Day 144. Job 1-4

After the inspired silliness of the Book of Esther, now we are into something quite different. Job is one of the enduring monuments of world literature, admired by people of all shades of belief and unbelief.
But who is Job anyway? Is he a real person? He is enveloped in mysteries. We don't know where the land of Uz is. Job is called "the greatest of all the people of the East" (1:3), but we don't know if he is an Israelite. He leaves no evidence of his existence outside the book that bears his name and a scant number of references to him elsewhere in the Bible (see Ezekiel 14:12-20). Did he exist? Well, among the many questions the book presents, that one hardly matters. He is very real in the story. He is a rich man who has prospered because he "[fears] God and [turns] away from evil" (1:1). He is rich because he is good. His wealth and his many children are signs that he is "blameless and upright." Wealth and good fortune are the direct consequence of leading a righteous life—this is the popular, comfortable belief of people in Old Testament times. (And many people still believe it.)
But things are about to change. Suddenly we are transported to the heavenly court where the LORD is enthroned like an oriental monarch. Like couriers, his angels come to attend him, and among them is Satan. This is not the devil as we think of him, the spirit of absolute evil. "The Satan" in Hebrew means "the accuser;" in God's court Satan is the prosecuting attorney, the "spirit of contradiction." He takes nothing for granted. He is there to investigate and uncover the real nature of things. The subject of Job and his blameless life arises. Satan, characteristically, refuses to accept virtue at face value. He challenges God to "touch all that he has"; the result will be that Job will curse God to his face (1:11). Job's righteousness is totally a matter of self-interest. His goodness is mechanical. "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan sneers (1:9). And God, uncharacteristically, accepts the bet and gives all that Job has into
the hands of Satan to test him. (But does God really work like this? Does he make bets with the devil? In the story he does.)
So everything that Job owns is taken from him, his sons and daughters together with his other possessions. But Job does "not sin or charge God with wrongdoing" (1:22) . All he will do is mourn in the conventional ancient ways and "worship" (1:20). My mother was fond of quoting his response of absolute submission—"The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (1:21).
So far God is getting the better of the bet, and he gloats a little when the heavenly court convenes again. See what I told you, the LORD says to Satan, Job "still persists in his integrity, although you have incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason" (2:4). God admits that Job's sufferings are absurd, meaningless, but he has still endured them blamelessly. But Satan, who has been out investigating, is not impressed—"Skin for skin! Touch his bone and his flesh," he says, "and he will curse you to your face" (2:5). And the LORD gives Job into his power, sparing only his life. (You will notice that God himself does not inflict these sufferings upon Job; it small point perhaps, but it is Satan who inflicts Job with "loathsome sores" (2:7) so that he is reduced to absolute misery. )
It is Job's own wife, who has shared in his sorrows, who now becomes his tempter. Give up this pretense of righteousness. It is doing you no good. "Curse God and die," she tells him. (Some helpmeet.) And Job's response this time falls considerably short of worship and absolute submission. It is ambivalent. "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" He does not curse God, but rather he asks a bitter question to which no answer is possible. He does not understand what is happening to him—and neither do we, not really. What is the point of his suffering? Is it as meaningless as cruel joke? A ridiculous bet between God and Satan?
Job's three friends then come to "sit shiva" with him. This is what happens when there is a terrible loss or grief in a family. For seven days after the funeral (see 2:13) they sit by turns with the family to comfort them. The friends of Job sit in silence; there is nothing to say. At last it is Job who breaks the silence to the curse, not God, but the day on which he was born (3:1). He wants to die, and he wants all creation to die with him. Light is the first thing that God makes, the basic "stuff" of creation. Here Job prays the light of the day of his birth should be extinguished—"Let gloom and deep darkness claim it," he says. "Leviathan" represents the primeval watery chaos out of which the world is created. Job prays that creation—and specifically the day of his birth-- might be swallowed up again in that confusion. He wishes for the oblivion of death, and end to feeling, thinking, suffering, and questioning (3:17). Light is
not a blessing but a curse because it reveals a world in which there is no rhyme or reason to things, where nothing makes any sense (3:23). Job does not much regret what he has lost--his wealth, his children, his health—as he mourns for the loss of meaning and intelligibility in his life. What he cries out for is an explanation.
And his three friends in turn try to give him that explanation, which is the only comfort he can expect. The core of the Book of Job is made up of the dialogue he has with them. The first to speak is Eliphaz. He begins gently by suggesting that Job remember the comfort he had offered to those who are suffering. He suggests that Job trust in God and his own righteousness. "Is not your fear of God your confidence," he asks, "and the integrity of your ways your hope?" Don't you believe the words of comfort you offered others? Don't you believe that sinners are punished and the righteous are rewarded? You know that "those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same" (4:8). You must have committed some sin, he suggests, that is the cause of what is happening to you. This is a commonplace belief in Bible times, reflected in such passages as Deuteronomy 28:1. Everyone knows this, Eliphaz says. Don't you believe it, Job?
Eliphaz himself is not so certain. He goes on to recount a terrifying vision he has had in the night, a nightmare, we would call it. In it a spirit glides past his face and speaks a disconcerting word in his ear. The whole foundation of Old Testament religion is based on the idea that righteousness is possible. But in his dream the spirit suggests that no, mortals cannot "be pure before their Maker" (4:17). Even God's angels, the spirits who are part of his heavenly court, are not worthy of his trust, "how much more those who live in houses of clay" (4:19). To those of us who believe that we cannot be saved by our works but only by the grace of God received by faith in Jesus Christ are familiar with the idea that human beings by themselves are helpless to secure God's favor. But for those who believe that their relationship to God is secured solely by their own integrity, by doing what it good, this "vision of the night" might well cause
"the hair of [their] flesh" to bristle (4:15). It message suggests that human righteousness based on keeping God's law is an illusion, that there is no truth but the grim fact that we "perish forever" and "die devoid of wisdom" (4:20-21). We suffer and never understand why.
I suppose that you have gathered by know that Job's would-be comforters do not bring him much comfort. He has to seek it, and find it so far as it can be found, elsewhere.