by David Plotz
Who is Job? And when did he live? The book does not give us many clues. Judging from the language and milieu, the book seems to take place before the time of the patriarchs, sometime between the Flood and Abraham. It’s pretty clear that Job is not an Israelite, since the book doesn’t mention the patriarchs, God’s covenant, or Israel. Other evidence that it’s pre-Abrahamic: the God of Job resembles the God of early Genesis, who intervened busily in earthly affairs, and concerned Himself with all humans, not merely His chosen Israelites.
Job lives in the land of Uz, which is not to be confused with the Land of Oz (though, as we shall see, Uz, like Oz, is vulnerable to sudden tornadoes that cause deadly building collapses). Job has “feared God and shunned evil,” and his faithful goodness has made him the richest man in the east, the Warren Buffett of Uz, with 7,000 sheep and 3,000 camels. He also has seven sons and three daughters. (That numerical pattern of sevens and threes is odd—why are sheep like sons and camels like daughters?)
Meanwhile, over at God’s house, some angels drop by for a social visit. Accompanying them is the Adversary, “Ha-Satan” in Hebrew, as we learned in Zechariah. Here is what this Satan is not: a fallen angel, wicked, omnipotent, demonic, living in hell, warring with God for dominion over the Earth, carrying a pitchfork, or dressed like an evil Santa. Here is what he is: argumentative, troublemaking. This is another example of the popular culture and Christianity oversimplifying and flattening a biblical character. Our modern Satan is a cartoonish incarnation of pure evil. The Bible’s Satan is fascinating because he’s ambiguous. He is actually the kind of guy any smart God would want around, because he questions authority. He asks the tricky, contentious questions that make God more thoughtful about His own work. Satan makes God uncomfortable, but only so God will do His job better.
The Lord asks Satan what he has been doing. Satan says he’s been wandering around the world. The Lord asks if he ever got a chance to meet the star earthling Job. God starts bragging about how good Job is. Satan interrupts the love fest, jeering that Job loves the Lord only because God has given him so much wealth. If God takes away all this good fortune, Satan says, Job will curse Him. God accepts the wager. He tells Satan to do his worst but to not harm Job physically. The next seven verses are breathtaking. In short order, four messengers arrive at Job’s house. The first announces that all Job’s oxen and donkeys have been stolen; the next that a fire from heaven has incinerated his 7,000 sheep; the next that the Chaldeans have taken his 3,000 camels; and the last that a “mighty wind” has blown down his son’s tent, killing all ten of his children. But Job does not curse God: He tears his clothes, cuts off his hair, and cries one of the most famous verses in the Bible: “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
CHAPTER 2
Round one clearly goes to God. Job isn’t cursing. But Satan isn’t satisfied. He gibes God a second time. The only reason Job isn’t complaining is that he still has health and life. “Lay a hand on his bones and his flesh, and he will surely blaspheme.” God can’t say no to a challenge. He says that Satan can do anything short of killing Job. Satan afflicts Job with wicked sores all over his body. Completely incapacitated, Job sits and scratches himself with a broken shard of pottery. His wife tells him he should curse God, but Job is philosophical: “Should we accept only good from God and not accept evil?”
We’re only halfway through Job 2, and almost all the action of this book has taken place: the divine bet, the punishments of Job, and his perseverance. What’s left to happen? Job’s three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar hear about his tragedies and show up at his house to console him.
CHAPTER 3
At this point, Job turns from prose to poetry. Both translations I am reading pause to observe, almost apologetically, that the poetic language of Job is very difficult and opaque. This must explain why the two translations differ immensely from each other, and from other translations.
Job has not cursed God—in that sense, God is winning his wager with Satan—but Job certainly isn’t taking his misery lying down. His first words to his three friends are, “Perish the day on which I was born.” He asks why God let him live, only to make him suffer, and why God doesn’t let him die now.
CHAPTERS 4-5
Job’s three friends—who turn out to be more “frenemies” than friends—immediately lay into him. Eliphaz rebukes Job, setting out the argument that the friends will repeat for the next thirty-odd chapters. No innocent man was ever punished by God. If you’re suffering, it is surely because you have done wrong. You, Job, are evil, as we are all evil: “For man is born to do mischief, just as sparks fly upward.”
Eliphaz also suggests that Job should be grateful for God’s punishment. The Lord is wounding him so as to heal him later. Eventually, God will give him wealth, protect him from violence, and, apparently, give him a lifetime supply of Viagra. (“When you visit your wife, you will never fail.”)
CHAPTERS 6-8
Job is unimpressed by Eliphaz’s Panglossian argument. He points out that his punishment is undeservedly great. He’s suffering so much that he can’t endure any longer. Job doesn’t curse God, but he certainly waxes wroth against Him. “I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” His flesh is infested with maggots, happiness has abandoned him, and when he seeks comfort in sleep, God sends nightmares. In a wonderful passage, Job urges God to stop paying so much attention to man, since his attention is so unpleasant. Job sees God as Big Brother: “What is man, that You make much of him…. You inspect him every morning, examine him every minute. Will You not look away from me for awhile, let me be?” (This inverts, and mocks, a famous verse from Psalm 8: “What is man that Thou are mindful of him?”)
The second friend, Bildad, now chimes in, also blaming Job, and telling him to shut up: “Your utterances are a mighty wind.” Of course Job should suffer, Bildad says, because God would never “pervert justice.” Job’s sons probably died because they sinned. God doesn’t punish the blameless.
CHAPTER 9
As I’ve mentioned, one repeated theme of the Bible is a lawsuit between man and God. Again and again, we are suing the Almighty or He is countersuing—usually for breach of covenant. Job 9 is the beginning of the most spectacular lawsuit of them all: Job v. God. The friends have urged Job to take his case to God. Canny lawyer that he is, Job recognizes that he faces impossible odds: “Man cannot win a suit against God,” Job moans. God can move mountains; He can “command the sun not to shine.” How can Job possibly argue with Him? How could Job possibly defeat Him? God would fix the outcome; He would cheat to win. Even though Job is innocent, Job says, “It will be I who am in the wrong.” Even if Job washes himself, “You would dip me in muck.” Again, Job doesn’t exactly curse God, but he comes mighty close, accusing Him of injustice, of punishing the blameless and mocking the innocent.
CHAPTER 10
So far, Job has directed most of his comments to the friends, but now he whacks God directly. God knows he’s innocent yet punishes him. Job wonders why God would bother to make him—to fashion him “like clay”—just so that he can suffer. Job thinks it must be a game for God, an ego trip.
These complaints of Job’s don’t count as curses for the purposes of the bet between God and Satan. Why? Even though Job is angry at God, he still accepts God’s authority. Job still appeals to God, still assumes that God can act to make it right. Truly cursing God would be abandoning Him. Job never gives up: he begs, berates, insists, and screams that God do better. But he always accepts that God is the decider.
CHAPTER 11
The bitter exchange between Job and his obnoxious friends continues. The three friends’ relentless criticism of him seems particularly unfair when you remember that he’s in mourning, having just lost all ten of his kids in a terrible accident (and lost his fortune, too). Miss Manners would take a hammer to the head of any funeral guest who behaved as
rudely as Job’s friends.
The basic pattern of the next twenty chapters is this: Jerk friend tells Job that he deserves his suffering because God always punishes the wicked; infuriated Job growls at the jerk friend, then asserts his innocence. Repeat.
CHAPTERS 12-14
Job vows to speak the whole truth to God—to say that God has wronged him. Job will speak out, he says, “come on me what may. I will…put my life in my hand. See, he will kill me; I have no hope; but I will defend my ways to his face. This will be my salvation.” No one else in the Bible—except Moses in a few brave moments, Abraham in the memorable face-off at Sodom, and Gideon, briefly—has ever dared what Job dares here. Job refuses to flatter God, refuses to confess sins he didn’t commit, refuses to compromise to win God’s approval. He is placing truth above life, honesty above obedience. In doing this, Job is laying out what has become the modern idea of justice. There is a truth that’s independent of power. The truth will set you free, even if it’s painful for the king to hear it.
CHAPTERS 18-21
Bildad hits the usual theme: only the wicked and ungodly are punished. The friends’ notion of justified punishment rings particularly hollow to me this week, when two good friends—two of the best people I know—were diagnosed with cancer. I don’t know how anyone who has lived for any time on planet Earth could swallow the friends’ argument. It’s obvious that suffering and happiness are randomly distributed. Often the good suffer terribly and the wicked prosper mightily. No one but a fool would say otherwise. Any religion that hopes to succeed has to devise an explanation for that injustice. Usually, the explanation is: you’ll get yours—and the wicked will get theirs—in the next world. The friends are claiming something manifestly false: that reward and punishment occur in our own lifetimes.
Job raises exactly this objection. “Why do the wicked live on, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? Their children are established in their presence…. Their houses are safe from fear…. Their bull breeds without fail…. They spend their days in prosperity.”
Job concludes that it’s all random. Some people die rich and happy, others poor and bitter, and there’s no order or justice in it.
CHAPTERS 28-31
Job sets out to prove that he was a good man. When God was still with him—“when His lamp shone over my head”—Job led a worthy life. He enjoyed his riches, to be sure—his “feet were bathed in cream,” and everyone heeded his orders—but he also did good, all the time. “I put on righteousness.” He had a handout for every beggar, a job for every widow, new clothes for every orphan.
Job contrasts those glorious days with his fallen state. Now he is mocked by worthless young men. (He describes them memorably: “They do not withhold spittle from my face.”)
At the end of Job’s laundry list of good deeds, he rests his case. It’s a brilliant summing up: He has undeniably proved that he was a good man. He’s so persuasive, in fact, that he finally shuts up the three friends. They fall silent, letting Job have the last word.
CHAPTERS 32-37
As soon as the three friends finally stop badgering Job, a whippersnapper named Elihu arrives to replace them. A know-it-all twerp, Elihu is even more obnoxious than the other three—more aggressive, smugger, and ruder to poor old Job. Elihu immediately takes issue with Job’s claim that God doesn’t answer us. Elihu says the problem is that Job isn’t listening. God answers in dreams (where He “terrifies them with his warnings”). God also answers in the form of physical illness, sending pain and discomfort to those who are crossing Him. (I don’t know about you, but I find the argument that illness is divine punishment infuriating.) A little later, Elihu offers another explanation for God’s apparent indifference to the pleas of Job and others who are suffering. It’s not that He’s not listening; it’s that their prayers are not sincere. “God does not hear an empty cry.” Elihu—who has the stamina of Fidel Castro—rants on like this for six straight chapters. As soon as he finally shuts his mouth…
CHAPTERS 38-39
…God Himself appears—in a whirlwind. He is not happy. The Lord Most High does not appreciate Job’s complaints. His opening line to Job: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man.” Job wants to question God, but that’s not how it’s going to be, the Almighty says. The Lord is going to be the one asking the questions. His first query to Job is a tough one: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.”
God continues in this swaggering vein for two chapters. It would sound like bragging if He weren’t, you know, God. He lists His creations and asks what Job has done that can compare: “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?” “Have the gates of death been revealed to you?…Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.” Can Job move the stars? Is Job the father of the snow? Does Job send rain to make the desert bloom? Does Job “know when the mountain goats give birth”? Will the wild ass serve Job? Is it by Job’s wisdom that the hawk soars and the eagle commands the mountains? I don’t think so.
God doesn’t merely humble Job. He savors Job’s humiliation, demolishing Job with sarcastic jabs: “Where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? Surely you know.” That “surely you know” is so mean, so petty. God takes too much pleasure in making Job feel like an ignoramous, like a mere speck.
Vicious, petty, cruel—definitely. But beautiful, too! God’s self-congratulatory speech is one of the most spectacular passages in the Bible, a masterpiece of imagery and forceful language, one killer phrase after another. Indulge me as I quote a favorite bit about the making of the ocean:
Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—
when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors,
and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?
“Thus far shall you come, and no farther”!
CHAPTERS 40-41
God bullies Job to answer His questions. “Anyone who argues with God must respond.” What do you have to say for yourself now, smart aleck? You started the fight, Job, so let’s hear it! Not so chatty, now, are you, little fella? I’m very familiar with how Job must feel at this moment, since God sounds exactly like my wife when she knows she has defeated me in an argument. Much like me, Job stammers, stutters, and caves in. All his courage of Chapters 1–37 vanishes in the teeth of this divine hurricane. He is totally cowed. His grand oath in Chapter 13 to confront God goes out the window. He whispers that he has nothing to say. “I lay my hand on my mouth…. I will not answer.”
That’s not good enough for God, who wants to run up the score on Job. He redoubles His bragging. Can Job tame the Behemoth, the mighty creature with “limbs like bars of iron”? Can Job fish and catch the Leviathan, the giant sea monster with “flaming torches” in its mouth, which “laughs at” javelins and arrows? God seems to think He has won this round because He has reduced Job to a blubbering mess. In the keeping score department, God certainly has triumphed, because Job has given up. But God has won only in the way that the president “wins” when he argues with his assistants, or a principal “wins” when she suspends a student. The powerful can crush the impotent whenever they want. But an independent referee would give the victory to Job, because God’s actual answer is unpersuasive. Job says that he is innocent, that he doesn’t deserve God’s punishment, and that God screwed up. God doesn’t address any of these points. Instead He thunders: I’m the mighty God of creation—how dare you question Me? God’s answer, as a lawyer might say, is “nonresponsive.”
CHAPTER 42
But wait—even God apparently recognizes that He’s in the wrong. Here in the final chapter, God rebukes the three friends and acknowledges tha
t Job is “right.” So all the bragging of Chapters 38 through 41 was just posturing, God flexing His big muscles before quietly admitting He screwed up. God restores Job’s fortune. Job gets twice as many sheep and camels as before, and ten new children—seven sons, and three daughters, who are the most beautiful girls in Uz. (This is perhaps the only time in the Bible when we are told the names of daughters but not sons.)
I confess that I’m flummoxed by Job. Should we believe Chapters 38 through 41, when God tells us we’re nothing, and that we have no right to question Him? Or should we believe Chapter 42, when God acknowledges that Job was right and settles the lawsuit? The God of Chapters 38–41 is petulant, arrogant, and wrong. The God of Chapter 42 is willing to correct His mistake. Also, the God of Chapter 42 admits that the three friends are fools. By rebuking them, He seems to be conceding that, in fact, the wicked aren’t always punished and the good aren’t always rewarded. But isn’t such a concession impossible for God? If He disavows their arguments, isn’t He saying that He’s impotent—that He doesn’t actually reward the righteous and upbraid the wicked?
Job is the paramount example of what I would call the Messy Bible, a story that’s far more complicated, ambiguous, and confusing than its popular version. The principal task of priests and rabbis has been cleaning up the Bible, taking complicated stories and bringing order to them. But it is an artificial order, with a much neater morality that we find in the real book: Jacob good, Esau bad; Moses good, Pharaoh bad; God good, good, good. As we’ve seen, the actual text is much sloppier. Some of the heroes are intolerable; some of the villains are admirable, and God himself is often unreasonable. This Messy Bible is truer to our actual world—where the good do evil and the evil do good, where people suffer for no reason—than the idealized Bible is. The Messy Bible is the better Bible. That’s why we should read the Good Book for ourselves, to confront the complexity that the idealized Bible avoids.