The Book of Job belongs to the literature on wisdom after captivity. It was created from dissatisfaction of world view of older wisdom, which still promised a certain pathway for people to luck and success and as well as solution for mysteries. According to this doctrine the human destiny is the result of conduct. Who is wise enough and staying loyal to the Lord, can be rewarded only. And that one can blame oneself only for any adversity.
In The Book of Job such issues are discussed which characterized the age after captivity. At that time, man no longer found support in the community that carried him and did not share its fate without any problems. Now he already considered himself an independent individual with unique fate. And this challenge no longer could been answered by the old traditional wisdom. This demanded a revision of the old faith. In other words the religion got challenged, first time in the history. And because the concrete observed reality has often clashed with traditional teachings, critical voices questioned the faith inherited from the ancestors. In addition to the book of Job, this phenomenon is especially evident in the book of Ecclesiastes.
This book shows through Job’s example, who had to suffer the most severe punishments completely innocently, the limitations of older wisdom. The four friends who, according to the patterns of traditional wisdom, want to enlighten Job about the causes of his suffering, completely ignore the reality of the suffering man, and they seemed as mockers in eyes of Job. Job is increasingly passionately rejecting his friends ’assumptions and sticking to his innocence. He appeals on God, on whose part he believes he has been treated wrongfully.
The Book of Job is an instructive poem, which is not about a specific incident, but wants to introduce the questionable nature of older life interpretation via an extreme example. In real life, one can never prove one’s impunity; deeper insight also denies the possibility of this in principle, as the friends of Job proved this with good reason (4,17-19; 15,14-16; 25-4-6; Rom 3,9-18.23. But in certain cases can be said the smallness of a man’s sin is not in harmony with the magnitude of the misfortune he has suffered. Who suffered Job’s fate described in first and second part – if the teaching of doctrine is correct – must be a true villain.
But after all The Book of Job is written to rule out the possibility of liability for misfortune. It’s turned out from the double heavenly ‘foregames’, the innocent Job is inflicted by adversities only for trialing his loyalty. Between our actions and success in accordance with the old teaching can be resulting that consequences someone is obeying to will of lord just because it benefits for him. This is – fatal to all piety – suspicion, which the Satan says as accuser before the throne of God (1,9): “Job fears God not without reason”. And indeed, Job has been an example of wisdom and exemplary piety so far, as we can see in his story (1,18), which were associated with above-average prosperity and undisturbed family happiness. But whether he sticks with piety if it no longer benefits him? The accuser offers a ‘bet’ to God: Take away all of his wealth, his health either, “he will curse you” (1,11; 2,5).
With this, it is obvious to the reader that Job’s friends are taking a false path with their suspicions. But aside from clarifying this the ‘bet’ between Satan and God has no more significance in enlighting of the Job’s problem. If the author of the book wanted to say that suffering should also be seen as a test of God, would have attained the purpose right in the second part with showing Job’s loyalty. But for understanding Job’s fate the real struggle began only in the third part with outbreak of complaints. He withdraws his former and exemplary rest in incomprehensible will of God. He does not blaspheme or deny God though, being aware of his innocence – according to the idea of the entire wisdom – yet he demands his truth from God. But God for this getting fiercer challenge does not answer with approving Job’s innocence, revealing the background of heavenly ‘bet’, but he orders back the indignant man into within his own human limitations (38-41.). There is no more talk of betting. Corresponding to this, Job is not shown as exemplary gracious, but only as a desperate, suffering, malcontent man.
This tension is resolved if we accept that this book, in its present form, was not born of a unified poetic idea, but it went through certain progression. Even in style, the speeches of friends, Job, and God in Hebrew verse are different from that prose framework about Job’s happiness trials based upon divine bet, restoration of happiness. We can see in the first, second, and forty-second chapters’ framework discussion a folk story in which the poet of speeches inserts his own conclusions, and at the same time he brokes the idea of an original narrative with his own problem raising.
The subject of the framework discussion was obviously an ancient Western Asian sentence. Job, who is called exemplary gracious even in Ez 14, 14.20, according to this tradicion in the age of patriarchs – Abraham and others – had been living as half-nomad man outside of Palestine, at the edge of desert, in the land of Uc (1,1). The three friends of him are not Israeli either. The name of Job – in Hebrew Ijjob – was very common at the first half of second millennium BC; meaning “Where is the father?”. In this sense the father is obviously the God.
The essence of folk narrative is reserving the piety even in the midst of severe suffering and affliction. That a merciful man really prefers God and his will over his own wealth, needing God only for ensuring it, reveals in not deserving and severe cruelty. The framework discussion is an example of how such a person can pass the test: “the lord giveth and the lord taketh away blessed be the name of the lord!” (1,21, and 2,10). The framework in the background of ‘betting’ shows that we must not see in such sufferings a sign of God’s wrath for some transgression, but can be seen as such a test in which piety is truly seen in its purity. But yet, this alone does not invalidate the connection between our prosperity and our actions. The innocent and exemplary Job, even in his own misery, eventually receives new family happiness and twice his lost fortune (42,10-17).
In contrast to this the poet of the middle main part describes Job in debate with his friends in such a way, like who rebels against God as his torturer at the verge of blasphemy (9,19-22). Unlike the framework discussion, this does not answer the question of the meaning of suffering. The mystery of innocent suffering remains unsolved until the end of the story. The poet of the parables was therefore interested in that question, how to remain faith in God even in the face of such unsolved mysteries. Is the suffering of the innocent opposed to the rule of God’s just world? Does this refute the belief in the goodness of the creator?
Words of God in 38-41. can be understood at first glance as if he is claiming blind obedience from Job, substantiating Job’s suspicion with this, that God’s righteousness and unrighteousness effect on anyone with no regard of conduct (9,22). Job must recognize how recklessness is daring to judge over God’s pathway as human. God’s action cannot be measured by the extent of human expectations. But mentioning examples of creator methods of God makes clear that he furnished the world wisely, and rules over it wisely. His goodness turns to all creatures. The human can recognize this even if he does not recognize this goodness in his life, yet. The ‘predictable’ image of God in traditional philosophy is not replaced by some unpredictable arbitrary God, whom Job sees him in his desperation, but rather God encourages man in recognizable wisdom of subjects of creation to trust him even when he leads him through precarious and incomprehensible pathways.
It is essential to break the need for human wisdom to make the God comprehensible and his action adopts the standard of human approached justice, which nourishes Job’s protest either. No one can be a discussion partner of God, since no one can be right against God. Since Job passionately rejected the answers and cliches about God of his friends from their narrow minded approach, this is the reason he was closer to God even in his rebellion, than his friends with their theological truths: “You did not speak of me as correctly as my servant Job” (42,8). Whereas Job knew, despite all rebuke, that God accepted him. That’s why he can say yes to his destiny and that’s why he can stay in his rediscovered fellowship with God.
We know nothing about the author of Book of Job. We know only that we can search him amongst the circle of poets of wisdom, and he was a man blessed with special poetic talent. The date of the work is presumed to be the 4th or 3rd century BC. His work was supplemented with the speeches of a fourth friend, Elihu, by a later author who wanted to understand the friends’ position on Job (32-37).
Elihu’s speeches emphasize in particular that we do not necessarily have to see punishment in suffering, or reaction of committed transgressions. Those also can be the a means of education, by which God wants to purify his chosen ones. And if this is the meaning of pain and sickness, we have no reason to doubt the justice of God’s divine world rule; rather, the goodness of God is manifested in it, with it he just wants to protect man from that evil. Here the strict connection between the sin and punishment that governs the speech of friends is broken, but it’s another attempt for human to determine the meaning of God’s actions. Thus, even the fourth friend does not attain with his wisdom the enlightenment that is revealed in the encounter with the living god before Job.
Division:
Job’s piety, his tribulation, and his complaint 1-3
Job’s discussion with his friends 4-28
Job’s closing word 29-31
Elihu’s speech 32-37
God’s answer 38-42
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