Introducing Job

Job 1-3

            Job is a tough book. It starts with two encounters between God and Satan, and that right there is enough to give one pause. Why in the world is Satan presenting himself along with the other angels? (Short answer: I don’t think Satan was fully banished from the Lord’s presence until the ministry of Jesus; cf. Luke 10.) An interesting tidbit is that the name Satan is only used once before in the Bible, in 1 Chronicles 21, but it is used 11 times in Job. The name Satan is not a proper name at all; it should be satan, or more literally, the satan, a word which means “the accuser.” So, the challenge between the Lord and the satan is between the one who accuses humans of sin and the Lord who holds up Job as an example of righteousness. The long and the short of the first two chapters of Job is that the Lord gives the satan permission to test job in the most extreme way and Job loses his wealth, his health, and his children. In chapters 1 and 2, Job bears this with assurance: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” In this, he is shown to be a righteous man, clinging to his God.

            Chapter 3 begins the central (and main) portion of Job—chapter 3-37—in which Job and his friends argue about the cause of his suffering. Here’s where things can get a little dicey, especially since we will only be reading a chapter or two a day for three weeks: none of them get it exactly right. The first three friends, who are the main dialogue partners, basically argue over and over again, “You must have done something to deserve it.” For his part, Job counterattacks, “No, I didn’t.” Job overplays his position so that he almost seems to deny that he is a sinner at all. As we work through this section, it might be helpful to think of Job as the voice of the sufferer, trying to make sense of what he did to deserve this and coming up with nothing bad enough to warrant the trouble. In this reading, Job’s friends are well-meaning meaning folks who try to explain suffering with well-worn platitudes, like, “God has a plan.” Maybe true in some sense, but not much comfort to someone dealing with devastating loss.

            So a whole book on how we respond to trouble and suffering—our own and that of our loved ones. We’ll see what kind of wisdom we can glean!