Unique book. In unheard of land away from Israel, Uz. Characters all non-Israelites. Intentional, though, so as not to distract us from Job and the questions raised by his suffering. The content is dense Hebrew poetry. Court scene in heaven. The accuser comes against God and Job. We think the book is going to answer the reason for Jobs suffering. Nope. Does every single thing in the universe act in accordance with Gods justice? Job says he is innocent so God doesn’t run the world correctly or He is unjust. The friends take the opposite view, God is just so it must be you, Job, who is the wicked one. Job is in a tough place and on an emotional roller coaster. His theology is broken for the first time. Elihu says- God is just, God runs the world that way but he concludes suffering may have other positive effects in our lives (true) but then he does conclude Job is unjust. God defends that He is not unjust and is running the world just fine. Why does He go into these details? He is countering Job’s assumption that he has enough perspective to make his claims! It is more complex than we realize. We only have a limited view. It needs to be seen in an infinitely larger context. Movie Bruce Almighty. Carrying out justice in a word like ours is extremely complex, never black and white. He talks about the creatures that are not evil but not safe, either, symbol of the world. Gods world is not perfect or always safe. Like the creatures. Why is their suffering? God doesn’t explain it. Instead God states we live in an amazingly complex world that is not designed to prevent suffering. God just asks for wisdom and trust in His character. The friends were rebuked by God. God actually approved of how Job approached the situation (even though Job stated some wrong things, crazy things). Don’t try and figure it out- like Job or his friends. Instead, just honestly bring you pain to God and trust Him that He knows what he is doing.
KEY IDEAS
Human beings should never doubt God’s goodness and sovereign purposes, even in the face of seemingly arbitrary personal suffering.
Human beings should never doubt God’s goodness and sovereign purposes, even in the face of seemingly arbitrary personal suffering.
- Satan is the accuser of the brethren. Don’t let him get you down.
- Bad things sometimes happen to good people. Don’t be surprised by it.
- God in His wisdom does not always provide healing for His children in earthly life.
- Life is short and accompanied by many troubles, but you’re headed toward a trouble-free afterlife.
- God sometimes allows His children to go through periods of suffering so they can condition and strengthen their faith muscles and increase their perseverance.
- Never forget: Satan is on a leash.
- Be forewarned: friends can have good intentions and yet give bad advice.
- You won’t always get all the answers you want, but you can take comfort in the fact that you know the good God who does have all the answers.
- Rejoice! Your Redeemer lives, and you’ll live forever with Him!
Job is a profound and unique book of the Bible. The story is set in an obscure land far from Job is a profound and unique book of the Bible. The story is set in an obscure land far from Israel called Uz. None of the characters in the book are Israelites. The author, who is anonymous, doesn't place the story in any clear period of ancient history. And this all seems intentional. It's as if the author doesn't want us to be distracted by historical questions, so he forces us to focus on the story of Job and the questions raised by his experience of suffering. The book has a clear literary design. It opens with a short narrative prologue (chs.1-2), followed by the main body of the book (chs. 3-37), which represents conversations between Job and four dialogue partners called "the friends." These are followed by a series of poetic speeches given by God (chs. 38-41), and then the book concludes with a short narrative epilogue (ch. 42). All these literary pieces just sit next to each other, forcing you to ponder what the overall message might be.
CHAPTERS 1-2
The prologue introduces Job. We're told he is a blameless man who honors God and has a lot of wealth. Then, we're suddenly trans- ported into the heavenly realms where God is holding court with his angelic "staff team" to discuss how to run the world. Among the heavenly beings is a figure called "the satan," which in Hebrew means "the one opposed." It's as if we are watching a court scene. God presents Job as a truly righteous man, and the accuser challenges God's policy of rewarding righteous people. He says Job obeys God only because he blesses him with prosperity. If Job were to suffer, they would discover how righteous he really is.
God allows the accuser to inflict suffer- ing on Job, and at this point most readers ask, "why would God do that?" So we read on, assuming that this book will eventually answer our question of why God allows good people to suffer. But you'll discover, to your frustration, that nothing in the book of Job ever answers that mystery. The prologue is setting up a different question Bible. that will become the focus of Job and his from friends. Does God run the universe by the strict principle of justice or not? This is the real question explored in the book of Job, and you don't discover the answer until the book's conclusion.
CHAPTERS 3-37
Back to Job's story. The prologue concludes with a suffering Job approached by three friends who will try to provide wisdom and counsel. Their names are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They're all non-Israelites who represent the best of ancient near eastern thinking. Their appearance opens up the next part of the book, which is structured as follows. First Job speaks, then a friend responds, then Job responds, then another friend responds, and so on for three cycles. The focus of their debate is whether God is truly just. Does God run the universe on the strict principle of justice? And if so, how is Job's suffering to be explained?
As we will see, Job and the friends hold some unexamined assumptions about what God's e justice ought to look like. They think every event in the universe follows from the strict principle of just recompense. If you're wise and good and honor God, good things will happen to you; God will reward you. But if you're evil and stupid, bad things will hap-pen; God will punish you.
Job's constant argument is, first of all, that he's innocent. The logical implication is that his suffering is not a divine punishment. Now, we know from the prologue that these two points are true. God himself said Job is righteous and blameless. Therefore, the only conclusion Job can draw is that God doesn't run the world according to justice, or, even worse, that God himself is not just.
The friends beg to differ. They argue that God is just and that God always runs the world by the principle of just recompense. This is why they accuse Job and conclude that he must have done something really bad to merit this suffering. They even start making up sins that Job must have committed.
Job gets so fed up with the friends that he he eventually stops talking to them, and he takes on up his case directly with God. In these chapters, Job is on an emotional roller coaster. He kind of believes that God is just, but he can't reconcile that with his suffering. So in some outbursts, he accuses God of being he a bully, and once he even claims God has orchestrated all the injustice in the world. But this thought terrifies him, and he backs off by saying God must be just and all-powerful. When he reaches the end of himself, he makes one last statement of his innocence. Job concludes by demanding that God show up personally and explain himself.
It's at this point that a surprise friend, Elihu, appears. He shares the same assumptions as the friends, that God is just and always operates the universe by the principle of strict justice. But Elihu draws a more sophisticated conclusion about why good people suffer. God may not be punishing them. He could be warning them, so they will avoid evil in the future. God can use hardship to build character and teach people valuable life lessons. Elihu doesn't claim to know why Job is suffering, but he's sure of one thing. Job, with his limited life experience, is not in a place to accuse God of being unjust. Job doesn't even respond to Elihu, and the dialogues come to a close. All the wisdom of the ancients has been spent, and the mystery remains.
CHAPTERS 38-41
Then, suddenly, God shows up in a whirlwind and responds to Job personally.
God first responds to Job's accusation that he's unjust and incompetent at running the universe. He takes Job on a virtual tour of the universe and asks him questions about the order and origins of the cosmos. Was Job around when God architected the earth or organized the constellations? Has Job ever commanded the sunrise or controlled the weather? God has his eyes on all kinds of cosmic details that Job has never even conceived of. Then God starts describing in detail the grazing habits of mountain goats, how deer give birth to their young, and the feeding patterns of lions and wild donkeys.
What is God's point in all of this? Remember the assumptions of Job and his friends about how God ought to run the world according God' to the principle of justice. Underneath that assumption is a deeper one. Job and his friends imagine they have a wide enough Job perspective from which they can tell God how he ought to run the world. This virtual tour is God's indirect way of deconstructing those assumptions. He's showing that the universe is a vast and complex place and that he has his eyes on all of it, every single detail Job, on the other hand, has only the small and limited horizon of his own life experience. What may look like divine injustice from Job's point of view needs to be seen in wan infinitely larger context. Job is simply not in a position to make such huge accusations just about God.
After the virtual tour, God asks Job if he would like to micromanage the world for a day according to the strict principle of justice to which he's holding God accountable. Let Job play God and punish every evil deed at every moment with precise retribution. It's impossible because carrying out justice in a world like ours is extremely complex. and it can never be black and white.
Which leads to God's last point. He starts describing two fantastic creatures. Behemoth and Leviathan. Some people think these are poetic depictions of a hippo and a crocodile, or perhaps of creatures that are now extinct. They could also refer to well-known creatures from ancient mythology, mentioned else-where in the Bible (Isaiah 27:1, Ezekiel 29:3, and Psalm 74:13-14). Either way, they represent the disorder and danger that still exist in God's good world. They are not evil. God is quite proud of them, even though they could kill you in a second without thinking about it. God's point in bringing up these creatures seems to be that his world is a good place, but it's not perfect or always safe. It has order and beauty, but it's also wild and often dangerous, like these two creatures.
So back to the big question of Job and the friends. How does one account for suffering in God's good world? God doesn't explain why. His response is that we live in an extremely complex and amazing world that, at this stage at least, is not designed to prevent suffering.
And that's God's response. Job challenged God's justice, and God replied that lob doesn't have sufficient knowledge about the universe's complexity to make such a claim. Job demanded a full explanation, and God asks Job for trust in his wisdom and character.
CHAPTER 42
And that's what he does. Job responds with humility and repentance. He apologizes for accusing God of injustice and acknowledges that he's overstepped his bounds. Then, all of a sudden, the book concludes with a short epilogue. God says that the friends were wrong.Their ideas about God's justice were too simple in light of the complexity of the world or God's wisdom. Then God says that Job has spoken rightly about him! Now, this can't apply to everything Job said about God, but despite Job's hasty and wrong conclusions, God still approves of Job's wrestling. Job came honestly before God and simply wanted to talk to God himself. And God's approval stows that this is the right way to process these issues, through the struggle of prayer.
The story ends with Job having his health, family, and wealth restored, not as a reward for good behavior, but simply as a generous gift from God.
This amazing book doesn't simply unlock the puzzle of why bad things happen to good people. Instead of trying to figure out the reasons' for suffering, we are invited to trust God's wisdom. When people search for reasons, they tend to either simplify God like the friends, or, like Job, they accuse God based on limited evidence.
Job invites us to honestly bring our pain and grief to God and to trust that he cares and knows what he's doing. That's the wisdom of the book of Job.
CHAPTERS 1-2
The prologue introduces Job. We're told he is a blameless man who honors God and has a lot of wealth. Then, we're suddenly trans- ported into the heavenly realms where God is holding court with his angelic "staff team" to discuss how to run the world. Among the heavenly beings is a figure called "the satan," which in Hebrew means "the one opposed." It's as if we are watching a court scene. God presents Job as a truly righteous man, and the accuser challenges God's policy of rewarding righteous people. He says Job obeys God only because he blesses him with prosperity. If Job were to suffer, they would discover how righteous he really is.
God allows the accuser to inflict suffer- ing on Job, and at this point most readers ask, "why would God do that?" So we read on, assuming that this book will eventually answer our question of why God allows good people to suffer. But you'll discover, to your frustration, that nothing in the book of Job ever answers that mystery. The prologue is setting up a different question Bible. that will become the focus of Job and his from friends. Does God run the universe by the strict principle of justice or not? This is the real question explored in the book of Job, and you don't discover the answer until the book's conclusion.
CHAPTERS 3-37
Back to Job's story. The prologue concludes with a suffering Job approached by three friends who will try to provide wisdom and counsel. Their names are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They're all non-Israelites who represent the best of ancient near eastern thinking. Their appearance opens up the next part of the book, which is structured as follows. First Job speaks, then a friend responds, then Job responds, then another friend responds, and so on for three cycles. The focus of their debate is whether God is truly just. Does God run the universe on the strict principle of justice? And if so, how is Job's suffering to be explained?
As we will see, Job and the friends hold some unexamined assumptions about what God's e justice ought to look like. They think every event in the universe follows from the strict principle of just recompense. If you're wise and good and honor God, good things will happen to you; God will reward you. But if you're evil and stupid, bad things will hap-pen; God will punish you.
Job's constant argument is, first of all, that he's innocent. The logical implication is that his suffering is not a divine punishment. Now, we know from the prologue that these two points are true. God himself said Job is righteous and blameless. Therefore, the only conclusion Job can draw is that God doesn't run the world according to justice, or, even worse, that God himself is not just.
The friends beg to differ. They argue that God is just and that God always runs the world by the principle of just recompense. This is why they accuse Job and conclude that he must have done something really bad to merit this suffering. They even start making up sins that Job must have committed.
Job gets so fed up with the friends that he he eventually stops talking to them, and he takes on up his case directly with God. In these chapters, Job is on an emotional roller coaster. He kind of believes that God is just, but he can't reconcile that with his suffering. So in some outbursts, he accuses God of being he a bully, and once he even claims God has orchestrated all the injustice in the world. But this thought terrifies him, and he backs off by saying God must be just and all-powerful. When he reaches the end of himself, he makes one last statement of his innocence. Job concludes by demanding that God show up personally and explain himself.
It's at this point that a surprise friend, Elihu, appears. He shares the same assumptions as the friends, that God is just and always operates the universe by the principle of strict justice. But Elihu draws a more sophisticated conclusion about why good people suffer. God may not be punishing them. He could be warning them, so they will avoid evil in the future. God can use hardship to build character and teach people valuable life lessons. Elihu doesn't claim to know why Job is suffering, but he's sure of one thing. Job, with his limited life experience, is not in a place to accuse God of being unjust. Job doesn't even respond to Elihu, and the dialogues come to a close. All the wisdom of the ancients has been spent, and the mystery remains.
CHAPTERS 38-41
Then, suddenly, God shows up in a whirlwind and responds to Job personally.
God first responds to Job's accusation that he's unjust and incompetent at running the universe. He takes Job on a virtual tour of the universe and asks him questions about the order and origins of the cosmos. Was Job around when God architected the earth or organized the constellations? Has Job ever commanded the sunrise or controlled the weather? God has his eyes on all kinds of cosmic details that Job has never even conceived of. Then God starts describing in detail the grazing habits of mountain goats, how deer give birth to their young, and the feeding patterns of lions and wild donkeys.
What is God's point in all of this? Remember the assumptions of Job and his friends about how God ought to run the world according God' to the principle of justice. Underneath that assumption is a deeper one. Job and his friends imagine they have a wide enough Job perspective from which they can tell God how he ought to run the world. This virtual tour is God's indirect way of deconstructing those assumptions. He's showing that the universe is a vast and complex place and that he has his eyes on all of it, every single detail Job, on the other hand, has only the small and limited horizon of his own life experience. What may look like divine injustice from Job's point of view needs to be seen in wan infinitely larger context. Job is simply not in a position to make such huge accusations just about God.
After the virtual tour, God asks Job if he would like to micromanage the world for a day according to the strict principle of justice to which he's holding God accountable. Let Job play God and punish every evil deed at every moment with precise retribution. It's impossible because carrying out justice in a world like ours is extremely complex. and it can never be black and white.
Which leads to God's last point. He starts describing two fantastic creatures. Behemoth and Leviathan. Some people think these are poetic depictions of a hippo and a crocodile, or perhaps of creatures that are now extinct. They could also refer to well-known creatures from ancient mythology, mentioned else-where in the Bible (Isaiah 27:1, Ezekiel 29:3, and Psalm 74:13-14). Either way, they represent the disorder and danger that still exist in God's good world. They are not evil. God is quite proud of them, even though they could kill you in a second without thinking about it. God's point in bringing up these creatures seems to be that his world is a good place, but it's not perfect or always safe. It has order and beauty, but it's also wild and often dangerous, like these two creatures.
So back to the big question of Job and the friends. How does one account for suffering in God's good world? God doesn't explain why. His response is that we live in an extremely complex and amazing world that, at this stage at least, is not designed to prevent suffering.
And that's God's response. Job challenged God's justice, and God replied that lob doesn't have sufficient knowledge about the universe's complexity to make such a claim. Job demanded a full explanation, and God asks Job for trust in his wisdom and character.
CHAPTER 42
And that's what he does. Job responds with humility and repentance. He apologizes for accusing God of injustice and acknowledges that he's overstepped his bounds. Then, all of a sudden, the book concludes with a short epilogue. God says that the friends were wrong.Their ideas about God's justice were too simple in light of the complexity of the world or God's wisdom. Then God says that Job has spoken rightly about him! Now, this can't apply to everything Job said about God, but despite Job's hasty and wrong conclusions, God still approves of Job's wrestling. Job came honestly before God and simply wanted to talk to God himself. And God's approval stows that this is the right way to process these issues, through the struggle of prayer.
The story ends with Job having his health, family, and wealth restored, not as a reward for good behavior, but simply as a generous gift from God.
This amazing book doesn't simply unlock the puzzle of why bad things happen to good people. Instead of trying to figure out the reasons' for suffering, we are invited to trust God's wisdom. When people search for reasons, they tend to either simplify God like the friends, or, like Job, they accuse God based on limited evidence.
Job invites us to honestly bring our pain and grief to God and to trust that he cares and knows what he's doing. That's the wisdom of the book of Job.