Job 1–42

Job

A good man loses everything for no reason he's ever told. The friends who make it worse, God's answer from the storm, and an ending that doesn't tidy up.

The story

Job is the most blameless man on earth, and the text says so before anything else. Rich, ten kids, a habit of offering sacrifices for his children just in case they'd sinned in their hearts. Then the scene cuts to heaven. God points Job out to Satan, the accuser, and the accuser asks the question the whole book hangs on: does Job fear God for nothing? Take it all away and he'll curse you to your face. God says: everything he has is in your hand. Just not him.

One day, four messengers, each arriving while the last is still talking. Raiders took the oxen and donkeys and killed the servants. Fire from the sky burned the sheep. Chaldeans took the camels. A wind hit the house where all ten of his children were eating, and they're dead. Job tears his robe, shaves his head, and falls down. And worships. Naked I came, naked I'll go. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken. Blessed be his name. The text says he didn't sin or blame God.

Round two. The accuser says skin for skin; touch his body and he'll break. God allows it, short of killing him. Job is covered in sores from scalp to sole and sits in the ashes scraping himself with a piece of broken pot. His wife says: still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die. Job says she's talking like a fool. Shall we take good from God and not trouble? He doesn't sin with his lips. The text is careful to say lips.

Three friends come. When they see him from a distance they don't recognize him. They weep, tear their clothes, and sit on the ground with him for seven days and nights without a word, because they can see how bad it is. That silence is the best thing they do in the whole book.

Then Job opens his mouth and curses the day he was born, and for chapter after chapter they argue. The friends' position, dressed up in a lot of poetry, is that God is just, so Job must have done something. Job's position is that he didn't, that he'd say so to God's face, and that he wants a hearing. He never curses God. He does accuse him. He says God is treating him like an enemy, and he demands an answer.

He gets one, from a whirlwind, and it's not what anyone expected. God doesn't explain. He asks questions. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? Who shut the sea behind doors? Have you seen where the snow is stored? Can you tie up the Pleiades? Do you feed the lions? Did you make the horse brave? Chapter after chapter of it, then Behemoth, then Leviathan, the sea monster nobody can hook. Job says: I'm small. I'll put my hand over my mouth. God goes again. Job says, finally: I'd heard about you; now I've seen you. So I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

Then the turn. God says to the friends: I'm angry with you, because you haven't spoken rightly about me, as my servant Job has. The ones who defended God are in trouble. The one who argued with him is called his servant. Job prays for them and God accepts him. His fortune is doubled. He has ten more children, and the daughters are named and given an inheritance alongside their brothers, which was not normal. He lives 140 more years and dies old and full of days.

The verse to keep

Job 42:5WEB

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

Gen Zsame meaning, your words

I'd only ever heard about you from other people. Now I've seen you for myself.

Job never gets his ‘why’. What he gets instead is this. Whether it's enough is the question the book leaves with you.

What it actually means

The friends' theology is the one most people hold without noticing: good things happen to good people, so if something terrible happened, look for the cause. Job's book exists to say that this is false, and that saying it to a suffering person is cruel. God's verdict at the end is aimed at the people who defended him with tidy answers. If you're the one in the ashes, this is the book that says you're allowed to shout.

God's answer doesn't answer. Job never finds out about the conversation in chapter one; he's never told why. What he gets is God, in person, taking him seriously enough to speak, and a tour of a creation far bigger and stranger than his own case. Somehow that's enough for him. Not an explanation. A presence. Whether that would be enough for you is a fair question, and the book doesn't pressure you on it.

The ending is the part people rush. Job gets double the livestock and ten new children, and it can sound like the deal the accuser was accusing him of. But children aren't replaceable. The first ten are still dead, and there's no line where Job stops grieving them. What the ending gives is a man who has been through the worst and is still able to receive good again, and to hand out inheritances to his daughters like a man who's stopped keeping score. That's not a bow on the story. It's a life carrying on with the losses inside it.

Worth arguing about

1Job's friends sat in silence for seven days and it was the best thing they did. What does that say about how to be with someone who's grieving?
2God said Job spoke rightly about him, and Job spent thirty chapters accusing God. What does ‘speaking rightly’ mean, then?
3God never tells Job why. Would an explanation have helped? Would it help you?
4The new children don't replace the old ones. What does the ending actually give Job?

Read it yourself: Job 1–2

World English Bible. 35 verses.

¹There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God, and turned away from evil. ²There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. ³His possessions also were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the children of the east. ⁴His sons went and held a feast in the house of each one on his birthday; and they sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them. ⁵It was so, when the days of their feasting had run their course, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts.” Job did so continually. ⁶Now on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before the LORD, Satan also came among them. ⁷The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, “From going back and forth on the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” ⁸The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant, Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil.” ⁹Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? ¹⁰Haven’t you made a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. ¹¹But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will renounce you to your face.” ¹²The LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power. Only on himself don’t stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. ¹³It fell on a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, ¹⁴that a messenger came to Job, and said, “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them, ¹⁵and the Sabeans attacked, and took them away. Yes, they have killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” ¹⁶While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “The fire of God has fallen from the sky, and has burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” ¹⁷While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “The Chaldeans made three bands, and swept down on the camels, and have taken them away, yes, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you.” ¹⁸While he was still speaking, there came also another, and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, ¹⁹and behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young men, and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you.” ²⁰Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped. ²¹He said, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked will I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the LORD’s name.” ²²In all this, Job didn’t sin, nor charge God with wrongdoing. ^2:1Again, on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before the LORD, Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD. ²The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, and said, “From going back and forth on the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” ³The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause.” ⁴Satan answered the LORD, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. ⁵But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.” ⁶The LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.” ⁷So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head. ⁸He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes. ⁹Then his wife said to him, “Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die.” ¹⁰But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job didn’t sin with his lips. ¹¹Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him. ¹²When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn’t recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky. ¹³So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.

Whole book: Job

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