Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [114]
PLOT SUMMARY: JOB
God is boasting about how faithful a servant Job is when Satan (or in Hebrew, “the Accuser” or “Adversary”) says, “Sure he’s a good guy. He has everything. Take it all away and see how good he is.”
Accepting Satan’s dare, God allows Satan to do his worst. Job loses everything, including his ten children who die when their house collapses in a windstorm. Despite the terrible tragedy, Job stands strong. Challenged a second time, God allows Satan to further test Job by covering his body with painful sores. When Job’s wife tells him, “Curse God, and die”—in other words, just put and end to your misery—Job faithfully answers that he must take both the good and the bad from God. That’s how most people thought the story ended, with a dutiful, obedient Job refusing to question the Lord. But it is really just the beginning.
Three of Job’s friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—arrive to offer “sympathy,” or at least discuss the subject of divine justice. The consoling friends quickly assume that Job must have done something wrong to deserve the punishment he is receiving. Angrily protesting his innocence and railing against his fate, Job curses the day he was born, no longer appearing quite the faithful servant of God meekly accepting his fate. Another character, Elihu, appears and attempts to vindicate his own view of God’s mysterious ways, but Job counters each of his arguments with continuing protests of innocence, pointing out how evil people seem to prosper.
Ultimately, God himself arrives to speak directly to Job from a whirlwind, telling him that for humans to discuss how God functions is presumptuous, since God is utterly beyond mortal understanding. At the same time, God’s showing up for a face-to-face encounter with this mere mortal is supposed to demonstrate how much God cares for Job. This occasionally sarcastic God—“Surely you know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great,” God cuttingly says to Job—argues that Job doesn’t even comprehend what a big task being God is. From ordering the heaves to letting “the wild ass go free,” God has lots of balls to juggle. Chastened by God’s unanswerable questions to him, Job is repentant. Instead of getting a clear answer to the questions he had posed to God, Job recognizes God’s awesome power and realizes that he can never comprehend God’s purpose. He repents for his weakness in questioning God.
With that, God reproaches Job’s three friends and orders them to make a special sacrifice. God then restores Job and his fortunes, bringing him even greater happiness and prosperity than he had enjoyed before. Scholars debate whether the family given to Job at the end of the book is the same seven sons and three daughters he had at the beginning, or whether they are ten new children. However, the book closes with Job giving the three girls names: Jemimah (“Dove”), Keziah (“cassia” or “cinnamon”), and Kerenhappuch (“horn of eye cosmetic”). If they were his own children, why would Job give them new names?
BIBLICAL VOICES
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
“Who is this that darkens counsel
by words without
knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you
shall declare to me.
Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have
understanding.
Who determined its
measurements—surely you
know!
Or who stretched the line
upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid the cornerstone
when the morning stars sang
together
and all the heavenly beings
shouted for joy?” (Job 38:1-7)
Why does God make bets with Satan?
For about twenty-five hundred years, the meaning of Job has puzzled people. The traditional depiction of Job was an over-simplification, presenting a picture of a