Book Of Job - Wikipedia

 

Prologue on Earth and in Heaven

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In chapter 1, the prologue on Earth introduces Job as a righteous man, blessed with wealth, sons, and daughters, who lives in the land of Uz. The scene then shifts to Heaven, where God asks Satan (Biblical Hebrew: הַשָּׂטָן, romanized: haśśāṭān, lit. 'the adversary') for his opinion of Job's piety. Satan accuses Job of being pious only because he believes God is responsible for his happiness; if God were to take away everything that Job has, then he would surely curse God.[24]

God gives Satan permission to strip Job of his wealth and kill his children and servants, but Job nonetheless praises God:

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.[25]

In chapter 2, God further allows Satan to afflict Job's body with disfiguring and painful boils. As Job sits in the ashes of his former estate, his wife prompts him to "curse God, and die", but Job answers:

You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?[26]

Job's opening monologue and dialogues between Job and his three friends

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In chapter 3, "instead of cursing God",[27] Job laments the night of his conception and the day of his birth; he longs for death, "but it does not come".[28]

His three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, visit him, accuse him of sinning, and tell him that his suffering was deserved. Job responds with scorn, calling his visitors "miserable comforters".[29] Job asserts that since a just God would not treat him so harshly, patience in suffering is impossible, and the Creator should not take his creatures so lightly, to come against them with such force.[30]

Job's responses represent one of the most radical restatements of Israelite theology in the Hebrew Bible.[31] He moves away from the pious attitude shown in the prologue and begins to berate God for the disproportionate wrath against him. He sees God as, among others,

• intrusive and suffocating[32]
• unforgiving and obsessed with destroying a human target[33]
• angry[34]
• fixated on punishment[35]
• hostile and destructive[36]

Job then shifts his focus from the injustice that he himself suffers to God's governance of the world. He suggests that God does nothing to punish the wicked, who have taken advantage of the needy and the helpless, who, in turn, have been left to suffer the significant hardships inflicted on them.[37]

Three monologues: Poem to Wisdom, Job's closing monologue

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The dialogues of Job and his friends are followed by a poem (the "hymn to wisdom") on the inaccessibility of wisdom: "Where is wisdom to be found?" it asks; it concludes in chapter 28 that wisdom has been hidden from humankind.[38] Job contrasts his previous fortune with his present plight as an outcast, mocked and in pain. He protests his innocence, lists the principles he has lived by, and demands that God answer him.[39]

Elihu's speeches

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A character not previously mentioned, Elihu, intrudes into the story and occupies chapters 32–37. The narrative describes him as stepping out of a crowd of bystanders irate. He intervenes to state that wisdom comes from God, who reveals it through dreams and visions to those who will then declare their knowledge.[38]

Two speeches by God

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From chapter 38, God speaks from a whirlwind.[40] God's speeches do not explain Job's suffering, defend divine justice, enter into the courtroom of confrontation that Job has demanded, or respond to his oath of innocence of which the narrative prologue shows God is well aware.[41]

Instead, God changes the subject to human frailty and contrasts Job's weakness with divine wisdom and omnipotence: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Job responds briefly, but God's monologue resumes, never addressing Job directly.[42]

In Job 42:1–6, Job makes his final response, confessing God's power and his own lack of knowledge "of things beyond me which I did not know". Previously, he has only heard God, but now his eyes have seen God, and therefore, he declares, "I retract and repent in dust and ashes".[43]

Epilogue

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God tells Eliphaz that he and the two other friends "have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has done".[citation needed]

The three are told to make a burnt offering with Job as their intercessor, "for only to him will I show favour". Elihu, the critic of Job and his friends, is notably omitted from this part of the narrative.[citation needed]

The epilogue describes Job's health being restored, his riches and family being remade, and Job living to see the new children born into his family produce grandchildren up to the fourth generation.[44]

Additions to Job

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Among other alterations to the Book of Job, the Septuagint features an extended epilogue. Continuing from the end of 42:17, the Greek edition confirms that Job will be resurrected with the righteous. The addition further identifies Job with Jobab in Genesis, the great-grandson of Esau and a king of Edom. Furthermore, Eliphaz in the story of Job is identified as Esau's firstborn son, Eliphaz, and the king of Taiman; Baldad is noted as the ruler of the Sauchites, and Sophar is noted as the king of the Minneans.

The addition contains several parallels with the writings of Aristeas the Exegete, quoted by Alexander Polyhistor who in turn was quoted in Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica 9.25.1-4.[45][full citation needed]