The framework of the story looks straightforward: A righteous man suffering the loss of everything, including his health. But what is there to learn from the debate that followed with Job’s friends?
At least they are introduced as Job’s friends since they were all on good terms during fair weather (Job 2:11-13). And they remained friends amongst themselves. Without doubt, they even regarded their bond as the true ‘fellowship of the saints’, because in their joint attempt to get Job back in line, they fancied to jointly fulfill God’s errand. Surely they didn’t get everything right, but who does? Was it not kind of them to at least try to comfort Job with their insight of seniority in the ‘ministry’, Job 15:10? One might think so – until we pause to hear what their pious-sounding words actually mean.
Why is this growing dispute placed squarely in the middle of a story about the apparent injustice of adversity? Or asked differently, what is the chief adversity that this book seeks to overcome: The loss of mere material blessings that are temporal, or the breakup of relationships that has eternal consequences? Eternal, because light and absence of light, truth and deception are mutually exclusive eternally and therefore cannot and will not mix ever?
What was their lengthy dispute all about?
Curiously, they don’t discuss any specifics of the blows of ‘fate’ that befell Job in chapters 1 & 2. It seems no one is interested in how bad it was for Job, or to offer practical help, or to find useful solutions such as insurance, or new financing, a hospital visit, or at least a pat on the back. In fact, not even Job himself asks for any of that. All he wants is justice, or at least an answer how God can be good if the godly suffer while the wicked prosper (e.g. Job 21).
Perhaps the ancient already had their ways of reaching out with practical help. However, even when there is someone to hold your hand, the question of why bad things happen to ‘good’ people remains. Does the book leave this question simply unanswered?
…the purpose of the Book of Job is to show that the proper relationship between God and man is based solely on the sovereign grace of God and man’s response of faith and submissive trust.
Gregory W. Parsons. The Structure and Purpose of the Book of Job, Bibliotheca Sacra 138 (550)(Apr. 1981) 139-57
Is Job only there to prove that no answer really qualifies as an answer? Is it only about whose hand we hold as our guide, regardless of whether that guide answers any of our questions at all, or whether he instead demands blind trust? If so, what difference would it make which guide you hold on to, if their answers are all equally inadequate, including the answer that there is (supposedly) no answer? Would that be worth the parchment, let alone our time to study it, as a pamphlet for agnosticism?
People vote with their feet. Perhaps this is why Job gets little more than cursory readings if the message up front is that anyone in search of answers is only wasting their time? This blog will not go there, promised.
Job testifies that he received an answer
Job’s tragic losses are the dramatic framework to properly introduce the problem. The ‘painting’ itself consists of ten times as many chapters, starting with the tragedy of having ‘friends’ who made Job’s misery truly unbearable when they turned against him as one, in the name of God.
Yes, Job systematically dismantles their claims, exposing how cruel their wrong answers really are. Hower, while he did this brilliantly, his own anguish in the meantime only continued to increase whether God is worthy of our trust. So if the answer were trivial and cynical that there simply is no answer, what would be the point of introducing the one called Elihu, and of four entire chapters that are called God’s answer to Job?
And if the book were only about exposing the treachery of those friends and the deceptive ideology that united their triumvirate, how would that explain their reconciliation in the end, i.e. that reconciliation became possible at all, and that reconciliation is the climax of the whole story (Job 42:8-10)?
These questions are there to make us wonder how the answers for Job are meant to be answers for us. If they were written down also for us (cf Ro 4:23-24; 1Cor 10:11), we should ask how are they ‘good news’ to Job and to us alike?
Why do religious people refuse to come to Christ to have life, and what does it take to change them?
The Bible is full of surprises, and we should count on finding treasure (Mt 13:52): Both the New and the Old Testament testify of Christ (Jn 5:39). This blog explores how Job found out how he at first resisted to come to Christ to have life (Jn 5:40), and what it took to change him (Jn 5:41-43), hundreds of years before this same Christ was made known by the New Testament.*
To get there, the book of Job for some reason wants the reader to first hear out those friends and why Job could no longer put up with their waffle. This blog aims to do so by paraphrasing the arguments of chapters 4 to 31 summarily in an attempt to boil them down to their essence, and at the risk of missing finer points, and without due attention to their poetic form. This will be followed by a more detailed verse-by-verse analysis of the replies by Elihu (chapters 32-37) and of what Job finally heard from God himself (chapters 38-41), asking: What did Job find in this answer so that it saved him from despair, and even made him an instrument for his adversaries to finally become genuine friends of God as well?
* Job 41:26-27 mentions swords of iron. Although iron has been known since the neolithicum, the mention of iron blades points to an author during the iron age or later (after 1200 BC).
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