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Course 15 · Lesson 5.1

The Book of Job: Job, his friends and the rejection of easy answers

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 15 outline

Module 1: Stating the Problem

  1. The ancient problem: Epicurus, the Psalms and Augustine
  2. The logical problem: is God’s existence compatible with evil?
  3. The evidential problem: Rowe, the fawn and gratuitous evil
  4. Defense and theodicy: what each tries to do

Module 2: Moral Evil and the Free-Will Defense

  1. Moral evil and human responsibility
  2. Augustine on evil, privation and the will
  3. Plantinga’s free-will defense
  4. Objections: horrendous evils, determinism and the freedom of the saints

Module 3: Natural Evil and Soul-Making

  1. Natural evil, the laws of nature and animal suffering
  2. Traditional accounts: the fall, fallen powers and the groaning of creation
  3. John Hick and soul-making theodicy
  4. Objections to soul-making: excess, injustice and who benefits

Module 4: Providence and the Limits of Explanation

  1. What providence means: creation, sustaining and governing
  2. Providence in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant thought
  3. Divine sovereignty, human freedom and open theism
  4. Skeptical theism and the limits of human knowledge

Module 5: Job, the Cross and Silence

  1. The Book of Job: Job, his friends and the rejection of easy answers
  2. God’s answer from the whirlwind and the ending of Job
  3. The crucifixion and suffering: Christ’s cry and the meaning of the cross
  4. Divine hiddenness and the silence of God
  5. Unanswered prayer in Scripture and in Christian life

Module 6: Living with Grief and Writing a Response

  1. Lament and the Psalms
  2. Christian accounts of grief: Lewis, Wolterstorff and the tradition of consolation
  3. Caring for those who suffer: presence, patience and what not to say
  4. Writing a reasoned response to the problem of evil

All courses

Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 5.1

What you will learn

  • Outline the structure of the Book of Job and its main speakers.
  • State the view of suffering held by Job’s friends and why the book rejects it.
  • Describe Job’s protest and the way it combines complaint with trust.
  • Identify the main disagreements among readers about the book’s meaning.

The big idea

The Book of Job is the Bible’s longest treatment of innocent suffering. Job loses his children, property and health, and three friends insist that he must have sinned, because God punishes the wicked and rewards the good. Job refuses that explanation, demands to be heard by God, and never curses him. At the end God declares that the friends have not spoken rightly of him, while Job has. The book therefore rejects the easy answer that all suffering is deserved, while leaving much unexplained.

Key terms

Retribution theology
The belief that suffering is God’s punishment for sin and prosperity his reward for goodness. It is also called the doctrine of retribution.
Wisdom literature
The group of biblical books, including Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, that reflect on how to live well and on the limits of human understanding.
The satan
In Job’s prologue, a figure called the accuser or adversary, who appears among the heavenly beings and challenges God about Job. The book does not use the later developed picture of the devil.
Lament
A prayer or speech of grief and complaint. Much of Job’s speech has this character.
Theodicy
An attempt to explain why a good God permits evil. The friends of Job offer a simple one.
Redeemer (go’el)
In Hebrew law, a relative who defends the family’s rights. Job speaks of a redeemer who will vindicate him (Job 19:25).
Elihu
A younger speaker who appears in chapters 32 to 37. Scholars debate whether his speeches belong to the original book.

Background

The Book of Job belongs to the Hebrew Bible and to the Old Testament in all Christian traditions. It is set in the land of Uz, outside Israel, and in a time resembling that of the patriarchs. Scholars do not agree on when it was written. Many place it between the seventh and fourth centuries BC, but the date is uncertain. Ancient Jewish writers debated whether Job was a historical person or a parable, and Christians have held both views.

The book has three parts. A prose prologue (chapters 1 and 2) tells of Job’s loss. A long poetic middle (chapters 3 to 37) records Job’s dialogue with three friends, then the speeches of Elihu. God answers from the whirlwind (chapters 38 to 41), and a short prose epilogue (chapter 42) ends the story. This lesson treats the first two parts. The next lesson takes up God’s answer and the ending.

A caution on method. Job is poetry, and poetry is not systematic argument. The speakers say strong and sometimes mistaken things, so a quotation from a speech is not always the book’s own teaching. The key is to read the speeches in the light of the prologue and of God’s verdict in the epilogue.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The prologue

Job is described as blameless and upright, one who feared God and shunned evil (Job 1:1). He is rich, with a large family. In heaven the accuser suggests that Job is pious only because he is rewarded, and God permits him to test Job. In quick succession Job loses his oxen, sheep, servants and all ten children, and then his health. His first response is, “the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). His wife tells him to curse God and die. He replies, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).

The reader is told what Job does not know: that his suffering is not punishment. The book removes at the start the explanation his friends will offer. From then on, the question is not whether Job is guilty but how a person is to speak to God and of God in undeserved pain.

Step 2: The friends

Three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, come to console Job, and for seven days they sit with him in silence, which is the best thing they do (Job 2:13). When he speaks they respond with arguments. Eliphaz asks, “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent?” (Job 4:7). Bildad says that if Job were pure God would surely restore him (Job 8:5-6). Zophar tells him that God exacts less of him than his guilt deserves (Job 11:6).

Their view is the doctrine of retribution. It rests on real biblical themes, such as the teaching of Proverbs that the righteous prosper, and Psalm 1. They are not villains. They defend God’s justice, and they want Job to repent and be restored. Their mistake is to apply a general rule to a particular case without evidence, and to put a person’s good name beneath a theory. As the dialogue goes on, their tone sharpens, and Eliphaz accuses Job of specific sins he has no grounds for naming (Job 22:5-9).

Step 3: Job’s protest

Job rejects their explanation, since he knows that he is not guilty in the way they say. He curses the day of his birth (Job 3), accuses God of treating him as an enemy, and observes that the wicked often prosper (Job 21). He does not accept silence. He wants a hearing: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him” (Job 13:15). That translation is that of the King James Version. Some modern versions render the Hebrew as though Job had no hope, and the text is disputed, which is why the verse is read in different ways.

Job also voices a hope that goes beyond his present state: “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth” (Job 19:25). Christians have often read this as pointing to Christ and the resurrection. Many modern scholars read it as Job’s hope for a defender who will vindicate him, and debate what it means for life after death. In either case it shows the book’s mixture of anger and trust.

Step 4: Elihu and the debate over the book’s meaning

Elihu, a younger man, speaks last. He claims that suffering may be a form of God’s instruction and warns Job against presuming to accuse God (Job 33 to 36). Some scholars see in him a preparation for God’s speech and a fairer view than the friends’. Others think his speeches were added later, since neither God nor the epilogue mentions him. The question remains open.

Interpreters also disagree about what Job teaches. Some read it as a lesson in patience (James 5:11 refers to the patience of Job, though the Job of the dialogue is not very patient). Some read it as a protest against the doctrine of retribution. Others read it as an answer to the question of whether disinterested piety is possible. Most agree that it will not allow any single formula to be applied to the sufferer.

  1. Why does the prologue tell the reader what Job does not know?
  2. What is good and what is wrong in the friends’ response?
  3. How can Job complain to God and still be said to trust him?
  4. How do you read Job 13:15 and 19:25, and why do readers differ?
  5. What would the friends have done better to do after the first seven days?
  6. Why do you think Elihu’s place in the book is disputed?

Examples

The friends at the hospital

A visitor tells a man with a serious illness that he must have done something to bring it on, or that God is teaching him something. The visitor means well and wants the world to make sense. The man feels accused. This is a modern version of the friends’ mistake. (A constructed example.)

Seven days of silence

Job’s friends first sit with him for seven days and nights without a word, because they see that his suffering is very great (Job 2:13). Many who care for the bereaved note that this presence is more helpful than anything the friends later say.

The righteous who suffer

Psalm 73 voices the poet’s envy of the prosperous wicked, until he enters the sanctuary of God and begins to see things differently. Like Job, the psalm shows that the tradition knew retribution does not explain every case.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic tradition has read Job as a figure of patient endurance and, in the Fathers, as a type of Christ the innocent sufferer. Gregory the Great wrote a long commentary, the Moralia. The Catechism cites Job in the discussion of the mystery of evil, and the modern Church recognizes the work as inspired Scripture that rejects the simplest explanation of suffering.

Orthodox

The Orthodox Church reads Job in Holy Week, linking his sufferings to those of Christ. Orthodox writers honor Job as a righteous sufferer and stress his faith under trial. The Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament used by the Orthodox, has an addition to the ending that says Job will rise again, which colors Orthodox reading.

Protestant

Calvin preached a long series of sermons on Job, stressing that God’s wisdom exceeds human grasp and that Job models endurance. Protestants generally read the book as a protest against the idea that suffering reveals sin, and a witness to God’s sovereignty. Many modern Protestant commentators stress Job’s honest lament.

Jewish and scholarly readings

Jewish tradition has read Job in many ways. The Talmud records a view that Job never existed but was a parable. Modern scholars see in Job a challenge to rigid retribution, and compare it with other ancient texts on the suffering of the righteous in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Some read it as a book of protest against God that God himself endorses.

Why it matters

Job is the biblical book to which sufferers and philosophers most often return. It shows that Scripture itself resists tidy explanations of pain, that honest protest can be prayer, and that those who explain too quickly may be the ones in error. It prepares the student to read the rest of this course with patience.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Job teaches patient silence under suffering.

Correction: The Job of the dialogue complains loudly and demands an answer. James praises his endurance, but the book approves his honesty, and God says that Job spoke rightly.

Misunderstanding: The friends say nothing true.

Correction: They state much that Scripture elsewhere affirms, such as God’s justice and greatness. Their fault is applying it to Job’s case without knowing, and accusing him falsely.

Misunderstanding: Job explains why God allows suffering.

Correction: The book gives the reader a heavenly scene Job does not see, but it does not claim to explain all suffering. Its main aim seems to be to reject a false explanation and to show how to trust God in the dark.

Knowledge check

What are the main parts of the Book of Job?

There is a prose prologue in which Job loses everything, a long poetic dialogue with three friends, the speeches of Elihu, God’s answer from the whirlwind, and a short prose epilogue. The prologue tells the reader that Job is blameless. The poetic parts explore how to speak of God in undeserved pain, and the ending restores Job.

What view of suffering do the friends hold, and why is it criticized?

They hold that suffering is God’s punishment for sin and that prosperity rewards goodness, so Job must have sinned. The book criticizes this by telling the reader he is innocent, and by having God say at the end that the friends have not spoken rightly. The rule has some basis in Scripture, but it does not apply to every case.

How does Job combine complaint with trust?

He protests loudly, curses the day of his birth and demands a hearing, but he never curses God or abandons hope in him. He says he will trust God though slain, and that his redeemer lives. The text of some of these verses is disputed. The book presents honest complaint as consistent with faith.

Why do scholars disagree about Elihu?

Elihu speaks in chapters 32 to 37, after the friends, and is not mentioned in the prologue, by God, or in the epilogue. Some think the section was added later. Others think it is part of the design, preparing for God’s answer. The question is unsettled and affects how one reads the book’s structure.

Think it through

  1. Have you ever been given a quick explanation for something painful? What did it do to you?
  2. What is the difference between honest complaint to God and rejecting him?
  3. What would it look like to sit with a suffering friend as Job’s friends did for the first seven days?

Independent assignment

Read Job aloud

In your own notebook, write about 400 words. Read Job chapters 1 and 2, and one speech each by Eliphaz (chapter 4), Job (chapter 7) and Bildad (chapter 8) in the King James Version. Summarize each speaker’s view in a sentence. Then write what you notice about how Job addresses God and how the friends speak about God. Keep the work private, and read at a pace that suits you.

Further study