Book of Job


The Book of Job, or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim section of the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.
The language of the Book of Job, combining post-Babylonian Hebrew and Aramaic influences, indicates it was composed during the Persian period, with the poet using Hebrew in a learned, literary manner. It addresses the problem of evil, providing a theodicy through the experiences of the eponymous protagonist. It is structured with a prose prologue and epilogue framing poetic dialogues and monologues, including three cycles of debates between Job and his friends, Job's lamentations, the Poem to Wisdom, Elihu's speeches, and God's two speeches from a whirlwind.
Job is a wealthy God-fearing man with a comfortable life and a large family. God discusses Job's piety with a character called the adversary. The adversary rebukes God, stating that Job would turn away from God if he were to lose everything within his possession. God decides to test that theory by allowing the adversary to inflict pain on Job. Job is tested through extreme suffering, including the loss of his wealth, children, and health, yet he maintains his piety while challenging the justice of God. Job defends himself against his unsympathetic friends, whom God admonishes. The dialogues explore human frailty and the inaccessibility of divine wisdom, culminating in God highlighting His omnipotence and Job confessing his limited understanding. Job's fortunes and family are restored in the epilogue.
The book has influenced Jewish and Christian theology and liturgy, as well as Western culture. It parallels wisdom traditions from Mesopotamia and Egypt. In Islam, Job is revered as a prophet exemplifying steadfast faith.

Structure

The Book of Job consists of a prose prologue and epilogue narrative framing poetic dialogues and monologues. It is common to view the narrative frame as the original core of the book, enlarged later by the poetic dialogues and discourses, and sections of the book such as the Elihu speeches and the wisdom poem of chapter 28 as late insertions, but recent trends have tended to concentrate on the book's underlying editorial unity.
  1. : in two scenes, the first on Earth, the second in Heaven
  2. – seen by some scholars as a bridge between the prologue and the dialogues and by others as the beginning of the dialogues – and between Job and his three friends; the third cycle is not complete, the expected speech of Zophar being replaced by the wisdom poem of chapter 28.
  3. :
  4. , with Job's responses
  5. – Job's restoration

    Contents

Prologue on Earth and in Heaven

In chapter 1, the prologue on Earth introduces Job as a righteous man, blessed with wealth, sons, and daughters, who lives in the land of Uz. The scene then shifts to Heaven, where God asks Satan for his opinion of Job's piety. Satan accuses Job of being pious only because he believes God is responsible for his happiness; if God were to take away everything that Job has, then he would surely curse God.
God gives Satan permission to strip Job of his wealth and kill his children and servants, but Job nonetheless praises God:
In chapter 2, God further allows Satan to afflict Job's body with disfiguring and painful boils. As Job sits in the ashes of his former estate, his wife prompts him to "curse God, and die", but Job answers:

Job's opening monologue and dialogues between Job and his three friends

In chapter 3, "instead of cursing God", Job laments the night of his conception and the day of his birth; he longs for death, "but it does not come".
His three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, visit him, accuse him of sinning, and tell him that his suffering was deserved. Job responds with scorn, calling his visitors "miserable comforters". Job asserts that since a just God would not treat him so harshly, patience in suffering is impossible, and the Creator should not take his creatures so lightly, to come against them with such force.
Job's responses represent one of the most radical restatements of Israelite theology in the Hebrew Bible. He moves away from the pious attitude shown in the prologue and begins to berate God for the disproportionate wrath against him. He sees God as, among others,
  • intrusive and suffocating
  • unforgiving and obsessed with destroying a human target
  • angry
  • fixated on punishment
  • hostile and destructive
Job then shifts his focus from the injustice that he himself suffers to God's governance of the world. He suggests that God does nothing to punish the wicked, who have taken advantage of the needy and the helpless, who, in turn, have been left to suffer the significant hardships inflicted on them.

Three monologues: Poem to Wisdom, Job's closing monologue

The dialogues of Job and his friends are followed by a poem on the inaccessibility of wisdom: "Where is wisdom to be found?" it asks; it concludes in chapter 28 that wisdom has been hidden from humankind. Job contrasts his previous fortune with his present plight as an outcast, mocked and in pain. He protests his innocence, lists the principles he has lived by, and demands that God answer him.

Elihu's speeches

A character not previously mentioned, Elihu, intrudes into the story and occupies chapters 32–37. The narrative describes him as stepping out of a crowd of bystanders irate. He intervenes to state that wisdom comes from God, who reveals it through dreams and visions to those who will then declare their knowledge.

Two speeches by God

From chapter 38, God speaks from a whirlwind. God's speeches do not explain Job's suffering, defend divine justice, enter into the courtroom of confrontation that Job has demanded, or respond to his oath of innocence of which the narrative prologue shows God is well aware.
Instead, God changes the subject to human frailty and contrasts Job's weakness with divine wisdom and omnipotence: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Job responds briefly, but God's monologue resumes, never addressing Job directly.
In Job 42:1–6, Job makes his final response, confessing God's power and his own lack of knowledge "of things beyond me which I did not know". Previously, he has only heard God, but now his eyes have seen God, and therefore, he declares, "I retract and repent in dust and ashes".

Epilogue

God tells Eliphaz that he and the two other friends "have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has done".
The three are told to make a burnt offering with Job as their intercessor, "for only to him will I show favour". Elihu, the critic of Job and his friends, is notably omitted from this part of the narrative.
The epilogue describes Job's health being restored, his riches and family being remade, and Job living to see the new children born into his family produce grandchildren up to the fourth generation.

Additions to Job

Among other alterations to the Book of Job, the Septuagint features an extended epilogue. Continuing from the end of 42:17, the Greek edition confirms that Job will be resurrected with the righteous. The addition further identifies Job with Jobab in Genesis, the great-grandson of Esau and a king of Edom. Furthermore, Eliphaz in the story of Job is identified as Esau's firstborn son, Eliphaz, and the king of Taiman; Baldad is noted as the ruler of the Sauchites, and Sophar is noted as the king of the Minneans.
The addition contains several parallels with the writings of Aristeas the Exegete, quoted by Alexander Polyhistor who in turn was quoted in Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica 9.25.1-4.

Composition

Authorship, language, texts

The character Job appears in the 6th-century BCE Book of Ezekiel as an exemplary righteous man of antiquity, and the author of the Book of Job has apparently chosen this legendary hero for his parable. The language of the Book of Job, combining post-Babylonian Hebrew and Aramaic influences, indicates it was composed during the Persian period, with the poet using Hebrew in a learned, literary manner. The anonymous author was almost certainly an Israelite—although the story is set outside Israel, in southern Edom or northern Arabia—and alludes to places as far apart as Mesopotamia and Egypt. Despite the Israelite origins, it appears that the Book of Job was composed in a time in which wisdom literature was common but not acceptable to Judean sensibilities.
The speeches of Elihu differ in style from the rest of the book, and neither God nor Job appear to take any note of what he has said; as a result, it is widely believed that Elihu's speeches are a later addition by another author.
The language of Job stands out for its conservative spelling and exceptionally large number of words and word forms not found elsewhere in the Bible. Many later scholars, down to the 20th century, have looked for an Aramaic, Arabic, or Edomite origin, but a close analysis suggests that the foreign words and foreign-looking forms are literary affectations designed to lend authenticity to the book's distant setting and give it a foreign flavor.

Modern revisions

Job exists in a number of forms: the Hebrew Masoretic Text, which underlies many modern Bible translations; the Greek Septuagint made in Egypt in the last centuries BCE; and Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In the Latin Vulgate, the New Revised Standard Version, and in Protestant Bibles, it is placed after the Book of Esther as the first of the poetic books. In the Hebrew Bible, it is located within the Ketuvim. John Hartley notes that in Sephardic manuscripts, the texts are ordered as Psalms, Job, and Proverbs, but in Ashkenazic texts, the order is Psalms, Proverbs, and then Job. In the Catholic Jerusalem Bible, it is described as the first of the "wisdom books" and follows the two books of the Maccabees.