What is the message of the book of Job for us today? First, our faith is sure to be tested. Pain may be inevitable, but misery is to an extent optional. We have no control over the weather that surrounds our lives, but we can do something about the climate of our inner life. What happens to us is less important than what happens in us.
As well as being inspired Scripture, the book of Job is one of the literary masterpieces of the world. We don’t know who the author was, but the setting is in the days of the patriarchs.
Job was a wealthy, influential man with a well-deserved reputation for uprightness and integrity: he “feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1). The Accuser (Satan), however, claims that Job serves God only because God protects him and grants him prosperity: “Stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (1:11).
God accepts the challenge, to show that the accusation is false. He allows a series of disasters that result in the loss of everything Job possesses—livestock, servants, and, finally, his own sons and daughters.
Though grief-stricken, Job does not curse or renounce God, as the Accuser had claimed he would. Instead, he bows before God in worship, saying:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21).
Job had withstood the Accuser’s first assault, showing that his worship of God was not governed by self-interest. Though stripped of everything, he still trusted in God.
But the Accuser still doubts that Job’s faith will hold firm under all circumstances: “Stretch out Your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face” (2:5). Again, God permits Satan to afflict Job, this time in body, provided only his life is spared (2:6). Job is afflicted with “loathsome sores” all over (2:7). His wife advises him to “curse God and die” (2:9). But Job gives this magnificent reply: “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (2:10).
Job’s “Comforters”
The second assault had failed. Now the Accuser fades out of the picture, and Job’s three ‘friends’—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—come to mourn with him and comfort him. So wretched is Job’s condition, they barely recognize him. “They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (2:13).
At the end of that time, Job vents his emotions:
“Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire?… For then … I would have been at rest” (3:11–13).
That most mysterious question, ‘Why?’, is now on Job’s lips, as for many since.
His three friends now begin to speak. Three times each in turn addresses Job, who promptly replies, pouring out his agony of spirit. At first, they deal gently with him, expressing surprise that one so noted for his faith and encouragement of others should break down and find God’s treatment of him so discouraging (4:3–5).
As Job continues to answer in defence of his integrity, his friends become increasingly impatient with him. Their main proposition is that all individual suffering is the result of that individual’s sin (4:7–8; 8:4; 11:13–15). Since Job’s suffering is so great, his sin must be very great indeed.
Job agrees that he is not without sin (7:21; 9:2), but wants his day in court, to prove that whatever peccadilloes he may have unwittingly committed in the past, the extent of his suffering is out of all proportion. But in his despair Job doubts that God would even bother to give him a hearing (9:16). Instead, God would overwhelm him with His superior wisdom and power (9:3–4,17–19). Job desperately longs for a mediator—someone who will argue his case and testify to his innocence before God (9:33–34).
Now and then amid his lamentation and agony, Job strikes the note of hope. He expresses an assurance that God Himself will be his Vindicator, if not in this life, then in the life to come:
“I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (19:25–27).
The debate rages back and forth, with neither Job nor his friends prepared to shift position. Eventually they reach a complete impasse. The three friends are silent at last because Job, despite his terrible afflictions, has insisted on his innocence (32:1).
Job’s friends—no doubt exhausted and frustrated—are unable to bring him round to their view and have no more to say. At this point the reader is ready to hear from God Himself. But instead, there is a series of speeches from Elihu (Chapters 32–37).