Old Testament · Wisdom & Poetry
אִיּוֹב
Suffering on trial, a blameless man, terrible comfort, and an answer out of the whirlwind.
The oldest question, argued at length and never quite answered. A blameless man loses everything, three friends arrive and sit with him in silence for seven days, which is the wisest thing any of them does, and then they open their mouths for thirty chapters. Their argument is the respectable one: suffering is punishment, so confess. Job refuses, not because he is sinless but because he knows that explanation is false, and he demands a hearing. When God finally speaks he answers none of the questions, asking instead about wild goats and the ostrich and the storehouses of snow, and somehow that is enough. The detail readers miss most: God's verdict at the end is that Job spoke rightly about him and the friends did not, which means the pious explanations were the error and the raw complaint was the faith.
If you remember one thing
God never tells Job why. He shows up instead, and the friends who had all the answers are the ones rebuked. The book protects sufferers from their own comforters.
“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.”
Job 19:25
Job 1:6-12
God permits the testing in response to a challenge. The scene raises questions the book never answers, and Job is never told about it.
Job 42:7-9
God's anger at the friends for not speaking rightly, after thirty chapters of what sounds like orthodox theology from them, which is the book's most disorienting reversal.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
The chiefs and kings descended from Esau, listed in Genesis 36 and again in 1 Chronicles 1. Teman becomes a byword for wisdom, which is why Job's friend Eliphaz is a Temanite and why Jeremiah asks whether counsel has perished from Teman.
A wealthy man of Uz, described as blameless and upright, who loses his children, his property, and his health in a single stroke, and spends thirty-eight chapters demanding an explanation from God. His three friends come to comfort him, sit with him in silence for seven days, and then start talking.
The Hebrew word satan means adversary or accuser, and in its earliest uses it is a role rather than a name, complete with the definite article: the accuser, standing in the heavenly court to press a case, as in Job and Zechariah.
A quiz for Job is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
