Bible 101: Lesson 16

Job

Job is considered by many scholars to be the oldest book of the Bible, predating the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy). It seems to be set around the same time as Abraham’s life, since there is no mention of the people of Israel or of the Law of Moses.

The book is mainly written in Hebrew poetry. It is the most ancient statement known that addresses the problem of evil and human suffering. How could a good God make such an evil world? Why should we bother to do good? What reward is there for living right? Why do some innocent people suffer and some guilty people go scot-free? How can God be fair, holy and loving if He lets this happen? Does God really care for and protect His people? Do problems in a person’s life mean that they have sinned somehow? If God is good, why does He allow the innocent to suffer?

Job is an appalling story. Here is a good man who suffers without deserving it. Almost all of us grow up with the idea that when we do wrong, we can expect punishment, and it is basically fair. One of the surprises as we get older is that there isn’t any real correlation between the amount of wrong we do and the amount of pain we experience. An even bigger surprise is that sometimes we get knocked down for doing the right thing. This is the kind of suffering that first bewilders and then outrages us. This is what happened to Job.

Job was a prosperous, respected, good-hearted man whose life fell apart in a single day. He lost everything he owned. All ten of his children were killed. But he refused to blame God for his troubles. Later he got a terrible disease and suffered excruciating pain. Then his three “friends” came along and started spouting religious thinking that basically blamed Job for his own troubles. They had the common and simplistic view that suffering is always the result of sin. Job knew better.

In beautiful poetry Job gives voice to his sufferings with accuracy and honesty. He says boldly what some of us are too timid to say. He shouts out to God what a lot of us don’t even let ourselves think. But he does not curse God, as his wife suggests he should do. He also doesn’t deny God. He is faced with the dilemma of either believing that God is being unfair to him, or there is some other unknown explanation. So Job challenges God to allow him plead his case with Him face-to-face. He hangs on to the belief that he will eventually have justice. He never loses his faith. In the end God restores to Job twice what he lost.

What the book of Job does not do is explain suffering. It doesn’t tell us how to live so that we can avoid suffering. In the end it leaves suffering a mystery, and Job comes to respect the mystery. In the course of facing and questioning his own suffering, Job finds himself confronted with a much larger mystery – the mystery of God. Perhaps the greatest mystery of suffering is how it can bring a person into the presence of God in wonder, love and praise. It doesn’t always do that, but it does it far more often than we would expect. It did for Job. It can for us too, if we join Job in rejecting the quick-fix advice of people who see us and hear us but don’t really understand us. If we allow the Living God to speak to us in our suffering and through our suffering and draw us close to Himself, then our suffering takes on value.

Messianic Prophecies in Job

Job 19:25-27 is one of the most beautiful statements of faith in the Bible.
“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God;
Whom I myself will behold, and whom my eyes shall see and not another.
My heart faints within me.”