’s restoration (42:10-17)
Key Concept—Perseverance
How are we to sum up the book of Job? The New Testament book of James sums up Job in one word. In James 5:11 we read,
As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
Perseverance—that is what James says the story of Job is all about.
However, before we proceed further, we must ask and answer the question: what kind of literature are we dealing with in the book of Job? C. S. Lewis answers that question this way …
The Book of Job appears to me unhistorical because it begins about a man quite unconnected with all history or even legend, with no genealogy, living in a country of which the Bible elsewhere has hardly anything to say, because, in fact, the author quite obviously writes as a story-teller not as a chronicler.
I believe Lewis is correct and most modern biblical scholars would agree. The book of Job is a story, not history. Furthermore, it is a story told in both prose and poetry.
So, who is this character, Job? The first thing the author tells us about Job is that he lives in the land of Uz. Not “Oz” but “Uz”, though the latter may sound as strange to us as the former. “Uz” is the poetic name for Edom (Lamentations 4:21). And the Bible tells us that the Edomites were the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau. Transjordan, of which Edom is the southernmost part, is often referred to in the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts as Kedem, translated in Job 1:3 as “the East”. The Kedemites were known for their wisdom (1 Kings 5:10). Job is one of three wisdom books we have in the Old Testament, the other two being Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
The author of this book tells us that Job was blameless and upright, he feared God and shunned evil. Job acted as a priest for his family. And, to top it all off, Job was a wealthy man.
As the story continues, we see Job’s life becoming a battleground for a cosmic conflict between God and Satan, literally “the Satan” or “the Adversary”. The Satan is one of the divine beings in God’s heavenly court. The book of Job also calls these beings “angels”. The Satan functions as a sort of prosecuting attorney. Later in the development of Hebrew Scripture (1 Chronicles 21:1), the Satan is seen as the source of evil and rebellion against God. Eventually, by the time of the New Testament, Satan becomes a proper name and he is also called, more simply, the devil (Matthew 4:1).
In this book, the Satan predicts that Job will give up his faith if the Lord takes away his wealth and family. So, the Lord gives the Satan permission to take away Job’s wealth and children, so long as the Satan spares Job’s life.
Now, upon hearing or reading this we might be tempted to say with St. Teresa of Avila, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!”
Often, we wonder why God allows Satan to tempt us, or to bring about suffering in our lives when we haven’t done anything wrong. The book of Job reveals that the same things that Satan uses to derail us in our spiritual journey, God uses to develop us. In chapter 23 Job says, “When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”
The book of Job also reminds us that we don’t have all the answers. We simply do not know why God does all that he does. But the book suggests that it is better to know the Lord than to know all the answers.
By God’s grace working in his life, Job discovered that he could face anything. He did not give up his faith in the Lord. He persevered even through much pain and suffering. As Abraham Heschel once wrote, “Faith like Job’s cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.” Through suffering, Job developed endurance.
Did you know that when golf balls were first manufactured, they had smooth covers? Then it was discovered that after a ball had been roughed up, one could get more distance out of it. So, they started manufacturing golf balls with dimpled covers. So it is with life; rough spots can be used by God to strengthen us to go the distance.
Another important point to note is that while Job did persevere, he was not patient. William Barclay explains…
We generally speak of the patience of Job which is the word the Authorized Version uses. But patience is far too passive a word. There is a sense in which Job was anything but patient. As we read the tremendous drama of his life we see him passionately resenting what has come upon him, passionately questioning the conventional arguments of his so-called friends, passionately agonizing over the terrible thought that God might have forsaken him. Few men have spoken such passionate words as he did; but the great fact about him is that in spite of all the agonizing questionings which tore at his heart, he never lost his faith in God… The word used of him is that great New Testament word hupomone, which describes, not a passive patience, but that gallant spirit which can breast the tides of doubt and sorrow and disaster and come out with faith still stronger on the other side.
So how did Job persevere through suffering? As I read through the book of Job, I see at least four steps that helped Job to persevere. First, Job persevered by worshipping God amidst suffering. We read in Job 1:20-21 about Job’s response to the first bit of suffering that God allowed into his life…
At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
Second, Job persevered by accepting his circumstances as from God’s hand. In Job 2:9-10 we read about Mrs. Job’s response to their suffering…
His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
Job’s wife did not accept their circumstances. Her choice was to curse God. But Job chose to adopt a different attitude. As Viktor Frankl points out in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, we cannot choose what happens to us in life, but we can choose our response.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Frankl was a Jew who was interred in a concentration camp during WWII and survived the Holocaust, so I think he knew what he was talking about.
Job and his wife both faced horrendous circumstances. Job’s wife chose to curse God because of their circumstances. Job chose to keep trusting God despite his circumstances.
Third, Job persevered by being more concerned about not denying the Lord than he was about his own pain.
Make no mistake, Job must have been in excruciating physical and emotional pain. He lost his children. He lost his wealth. He lost his health. He longed for death. But notice Job’s main concern. In Job 6:8-10 we read…
“Oh, that I might have my request,
that God would grant what I hope for,
that God would be willing to crush me,
to let loose his hand and cut off my life!
Then I would still have this consolation—
my joy in unrelenting pain—
that I had not denied the words of the Holy One.
Job’s main concern was that he would not deny the words of the Holy One. Job longed, more than anything else, to remain faithful to the Lord.
Fourth, Job persevered by remembering that his Redeemer was alive. In Job 19:25-27 we read…
I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
The word in Hebrew for “redeemer” is “go’el”. In the book of Ruth, we saw how Boaz acted as the kinsman-redeemer for Ruth and her family. The term is sometimes applied to God in the Old Testament as the redeemer of Israel. Was Job hoping to see God after death? We do not hear of such a hope very much in the Old Testament. But a belief in resurrection did develop in the post-exilic period, so that may be Job’s hope.
What may be a hazy hope in the case of Job is a sure anchor of hope for us as Christians. Our redeemer is Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead. And we shall surely see him. In 1 John 3:2 we read these words…
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
One final thing we see in the book of Job is that the Lord blessed Job in the end. In Job 42:12 we read, “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first.”
We all tend to look at suffering in our lives and forget that we are only in Act 2, so to speak. The play isn’t over. God isn’t finished with us yet. Many years ago, the great Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, wrote…
Consider him that waits for a crop of corn; and will not you wait for a crown of glory? If you should be called to wait longer than the husbandman, is not there something more worth waiting for? In every sense the coming of the Lord drew nigh, and all his people’s losses, hardships, and sufferings, would be repaid. Men count time long, because they measure it by their own lives; but all time is as nothing to God; it is as a moment. To short-lived creatures a few years seem an age; but Scripture, measuring all things by the existence of God, reckons thousands of years but so many days. God brought about things in Job’s case, so as plainly to prove that he is very pitiful and of tender mercy. This did not appear during his troubles, but was seen in the event, and believers now will find a happy end to their trials. Let us serve our God, and bear our trials, as those who believe that the end will crown all. Our eternal happiness is safe if we trust to him: all else is mere vanity, which soon will be done with for ever.
Amidst suffering, we often ask “why?” as Job did. There is seldom a complete answer in this life. But this poem by Martha Snell Nicholson, that my father often quoted, has brought me encouragement time and time again…
One by one He took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Until I was empty-handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.
And I walked earth’s highways, grieving,
In my rags and poverty.
Till I heard His voice inviting,
“Lift your empty hands to me!”
So I held my hands toward heaven
And He filled them with a store
Of His own transcendent riches,
Till they could contain no more.
And at last I comprehended
With my stupid mind and dull
That God could not pour His riches
Into hands already full.
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