Program / Course 6: Old Testament Theology and History / Lesson 5.2
What you will learn
- Summarize the structure and argument of the book of Job.
- Explain how Job challenges a simple view that suffering is always punishment.
- Summarize the voice and themes of Ecclesiastes, including the word translated vanity.
- Describe how Jewish and Christian traditions have received these two books.
The big idea
Proverbs says that wisdom tends to bring blessing. Job and Ecclesiastes ask what happens when life does not match that pattern. Job is a righteous man who loses everything, and his friends insist that he must have sinned. God, speaking from a whirlwind, refuses their argument and also does not explain the suffering. Ecclesiastes surveys life under the sun and finds much of it fleeting, yet it still counsels enjoyment and the fear of God. Both books keep faith while admitting that some things are not understood.
Key terms
- Theodicy
- An attempt to explain how a good and powerful God can allow evil and suffering. The word comes from Greek words for God and justice.
- Retribution theology
- The view that suffering is the punishment for sin and prosperity the reward for righteousness. Job’s friends hold it.
- The accuser (ha-satan)
- In Job 1 and 2, a member of God’s court who tests Job. The Hebrew word means accuser or adversary, and the figure is not the later devil in every detail.
- Whirlwind
- The storm from which God answers Job in chapters 38 to 41.
- Qoheleth
- The Hebrew name for the speaker of Ecclesiastes, usually translated the Preacher or the Teacher. It is a title connected to gathering an assembly.
- Hevel
- The Hebrew word that the King James Version translates as vanity. It literally means breath or vapor, and suggests something fleeting, insubstantial or puzzling.
- Under the sun
- A phrase in Ecclesiastes for life as seen from within the human world, without appeal to anything beyond it.
Background
Both books are set apart from the rest of the Old Testament by their tone. Neither tells the history of Israel. Neither mentions the exodus or the law of Sinai. Job is set in a land called Uz and has no Israelite characters. Ecclesiastes speaks in the voice of a king in Jerusalem but never gives his name. They belong to the wisdom tradition, and they criticize its simplest forms.
The dates are uncertain. Job’s story may be old, but the poem is generally dated to the sixth century BC or later, in a range from the seventh to the fourth. Ecclesiastes presents itself as the words of the son of David, king in Jerusalem, and tradition has ascribed it to Solomon, but its language, which includes words of Persian origin and late Hebrew forms, leads most scholars to date it to the Persian or early Greek period, perhaps the third century BC. The matter is argued.
Because the books ask hard questions, ancient readers debated their place. Rabbinic discussion records that some doubted whether Ecclesiastes should be kept among the holy books because of its apparent contradictions, and the books were finally accepted. The questions they ask are among the oldest and most lasting in religion.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: The story and dispute of Job
Job is described as blameless and upright, a man who fears God and turns away from evil (Job 1:1). In a scene in heaven, the accuser suggests that Job serves God only because he is rewarded, and God allows Job to be tested. Job loses his children, wealth and health. His wife urges him to curse God and die, and he refuses. Three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, come to comfort him, and sit in silence for seven days.
Then the long dispute begins, in poetry. The friends insist that God is just and so Job must have sinned. Job insists that he is innocent, and he demands that God appear and answer. He wishes for an arbiter between himself and God, and in one famous passage says, I know that my redeemer liveth (Job 19:25). Interpreters differ on what Job means by the redeemer and whether he looks for vindication in this life or after death. A fourth speaker, Elihu, then argues that suffering may teach.
Step 2: God’s answer
In chapters 38 to 41, God answers from the whirlwind. He does not explain why Job suffered and does not mention the heavenly scene. Instead, he asks Job questions: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? (Job 38:4). He describes the sea, the stars, wild animals, the great creatures Behemoth and Leviathan. The speeches present a world far larger than Job’s concerns, kept by God with care and wild beauty.
Job responds that he has uttered what he did not understand and that now his eye sees God (Job 42:1 to 6). The final verse is hard to translate, and he either repents in dust and ashes or is comforted regarding dust and ashes. In the epilogue, God says to Eliphaz that he and his friends have not spoken of God what is right, as Job has. Job prays for them, and his fortunes are restored. The book thus rejects the friends’ view and affirms Job’s right to protest.
Step 3: The voice of Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes opens with the cry, Vanity of vanities; all is vanity (1:2). The Hebrew hevel, breath, suggests that what the Teacher sees is fleeting. He tests wisdom, pleasure, work and wealth, and finds each limited by death, since the wise man dies as the fool. Generations pass and nothing seems new. There is a time for every purpose under heaven (3:1), but people cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
Yet the book is not simply despairing. It repeatedly advises enjoying food, drink, work and the love of a spouse as gifts from God (2:24, 9:7 to 10). It tells readers to fear God and to keep his commandments (12:13). Whether this ending is the main message or an addition by an editor who tamed the book is argued. The epilogue speaks of the Teacher in the third person, so it appears to come from another voice, perhaps a disciple.
Step 4: What the two books share
Both books keep the faith that God is God and refuse the easy answers. They honor honest questions, and Job models speaking to God and not only about God. They place limits on human wisdom: people cannot see the whole, and not everything can be solved. Both also affirm that God is not mocked or reduced to a formula.
In their final forms, they stand beside Proverbs and complete the picture. Proverbs describes the order; Job and Ecclesiastes recognize its limits. Together they teach that wisdom includes humility.
- Why does the author give the reader information in the prologue that Job does not have?
- What are the friends’ arguments, and what is wrong with them according to God?
- Why does God answer with questions instead of explanations?
- What does the word hevel add to the understanding of the Teacher’s claim?
- How can Ecclesiastes advise enjoyment and also say that all is hevel?
- How do these books complement Proverbs?
Examples
The friends’ silence and speech
For seven days the friends sit with Job without speaking. This silence is often praised by readers as true comfort. When they begin to talk, they offer arguments that wound. The story is used to teach how to sit with a suffering person without explanations.
A time for every purpose
Ecclesiastes 3 lists times to be born and to die, to weep and to laugh, to keep silence and to speak. The poem does not claim that every time is good, but that there are seasons, and wisdom is to recognize them.
James and Job
The letter of James holds up the patience of Job as an example and mentions the end intended by the Lord (James 5:11). The reference shows that early Christians saw Job as a figure of endurance, as well as of questioning.
Different perspectives
Jewish readers
Jewish tradition reads Ecclesiastes on the feast of tabernacles and holds Job to be a book of deep significance. The Talmud discusses whether Job was a real person and whether he was an Israelite. Rabbinic commentators accept the book’s challenge to simple views of reward.
Catholic readers
The Catholic Church has read Job as a figure of Christ’s suffering and as a model of faith in trial, as in Gregory the Great’s commentary. The Catechism cites Job on the mystery of suffering. Ecclesiastes is read for its call to hold earthly things lightly.
Orthodox readers
The Orthodox read Job during Holy Week as a figure of the suffering of Christ, and honor Job as a saint. They read Ecclesiastes as showing the emptiness of life apart from God.
Protestant readers
Protestants often stress that Job shows God’s sovereignty and that the friends are wrong. Calvin’s sermons on Job are well known. Ecclesiastes is read in various ways, as a pessimistic observer, as a skeptic whose view is corrected by the epilogue, or as a realistic teacher of faith.
Scholarly views
Scholars debate the unity of Job, especially the Elihu speeches and the epilogue, and the meaning of Job 42:6. They debate the tone of Ecclesiastes and whether its frame narrator disagrees with the Teacher.
Why it matters
These books are an answer to the people who think that faith must be simple. They give permission to ask why, they warn against explaining other people’s suffering, and they offer an account of faith that can include protest and uncertainty. They are widely read by people who suffer, in every tradition.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The book of Job explains why God allows suffering.
Correction: It does not. It rejects the explanation that suffering is always punishment and shows God’s answer in terms of his greatness. Philosophers and theologians still debate what the book teaches.
Misunderstanding: Ecclesiastes is a pessimistic book that denies faith.
Correction: The Teacher is honest about limits, yet recommends enjoyment as God’s gift and ends with the fear of God. Readers disagree about the book’s overall tone.
Misunderstanding: Job’s friends are villains who say only false things.
Correction: Much of what they say matches other Scripture. Their error is applying a general rule to Job and refusing to hear him.
Knowledge check
What view of suffering do Job’s friends hold, and how does the book respond?
They hold that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, so Job’s suffering must be the result of sin. The book rejects this as a universal rule. The prologue shows that Job is blameless, and in the epilogue God says that the friends have not spoken rightly of him, while Job has. The view is not false in every case but fails as an explanation of Job.
What does God’s answer from the whirlwind say, and what does it leave unsaid?
God asks Job where he was when the earth was founded and describes the sea, animals and the great creatures, showing a world beyond Job’s understanding that God keeps with care. He does not explain why Job suffered or mention the heavenly scene. Many readers see the answer as an invitation to trust, while others find it a refusal to answer.
What does hevel mean, and why does it matter for Ecclesiastes?
Hevel literally means breath or vapor. The King James Version translates it vanity, but modern translations use words such as meaningless, fleeting or futile. The image suggests that things pass quickly and cannot be grasped. The word shapes how readers take the book, as despair, realism or a call to enjoy life as a gift.
How do scholars date Ecclesiastes, and why?
Tradition ascribed it to Solomon because the opening names a son of David, king in Jerusalem. Most scholars date it later, in the Persian or early Greek period, perhaps the third century BC, because its Hebrew shows late features and Persian loanwords. The speaker never names himself, and some see the royal voice as a literary role.
Think it through
- What do you think of a God who answers questions with questions?
- How can you help a person who suffers without offering an explanation you cannot know?
- Which part of Ecclesiastes feels most true to you, and which most difficult?
- Why might a collection of Scripture include both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes?
Independent assignment
Comparing the friends and the Teacher
In your own notebook, read Job 1, 2, 38, 40 and 42 and Ecclesiastes 1, 3 and 12. Write 300 to 400 words on how each book speaks to a person who suffers or doubts. Include one place where you think the book challenges a common view, and note one verse whose meaning is disputed. Keep it for yourself.
Further study
- Jewish Publication Society, The Hebrew Bible in English (JPS translation) Read Job 1 to 3, 38 to 42, and Ecclesiastes 1 to 3 and 12.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Problem of Evil Read for the philosophical discussion of suffering that Job raises.
- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain Read for a twentieth-century Christian response to the problem.
- Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering Read the chapters on Job for a philosophical reading of the book.
- Job 38 God answers out of the whirlwind.
- Job 42 Job’s response and the epilogue.
- Ecclesiastes 3 A time for every purpose.
- Ecclesiastes 12 The conclusion of the matter.